Pioneer moments: 'It is so cold'
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
Lucy Meserve Smith, the daughter of Josiah Smith and Lucy M. Bean and the wife of George A. Smith, crossed the plains in 1849. Sister Smith, then 32, traveled with her family group of 19, including "teamsters, a hunter and cowboy."
The group crossed the Missouri River July 11 and left Kanesville, Iowa, July 22.In early October, however, the group, less than 300 miles from the Salt Lake Valley, got caught in a severe snow storm. The first day of October, she wrote, "we traveled until 11 o'clock at night to get to the willows, as we found no food for the animals as it is snowing very fast."
The next day, they lost 60 head of cattle and the snow drifted 6 feet deep. The brethren dug roots for a fire. One man in the group cooked pancakes "as not one of us women could get out to do a thing the storm was raging so badly." The mothers, she continued, were obliged to stay in the wagons to keep their children's hands covered till the men could set up a little stove. The sound of the storm did not drown out the sound of the children and animals crying.
"The front of my wagon was full of snow," wrote Sister Smith. "I tried to get up to get a snow ball, as I was so very thirsty, but fainted and fell back."
A day later, the storm still raged. "The brethren dug away the snow and made a fire of the roots and I stood on the snowy wagon floor and made biscuits," she wrote.
Sister Smith continued, "It is impossible for me to keep my journal it is so cold, we are in the midst of mountains covered with snow."
Soon teams sent from the Salt Lake Valley helped the company. "We were obliged to stay a number of days before we could move, for the snow was so very deep," she said.
Then Sister Smith records a "pleasing" reunion with friends and family in the valley. "We arrived in the Salt Lake Valley quite late in the evening tired and hungry, but I cooked supper for myself and the teamsters and then I could go back to my wagon and go to bed and thank my Heavenly Father for my safe arrival." (Source: Lucy Meserve Smith Papers, LDS Church Archives)
