Twelve Mormon Homes : Twelve Mormon homes visited in succession on a journey through Utah to Arizona.

Twelve Mormon Homes, page 029

infants had perished from the sufferings they had undergone; others found them established in tiny homes, longingly await- ing him.21 I asked Mrs. M ary whether the band of exiles knew where they were to go. Had the pioneers returned? "No," she said; "we heard from time to time how they were faring, from the post-of&e boxes, but that was all we knew." "Were you long on the journey?" "Very long," she said; "but we kept cheerful, knowing the Lord was our guide. But you can think what we felt when we came into the mountains, and word was passed one day from wagon to wagon, that Brother Young and the other pioneers were in sight, coming back to meet us! They brought news that they had chosen the spot for us to settle, and planted seed- corn there. It was beautiful weather, and we had a dance, and book, S. George Ellsworth, Utah's Heritage (Santa Barbara and Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, Inc., Igp), pp. 140-41 gives the correct version. The Thomas L. Kane papers in the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia properly detail the events leading to the call of the Battalion. Facsimile copies are found in the Special Collections Department, Marriott Library, University of Utah. See also B. H. Roberts, History of the Church of lesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, . . . (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, rgp), 7:610-11 (hereinafter cited as fiocumentary History). Daniel Tyler, A Concise History of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexi- can War, 1846-1847 ([Salt Lake City: ] n.p., 1881), pp. I 10-18; and Bancroft, History of Utah, pp. 238-46. 210ne such person who marched to California in the Mormon Battalion and ex- pected his family to await his arrival in Salt Lake City was Robert S. Bliss. Instead, when he arrived in Salt Lake in October 1847, he discovered his family had been left behind at Winter Quarters on the Missouri River. See J. Cecil Alter, ed., "The Journal of Robert S. Bliss, with the Mormon Battalion," Utah Historical Quarterly 4 (193'): 67-969 I 10-28, and Everett L. Cooley, ed., "The Robert S. Bliss Journal," Utah Historical Quarterly 27 (1959): 380-404.