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Show The Promised Land 141 had already lost his wife and his two youngest sons since Montrose two years earlier, and now his six-year-old son C. was run over by a loaded wagon and his life snuffed out in an instant. This vivacious lad, a bit of sunshine in a drab world who had managed to elude the destroying angel in the two dreadful Sidney leaving Sidney winters at Winter Quarters (when one out of five persons had fallen victims to the disease), was now taken suddenly by accident. But death had time only was such And should we bury on the pioneer trail, they dead, and perhaps sing: thing a common to pause and their die, before our journey's through, all is well. We then are free from toil and sorrow too, With the just we shall dwell. Happy day, our lives are spared again, to see the Saints Their rest obtain, o how we'll make the chorus swell, All is well, all is well 3 But if .. There is no way of knowing how John Tanner stood the trip and how much he suffered from the heat, fatigue, and other discom forts in general. His seventieth birthday occurred when they were about halfway to the valley, and besides his advancing age, he was not in the best of health. But it is doubtful if he did any complaining; there were enough troubles and problems in the camp without his adding to them. lay on his hard bed at night, looking up at. the stars, he may have pondered his past sixteen years in the service of the church. Most of that time he had spent moving about with the main body of the Saints. During that period of time there had been born to him five children and thirty-five grandchildren. Two of his children and seven of the grandchildren died in the same period. How many of the deaths were attributable to the rigors of pioneering cannot be said with certainty, but perhaps most of them. Covered wagons and As he frontier life were hard on babies and their mothers. But if John thought about these things, they were only part of his past experience, not to be regretted, but counted as part of those hard facts of life you give for a cherished cause. He may have given thanks to God that his life, and whatever health he had left, had been to see him through to the end of the journey. John was keen preserved enought to know how important he and his substance had |
