Louisa Carritt Enderby

Scene Six: Florence

Throughout May, June, and July of 1861, about four thousand Saints from the East, and two hundred “down and back” wagons from the West converged on Florence, where a bustling outfitting camp had been set up—complete with provisions store, warehouse, campsites, corrals, weighing machines, bowery, and LDS agents directing the outfitting.

Jacob Gates, agent in charge, had set up the camp. Acting on orders from Brigham Young, he had arrived in New York City from England in February. There he had made preliminary railroad bookings for the May and June European emigrants, taking time to visit an old boyhood friend on Wall Street to show him a copy of Joseph Smith’s Civil War prophecy. In Chicago, Elder Gates bought 111 unassembled wagons from the Peter Schuttler wagon company for $7300, to be delivered at Florence in June.

After Elder Gates reached Florence in early April, he heard distressing news of the fall of Fort Sumter. On April 24 he saw soldiers from Ft. Kearney, Nebraska, heading east. “The war spirit is up,” he wrote, “and fear seems to creep over the nation and a dread of something to come.” 14

On May 5 he learned how many “down and back” teams were coming from Salt Lake City. Without knowing how many emigrants to expect because of possible delays, he opened a warehouse and stockpiled provisions and trail equipment.

The first group of emigrants—the Saints who had traveled on the Manchester—arrived in Florence on May 24. Elder Gates helped them obtain wagons, form an independent train, and start west on May 29. The second emigrant company—the Underwriter passengers—reached Florence on June 3, followed by the Saints from the eastern states on June 20. Meanwhile, the wagons from Utah rolled into Florence between June 16 and June 30, on schedule. The last group of emigrants—-the Monarch company—arrived on July 2.

Elder Gates, Elder Pratt, Elder Snow, and Captain Young were surprised by the large number of emigrants. Elder Snow had estimated that three hundred wagons would be needed; he had, in fact, misjudged by three hundred wagons. By July 2 the Florence outfitting camp contained more than 2500 Saints—including Germans, Swiss, Italians, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Scots, Welsh, English, Irish, and Canadians.

Saints who could not buy their own wagons and teams signed up to travel in the “down and back” companies. Captain Joseph W. Young supervised the “ticket sales” and loading of the four Church trains, freeing Elder Gates to oversee the outfitting of the independent trains.

While waiting for wagon assignments, emigrants assembled Schuttler wagons, built a public bowery, and sewed together wagon covers and tents. To feed the Saints and stock the wagon trains, Elder Gates’s agents procured bulk supplies from stores in the area, including 13,000 pounds of sugar, 3,000 pounds of apples, 3,300 pounds of ham, and 15,000 pounds of bacon.

During late June and early July, six independent trains and the four “down and back” trains fitted out. On Perpetual Emigration Fund Company ledgers, Church agents issued loans and credits for food, supplies, and wagon fares to passengers in need—including more than six hundred heads of households. People in Church trains received wagon assignments, with six to twelve people per wagon. Fares were fourteen dollars for adults and seven dollars for children under age eight. Each passenger was allowed fifty free pounds of baggage, and was charged twenty cents for each pound over fifty.

One sister wrote that in her wagon, items not used daily “were stacked up in the middle of a wagon, as high as the bows,” cutting the wagon into two apartments. 15 Camp kettles were tied beneath the wagons. The groups camped outside Florence until departure day, practicing campfire cooking and learning to handle ox teams.

The “down and back” trains moved out during the first two weeks in July. Jacob Gates closed down the Florence camp and left it on July 17—four days before the first major battle of the Civil War. By then, 12 wagon trains with 624 wagons had left Florence, carrying 3,900 emigrants—1000 from the eastern states, 1900 from Europe, and 1000 “independents” who had reached Florence on their own. About 1,700 emigrants traveled to Utah in the four “down and back” wagon companies.

Scene Seven: The Mormon Trail

The 1,000-mile trail the emigrants followed paralleled the Platte River’s north shore across Nebraska and part of Wyoming, then followed the Sweetwater River halfway across Wyoming to South Pass before cutting southwest to Fort Bridger and over rugged 7,700-foot high mountains into Utah. In mid-journey the trains passed US army units that had once been stationed in Utah—with their troops and baggage wagons heading east to join in the fighting.

The emigrants traveled safely, for the most part. Although they experienced some problems, the majority of the emigrants arrived in Salt Lake City healthy and in good spirits. James H. Linford, an emigrant from England, wrote “there was a sameness in every day’s travel,” and “all in all it was a nice trip for the healthy and strong.” He noticed that “All of the able-bodied emigrants walked from Florence to Utah.” 16

The Utah teamsters, called “Utah boys,” were considered rough-mannered by some of the European Saints. But the “Utah boys” helped to make the journey more interesting. Zeb Jacobs wrote in his diary of a man who had joined with the young teamsters in a “snipe hunt” one night: “We stopped him and found that he belonged to Heber P. Kimball’s train which was a short distance ahead of us. The boys had induced him to catch rabbits in Yankee fashion, by building a small fire and lying down by it with an open sack for the rabbits to run into, and then hit them on the head with a club, now and then giving a low whistle; other boys going out to drive the rabbits in, when all of a sudden the boys gave a yell. The man thought the Indians were upon him, and off he started at full run. He had run about a mile when we stopped him. The fellow was scared out of his wits.”

During August, September, and October, the wagon trains reached Salt Lake City. Church leaders welcomed the newcomers, and the “Utah boys” resumed their less exciting work. The “down and back” trains were disbanded, and the borrowed wagons and teams were returned to their Utah owners, who received a total of more than two hundred thousand dollars in tithing credits as pay.

Emigrants quickly found lodging and work. Hundreds stayed in Salt Lake City; others settled in areas such as St. George, Tooele, and Lehi. Brigham Young felt pleased that 3,900 emigrants had reached Utah safely—1,700 of them in “down and back” wagons with Utah oxen, saving the Church thousands of dollars that would otherwise have been spent to buy cattle and wagons. “The sending down of wagons from Utah to Florence is a grand scheme,” wrote Elder McAllister. 18

From 1862 to 1868 (railroads reached Utah in 1869), 24,000 more emigrants came to Utah. One-third to one-half of those, needing Church help, came in “down and back” wagon trains sent from Utah.

The carefully orchestrated emigrations during the 1860s pay tribute to the inspiration and organizing genius of Brigham Young and the emigration officers who oversaw the migration. Although some other companies did endure severe hardships, the carefully planned and supplied “down and back” wagon trains and the independent trains that traveled with them typify our LDS emigration legacy.

Note:

This paper draws in part from the author’s Kindred Saints (Salt Lake City: Eden Hill, 1982), pp. 124-52, and his “The Great Florence Fit-out of 1861,” forthcoming in BYU Studies. For an analysis of the Church Trains during the rest of the 1860s see Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1958), pp. 205-11.

[illustrations] Illustrated by Scott M. Snow

[illustration] From Florence, emigrant wagon trains followed the Mormon Trail 1,000 miles across Nebraska and Wyoming into Utah.

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