There was a soft laugh from him. “My blisters now have blisters.”
“I saw,” she said sadly. Jens thought his hands were tough from his farming, but he had been put on one of the two-man saws for most of the day. Fresh-cut lumber did not provide easy cutting. His hands had blistered, then popped, then blistered again to become ugly sores. Tomorrow he would have to do something else.
“There is something about which I should like to speak with you.”
“All right.” She turned over on her side so she could look at him directly. The moon wasn’t up yet, but it would be in another ten minutes, and when it appeared it would be almost three-quarters full. The eastern sky was already lightened by its promise and gave enough light that she could make out his features. He wasn’t looking at her, but his eyes were wide open as he stared upwards.
“We still have more than five hundred krone, Elsie. That’s about six or seven hundred dollars.”
That was totally unexpected. “Yes?”
“That’s enough to pay for our wagon and teams and the supplies we need and still have enough left over to buy a farm when we get to Utah.”
“I know, Jens. We have been very blessed.”
“Very blessed.”
She waited, feeling his hesitancy, still puzzled by this particular course in the conversation. They had both talked about how very blessed they were to have the resources they did. Many in their circle were coming only with the help of the Church. Others had enough to pay their own way but didn’t know what they would do when they reached Zion, for it would take everything they owned to get there. But even after paying out the required amounts for ship, train, and steamer travel, and 10 percent of the profit on their farm as tithing, Elsie and Jens had spent less than a quarter of their total assets.
“Brother Webb said today that it looks like we can make each handcart for under ten dollars, maybe even five or six,” he said.
“Really? That’s wonderful. I would have guessed much more than that.”
“A wagon costs about fifty or sixty dollars. Oxen are selling for about seventy dollars a yoke.”
“And we need two yoke?”
“At least. It would be well to have a spare yoke to trade off the teams.”
She nodded, sobered a little. Add in supplies, which the brethren were estimating would be about fifteen dollars per adult and half that for children, and . . . She did some quick calculating and drew in her breath. That was over three hundred dollars, nearly half of all they had left. No wonder he was worrying.
“Elsie, we’re young and strong.”
Again he had taken her by surprise. “Why do you say that, Jens?”
“What would you think if we went by handcart instead of with the independent wagon companies?”
Perhaps it was just as well that he wasn’t looking at her, for she could not contain the shock from flashing across her face. “By handcart, Jens?”
“Yes,” he said eagerly. “They say they are not going to load the carts too heavily here in Iowa City. That will give us a chance to get ourselves hardened for when we have to take a full load.”
She was still so caught by surprise that she didn’t speak.
“Jens and Bodil are in good health. It would be a wonderful adventure for them. Jens has already said he wants to pull a cart.”
“But why, Jens?”
She saw his chest rise and fall as he drew in a deep breath. “Elder Spencer came by where we were working this afternoon,” he began. “The brethren are worried, Elsie. They have used all of their resources to send off the first three companies. There is not enough money to outfit everybody.”
So that was it. She nodded slowly.
“Brother Spencer asked that if any of us had any extra resources, we consider putting it into a common fund, so more people can be taken this season.”
She was reeling a little, but now she at least understood. “So if we go by handcart, it will cost us only about fifty dollars instead of three hundred?”
“Yes.”
“And would you hold out enough for our farm in Utah?”
He didn’t answer for several seconds, and she went up on one elbow. Now she could see that his mouth was drawn into a line and his eyes were wrinkled in consternation. “What, Jens?”
“I would like to hold out enough for us to get a handcart.”
She gasped softly.
“And then I would like to give everything else to the fund.”
She dropped back to the pillow like a rock. “The farm money too?”
“Everything,” he said softly.
She didn’t know what to say. He had overwhelmed her.
“We have been blessed, Elsie. We know what the Doctrine and Covenants says. Everything belongs to the Lord anyway. We are only his stewards.”
“But, Jens . . .” She didn’t know what to say.
“Think about it, Elsie. How would we feel if that were us and there wasn’t enough money for us to continue on? Think how we’d feel.”
“What will we do when we get to Utah? How shall we make a living?”
He answered without hesitation, and she knew he had thought about this a great deal before he started talking to her. “ ‘Consider the lilies of the field,’ ” he quoted softly. “ ‘They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed such as one of these.’ Are we not more than the lilies of the field, Elsie? Why did we prosper as we did in Denmark?”
“Because the Lord blessed us,” she answered at once.
“Yes. If we do His will now, don’t you think He will bless us even more?”
“Yes, I do, but—” Then in one instant she saw it as clearly and as simply as he did. “No,” she corrected herself.
“No what?”
She heard the disappointment in his voice and scooted over to lie up against him. “No buts, Jens. You are right. We must have faith in the Lord. How can we expect Him to help us if we are not willing to help others?”
“So you agree?” he exclaimed.
“You are a good man, Jens Nielson. The best day of my life was when I married you. Do you think I would try to stop you now from being that kind of man? Yes, Jens, I agree with you completely.”
“Then I shall take the money to Brother Spencer first thing in the morning.” He bent over and kissed her softly. “Thank you.”
“No, Jens. Thank you.”
III
Friday, 4 July 1856
By now, one week following their arrival in Iowa City, all but a few of the Willie Company were in tents. To Maggie’s great relief, the McKensies and the James family were assigned to the same tent. With the death of baby Jane on the ship, that made nine in the James family and four McKensies. To everyone’s delight, Elder Ahmanson asked if Ingrid Christensen could join them. Her aunt and uncle had a full tent without her, and the leader of the Scandinavians wanted Ingrid to get as much exposure to English as possible before their departure. Eventually they would have to have a few more join with them, but for now there were enough people who preferred to sleep outside instead of in the stuffy tents that no one else was with them.
Mary McKensie was especially happy that Ingrid had come over with them. Since the Danish girl had become friends with Maggie and Hannah and the two James sisters, Mary had heard Maggie laugh more in any one given day than she had in the previous three months.
On this morning, which was the Fourth of July, the emigrants who had crossed the Atlantic on the Thornton paused with their American leaders and briefly celebrated the birthday of their newly adopted country. Utah was not a state as yet, but Utah Territory was a United States possession and the Saints considered themselves to be U.S. citizens.
Holiday or not, the urgency to prepare for departure did not allow for setting their work aside for even a day. After an hour of celebration, reality set in again. However, instead of normal work assignments, the Church agents had decided that this would be a good day for some special training.
George D. Grant took the lead while William Kimball watched. “Sisters, in council last night we as your leaders decided that we should better prepare you for your journey. In a week or so—we hope—you will all be out on the trail. It will be a new style of life for most of you. You and the brethren will have experiences you have never had before. And you will be expected to do things that most of you have never done before—simple things like making a fire, cooking a meal over that fire, yoking up a team of oxen, pitching a tent.
“Now, I am happy to say that we have several men who are experienced in these things. Levi Savage, Brother Atwood, and President Willie have been across the trail more than once, but they cannot do everything. Nor should they. You have to learn how to get along out there. You have to know how to take care of yourselves. And that is what we’re going to do today.”
He raised his arm, pointing at a spot about midway through the group. “Sisters, this half of you over here will stay with Elder Kimball. He is going to teach you how to make a fire and cook over it. Also he will give you a few tips on doing laundry in the middle of the wilderness. The rest of you come with me.”
As they started to separate, Grant continued. “Brother Spencer and Brother Webb are going to teach your husbands how to kill, clean, skin, and butcher a beef cow. We send with each company about fifty head of cattle for fresh meat. The men will do the killing, but once the animal is butchered the rest of the task will become yours, sisters. So after fire building you are going to learn how to tan a hide and how to smoke beef so that it will not spoil on the trail.”
•••
“Sisters, how many of you recognize what I am holding in my hand here?”
Brother Kimball held up a stone and a flat piece of steel. As he turned it slowly, Mary McKensie shook her head. She looked at Jane James standing beside her. She looked equally blank. The five girls, standing together, also shook their heads.
“All right,” Kimball said, lowering the device. “I’m sure that most of you sisters have had to start fires and keep them going in your homes. How many of you used matches to do so?”
Most of the hands came up. The stick match had been invented some twenty or thirty years before and was now to be found virtually everywhere.
“How many of you always kept hot coals in a bucket so you could use those to start your next fire?”
Again many hands came up.
He held up the stone and steel again. “And how many of you have ever used a flint and steel to start a fire without the help of anything else?” This time only three hands came up.
“Well, then,” Brother Kimball went on, “since matches get wet and blow out in the wind, we are now going to teach you how to start a fire, even in inclement weather, using flint and steel. This is something they will be teaching the men as well, but there will be many times when it will be up to the women to start a fire.”
And so they went to work. For the next hour they learned the art of starting and maintaining a good cooking campfire. They learned how to shave fine slivers off a dry stick or comb the flammable fibers out of linen or wool. The hardest of all was sending the spark exactly into the fibers.
Mary McKensie and Jane James formed one team; Hannah, Ingrid Christensen, and Emma James another; Sarah James and Maggie a third. They worked until their hands were sore. Brother Kimball came over and watched, coaching them as they tried again. When Mary finally sent a spark flying into the wad of fibers and it began to glow, Jane gave a little cry and dropped to her knees. Bending clear over, she blew on it softly. It began to smoke; then after a moment it burst into flames.
You would have thought they struck gold. Mary let out a yell and clapped her friend on the shoulder. The girls gaped, coveting openly what they saw. Quickly the two women added the slivers of wood, then small sticks. In a moment they had a fire big enough to support a frying pan.
At Kimball’s insistence, the girls kept trying, and five minutes later Sarah and Maggie had success. In ten more minutes there were fifteen or sixteen crackling campfires burning around the campground.
At that point they moved on to their next lesson. They quickly learned that cooking over an open campfire, especially when the wind was blowing, was significantly different from cooking over a fire in a fireplace or with a stove. Brother Kimball demonstrated some of the basics—how to make a bed of coals and wrap potatoes or other vegetables in leaves until they were steamed through; how to create a spit for roasting meat; how to bring water to a slow boil over a low flame. The ultimate astonishment came when he taught them how to bake bread in what he called a “spider,” a heavy black kettle with a thick lid, a handle, and three spindly legs.
At first, when he indicated that that’s what they would be doing, the women thought he was teasing them. But when, an hour later, he lifted the spider and dumped out a perfectly browned loaf of white bread, they became believers.
While they waited for the bread to bake, the sisters went over to observe the men in their training. As they arrived, the men had finished butchering a beef and Daniel Spencer was teaching them how to hitch up a yoke of oxen. There would be only five wagons with their company, but everyone would need to help with the animals.
What a sight that proved to be. Maggie’s mother wasn’t sure whether to feel sorrier for the men or for the animals. Some of the oxen the agents had managed to purchase were unbroken yearlings that had never been yoked before. They fought and bawled and bolted and bucked. The men fought back. They yelled, they bellowed, they jumped out of the way, they tried to hold on to the powerful necks, with no success. One man wasn’t quick enough and was sent sprawling. Not a few disparaging remarks were made about both the parentage of the animals and their character.
The sisters hooted as it took seven men to corner one young pair of very frightened and very spooked animals and get the yoke on them. In the end, one of the men actually ended up sitting on the animal’s neck before they could subdue it enough to yoke it to its partner.
Through it all the Church agents stood back, just shaking their heads in rueful disbelief. This was proving to be more of a challenge than even they had anticipated.
Chapter Notes
The description of the handcarts and the materials used in their construction comes from two or three sources cited in Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, pp. 53–55. The shortage of materials and the fact that much of the lumber that could be procured was green and uncured would prove to be a major factor in what happened later. Also, the figures given on the amount of flour needed are accurate. These two things, as much as any other, illustrate the immense challenge it was to outfit a handcart company.
As stated before, Jens and Elsie Nielson were actual people who came with the Willie Handcart Company. It is not stated exactly how much money Jens had realized on the sale of his farm, only that when he reached Copenhagen he paid sixty dollars in tithing, so the assumption is that it was the equivalent of about six hundred dollars. He kept that first tithing receipt throughout his life.
About four hundred of the emigrants who came on the last two ships in the 1855–56 season were well enough off that they planned to cross the plains in wagon companies. These people contracted with many of those going by handcart to carry their heavier goods to Utah for them. The Nielsons had garnered sufficient means from the sale of their farm that they originally planned to go by wagon with one of those independent companies. In a letter written much later to one of his sons, Jens Nielson said only this: “I had enough money to come to Utah, but we were counseled to let all the money go we could spare and cross the plains with handcarts” (quoted in Lyman, “Bishop Jens Nielson,” p. 3). That decision would
put him and Elsie and the children in the Willie Handcart Company and not with the Hunt or Hodgett Wagon Trains that followed some weeks later.
It seems incredible to modern readers to think that some of the emigrants had so little knowledge and skills about the fundamental kinds of things that are necessary for life on the trail, but it is important to remember that most of them came from the working classes in British industry and were not skilled in living out-of-doors in any way. The following accounts give some clue as to the challenges they faced in preparing to cross some thirteen hundred miles of wilderness:
“The [John Powell] family traveled by train from Boston to the Iowa camp grounds where they helped build their handcarts and joined the company of Captain Edmund Ellsworth [the first handcart company of 1856]. . . . At the Iowa campgrounds they saw the first stove with an oven and they had never seen a washboard until they came to America” (in Carter, comp., Treasures of Pioneer History 5:237).
A twelve-year-old daughter in the Powell family later wrote: “We remained in Iowa six weeks. All the men were busy making handcarts. Our bake kettle which Father had ordered had not come. We had to fry our dough in a pan over the campfire. . . .
“Each day I took pains to watch the women bake bread in their bake-kettles. I was taking lessons from them. I knew that I should have to do the baking when our own kettle came and I was anxious to learn the best way to do it” (“Autobiography of Mary Powell Sabin,” in Carol Cornwall Madsen, Journey to Zion, p. 598). The bake kettle was not delivered before they left Iowa City, but it did catch up to them in Florence, Nebraska, three hundred miles to the west.
Captain Edward Bunker, who led the “Welsh Company” of handcarts, the third company to come west in 1856, wrote of the challenges of leading a company of Saints who did not speak English and who had little experience in dealing with animals: “I had my councilors . . . , neither of whom had had much experience in handling teams. Both were returned missionaries. The Welsh had no experience at all and very few of them could speak English. This made my burden very heavy. I had the mule team to drive and had to instruct the teamsters about yoking the oxen” (“Autobiography of Edward Bunker,” as cited in Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, p. 82).
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