John Tanner and his family

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168 John Tanner and His Family Young was sick at heart. He desired and expected perhaps families, but when the missionaries rendezvoused at Payson before leaving for the trip, there were 437 persons with 150 wagons, President 20 or 30 588 oxen, 336 cows, 107 horses, 52 mules." a President Young and party accepted an invitation to attend farewell meeting and the president wrote the following in his own journal: We held a meeting at Payson on the 23rd [March 1851]. President Heber C. Kimball and Elders Charles C. Rich, Amasa M. Lyman and R. McBride addressed the people. I was sick at the sight of so many of the Saints running to California, chiefly after the God of this world, and was unable to address them. The captains companies were then organized in the usual way with of hundreds and fifties." What caused so many of the John Tanner family to move to California is not known with certainty, but it was probably due to the presence of Apostle Amasa M. Lyman. Amasa was a colorful figure. He was married to Louisa Maria Tanner, the only marriage­ able girl in the John Tanner family, and the Tanner boys admired him and gravitated to him. His position as an apostle in the Mormon church added to his stature. company left Payson, March 24, 1851, expecting to the Chino purchase property owned by Isaac Williams. The total distance would be about seven hundred miles, three hun­ traveling dred less than the trip from Winter Quarters to Salt Lake, but with greater obstacles than those met by the pioneers of 1847. Wagons The large had been taken road had been Parley P. this "southern" route before, but no well-defined made, and watering places were far apart. over Pratt, who was going on a mission to the Pacific with the camp most of the way. He has left a journal Isles, of the trials and hardships encountered on the way, and giving telling a description of the country through which they passed. A few of was Pratt's descriptions will April 23, illustrate 1851: After some passing a phases of the tedious few miles of very journey: hilly road, we came down upon a small stream which heads in numerous spring meadows near the rim of the basin, on the divide between it and the Colorado. Here we stopped to rest on Saturday and Sunday.