Louisa Carritt Enderby
A BIRTHDAY REMEMBRANCE
May 25, 1920
I’m eighty-six years old today, and thankful I can truly say,
I am free from care and worldly strife, and I am satisfied with life.
I am thankful that I had my birth, when Gospel light is on the earth,
That in the years of early youth I was converted to the truth,
That a servant of the Lord was led to lay his hands upon my head
And give me power to proclaim the Gospel truth in Jesus name,
That in the service of the Lord, I was called to go abroad
And by the grace of God I went and called on sinners to repent
And when my seven-year mission ended, my heavenly father condescended
To lead me to this chosen land, that I might on Mount Zion stand,
And gave me wives one, two, and three, and a numerous posterity
And when the world in tumult rose, we dwell in peaceful calm repose,
That to work in the temple I was led, for the living and the dead
And now that I have had my day, soon the night will come, I’ll pass away
Obedient to our father’s will, I’ve sought my mission to fulfill
And when I am numbered with the dead, I trust my children may be led
To move on in this temple work, and not a single duty shirk,
That those who lived and passed away, in a dark and cloudy day
May partake the precious things, the everlasting Gospel brings.
Let us pray they may the truth believe, and our vicarious work receive
That when the Savior comes again, we with them may rise to reign
As priests and kings upon the earth at creation’s second birth
It is my earnest humble prayer, that we may meet each other there.
It is a blessing great and grand, that we may on Mount Zion stand
And exercise a saving power for the dead in this eleventh hour.
All glory be to God on high, who left his mansion in the sky
To show his love and father’s care, and came and answered Joseph’s prayer
That holy angels from the Lord, the holy priesthood have restored
The church of Christ to organize, and preach repentance and baptize
In his name whose blood was shed for the living and the dead
“What comfort this sweet sentence gives, I know that my redeemer lives.”
This article appeared in the September 1985 Ensign. It specifically mentions the 1861 voyage the emigrant ship Underwriter among whose passengers were William and Louisa Halls. The article gives us a more complete picture of what their trip to Utah was like, so it is included here.
“Down and Back” Wagon Trains:
Bringing the Saints to Utah in 1861
By William G. Hartley
William G. Hartley, “ ‘Down and Back’ Wagon Trains: Bringing the Saints to Utah in 1861,” Ensign, Sept. 1985, 26
Abraham Lincoln’s election as president of the United States in November 1860 initiated a chain of events that would change for years to come the pattern of LDS emigration to Utah. As a result of Lincoln’s election, the southern states seceded—and the Civil War began.
During this time, the migrating Saints faced many questions. Would the Civil War block ships from Europe? Would the armies commandeer all the available transportation? A large segment of the emigrating Saints were too poor to buy their own wagons and teams, and the Church lacked the funds to buy them even if they had been available. Earlier emigrants had used inexpensive handcarts, but these had afforded too little protection from the elements and no room for extra food. Thus, the leaders of the Church needed to devise a new, inexpensive wagon system for the 1861 emigrants.
The story of the 1861 LDS emigration in “down and back” wagon trains is a drama that spans Europe, the Atlantic, and America, in which members of the Church from many lands played parts in gathering the Saints to Utah.
Scene One: The Eastern States
As Baptist-born Wilhelmina Bitter and her husband, Traugott, listened to Elder Bernhard Schettler preach in Williamsburg (Brooklyn), New York, they wondered why Mormons, or anyone else, would want to move to the Utah wilderness. But their friends, the Blumells, had fasted and prayed about the Church and had received a testimony of it when the rooms in which they were praying “became lit up.” Brother and Sister Bitter soon received their own testimonies and were baptized with the Blumells. By spring, 1861, Elder Schettler’s branch of New York German converts included not only the Bitters and Blumells, but also several other families who were to head for Utah wilderness. 1
Elders Erastus Snow and Orson Pratt of the Council of the Twelve found that, unlike Elder Schettler’s enthusiastic converts, most of the resident Saints in the eastern states were less than enthusiastic about emigrating. In late 1860, the Apostles tried to fire up the Eastern Saints to “gather them to Zion.” Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Elder John D. T. McAllister succeeded in warming up several hundred Pennsylvania Saints to go west.
Hesitant Saints became less hesitant after hearing about the capture of Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 14. Elder Snow called the shots fired at Fort Sumter a “loud sermon” telling the Eastern Saints to flee to Utah for safety. 3
Elder Lucius Scovil, who was laboring in New York and New Jersey when war broke out, immediately mailed copies of Joseph Smith’s 1832 Civil War prophecy (see D&C 87) to several of his non-LDS relatives. His diary records that President Lincoln’s urgent call for troops upset many Easterners. “War! War and blood! is the cry,” he wrote. Elder Scovil advised Eastern Saints “to wind up their business and leave Babylon” that spring. 4
By April 26, an anonymous letter with anti-Mormon threats prompted Elder Pratt and Elder Snow to cancel public LDS meetings in the New York City area. Pro-South mobs tore up railroad tracks in Baltimore, and the Apostles began to worry that war might prevent the Saints from emigrating.
Scene Two: Salt Lake City
On 23 April 1861, the day after news arrived of Fort Sumter’s fall, two hundred wagons and seventeen hundred oxen left the Salt Lake Valley for Florence, in Nebraska Territory, to provide transportation for hundreds of needy emigrant Saints.
Earlier, in February, Brigham Young had asked Utah wards for loans of wagons and teams for the six-month round trip, in exchange for tithing credits. Seventy-five wards—nearly every ward in Utah—donated a fully outfitted wagon and yoke of oxen, and most sent two or more outfits. These “down and back” wagons made up four Church trains, whose captains were Mormon Trail veterans Joseph W. Young, John R. Murdock, Joseph Horne, and Ira Eldredge.
Young men agreed to drive the wagons. Brigham Young himself “donated” several teamsters, including nineteen-year-old Zebulon Jacobs, whose diary describes the struggles and triumphs of the journey. At four trail stations along the way, the four trains deposited tons of flour—also donated by Utah wards—to feed the Saints during the return trip.
Scene Three: Copenhagen
Meanwhile, early in 1861, Scandinavian Mission President John Van Cott had called for hopeful emigrants to come to Copenhagen’s docks by late April. That month news of the war in America arrived.
President Van Cott booked the Baltic Sea steamer Valdemar and ushered more than 550 Saints aboard on May 9, bound for Kiel, on Germany’s north shore. By another steamer he reached Kiel before the Saints did and chartered a train for them. The company then traveled to Hamburg, where they boarded two North Sea ships, the Eugenie and the Brittannia, to sail to Hull and Grimsby on England’s east coast, where they would join the other European Saints in crossing the Atlantic.
Scene Four: Liverpool
In late 1860 in England, Norwich District President William Jeffries felt the “emigration spirit.” 5 He received a release from his position and married his sweetheart, Mary. They packed and reached Liverpool on 11 April 1861. In Birmingham, about the same time, F. W. Blake and one hundred other Saints boarded a Liverpool-bound train “amidst cheering shouts of hurrahs, waving of hats and handkerchiefs.” 6
To channel the swelling LDS emigrant stream towards America, European Mission President George Q. Cannon chartered three ships at Liverpool, filled them with supplies, appointed LDS officers for each ship, and supervised the emigrants’ boarding and departures.
On April 16, Jeffries and 378 other Saints set sail aboard the Manchester. F. W. Blake and 623 other Saints followed on the Underwriter on April 23. Three weeks later, after a bumpy train ride across England from Hull, President Van Cott’s Scandinavian company arrived in Liverpool. On May 16 they joined the largest LDS company yet to sail—955 Saints—on the Monarch of the Sea. All in all, about two thousand European Saints made the five- to seven-week voyage to New York on the three ships.
Scene Five: Across Civil War America
After arriving in New York, the three groups of European Saints soon joined with a fourth group of Saints from the eastern states. In New York City, LDS emigration agents funneled the four companies—three thousand Saints total—onto harbor barges that landed each of them at the Jersey City depot. From there, they traveled by train northwest to Dunkirk, New York, west along Lake Erie and to Chicago, and southwest to the Mississippi River at Quincy, Illinois, fifty miles south of deserted Nauvoo.
The Saints traveled by riverboats twenty miles downriver to Hannibal, Missouri, where they again traveled by train—this time across Missouri to St. Joseph. There they boarded Missouri riverboats for a two- or three-day upriver push to Florence. The ten day trip from New York required a half-dozen train changes and two transfers to and from riverboats—a tiring, dirty, and uncomfortable crossing of America to its frontier.
The Manchester and Underwriter groups reached and departed from New York in May. The Eastern Saints’ Company, which included teenager Thomas Griggs (who later composed the hymn, “Gently Raise the Sacred Strain”) and sixty Saints from Boston as well as members from Elder Schettler’s German branch, left on June 11. A day later, President McAllister and three hundred Saints from Pennsylvania joined the Eastern Company’s train. Finally, on June 20, the last bloc—the Monarch passengers—began their train trip from New York, barely in time to meet the “down and back” wagons.
During the trip from Jersey City to Florence, the Saints saw clear evidence of America’s Civil War. At the Jersey City train depot on June 11, Boston Saints met “a regiment of New York soldiers on their way to war” who harassed them. 7 Because of “the call of government for means of transporting the troops,” 8 the Saints had a hard time getting enough railroad cars. In Elmira, New York, George Ottinger, one of the Pennsylvania Saints who later became a famous Utah artist, “had a row with a soldier” who was bothering two LDS women. 9 Near Chicago the train passed “a gallows furnished with a noose and an inscription that read ‘Death to traitors.’ ” 10
When the emigrants reached Missouri they saw troops guarding a cannon they had captured from secessionists and learned that a rebel officer was imprisoned in the train depot. Nearly every town and bridge they passed was under guard, and rumor had it that rebels had fired into previous passenger trains. Thomas Griggs wrote that Chillicothe, Missouri, “presented the appearance of a captured city, all business being entirely suspended and the streets patrolled by armed men of every conceivable character of drunkenness.” 11 Griggs added that “the spirit of secession was prevalent,” and that American and rebel flags were alternately run up and down the town’s flagpole. 12
War curtailed Missouri River traffic, forcing the emigrants to overload the available steamboats. George Ottinger wrote that on his riverboat “the people piled in endways, sideways, crossings and every way all as thick as hops.” 13
By mid-July, when Lucius Scovil and Orson Pratt were hurrying to Florence to join the last LDS wagons, no trains were running in Missouri. Secessionists had burned railroad bridges and torn up tracks, and the two elders had to ride to Florence by stagecoach. Had the LDS groups who had traveled by train arrived in Missouri a month behind schedule, the war would have kept them from Florence.