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Dear Ellen liam who has a very bad cold also a cough it has lasted him two or three weeks but I think he will get well, when the cool weather abates little. It seems to rnc we have had more cold disagreeable weather this winter than I have ever known before in this place I suppose you are having a very cold time there from all accounts Oh! how it makes my heart ache to hear of the sufferings of the poor handcart companies that eame through this eold weather so late in the season; poor things they found that faith alone was not proof against cold and snow.23 I hope they all found good homes that did arrive There is quite {a] reformation"1 going on here at present, all the true hearted Mormons are being bapti/ed over again, those who are not, are not considered members of the church. I think it is doing great good the meetings are more fully attended than before and they are more lively 23Between 1836 and 1.860 ten companies of immigrants came to Utah by hand-carl - a two-wheeled carl supporting a box containing the traveler's belongings. In 1856 five companies made their wav west; the first three made a successful journey, but the last Iwo companies met disaster as handcarts made of green wood required constant repair, and the companies met an early winter in the plains and mountains. One hundred and twentv-two person;, died (if starvation and exposure, a far greater number lost than in the famed Donner Party disaster, but not known for the excessive tragedy of the Donner Party. A brier summary is "Handcart Travel" in Andrew Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Publishing Company, 194]), 312-16. A longer account is LeRoy R. Ilafen and Ann W. Hafen, Handrails lo '/Aon: The, Story of a Unique Western -Migration, 1856-1860 . . . (Clendale, California: 'Hie Arthur H. Clark Company, I960). "4The Mormon lieforrnation, which began September 13, 1856', Kaysville, Da vis County, Utah, with Jedediah M. Grant as the leading spirit, was an effort on the part of Mormon leaders to "get the fire of the Almighty kindled" among the Saints who had "measurably gone to sleep" and wore not living their religion. The Reformation spread rapidly through the Mormon settlements in western America, and lasted until the spring of 1857. Included in the exhortations to righteousness, according to Mormon patterns, was the call to take more wives. Howard Claire Scarle, "The Mormon Reformation of 1856-1857" (master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1956). Stanley S. Ivins, "Notes on Mormon Polygamy," Western Humanities'Review, 10 (Summer 1956), 229-39, and reprinted in Utah Historical Quarterly, 35 (Fall 1967), 309-21, points out that during thii period "plural marriages skyrocketed to a height not before appro ache d and never again to be reached. If our tabulation is a true index, there were sixty-five per cent more of sueh marriages during 185(3 and 1857 than in any other two years of this experiment." 36 |
