Impact on Keokuk 1853 encampment recalled
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KEOKUK, Iowa — The impact of Latter-day Saints in the 1840s and 1850s on Lee County, Iowa — across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo, Ill. — was remembered and celebrated June 27-28 with a symposium marking the sesquicentennial of the 1853 Mormon encampment in Keokuk.
City officials in Keokuk and and Montrose joined local and visiting scholars and senior Nauvoo missionaries for a Friday evening dinner and a Saturday of presentations and dedications of historical markers.
About 85 people attended the dinner on Friday evening, according to Marian Hollingsworth, a Church public affairs missionary in Nauvoo. She said Mayor David Gudgel of Keokuk spoke highly of the Mormon pioneer immigrants who came to Keokuk in 1853 to outfit for their journey to the Salt Lake Valley and of the service they rendered to the city during their stay.
Loren N. Horton, Iowa state senior historian emeritus, delivered the keynote address, giving a context for the 1853 encampment in Iowa.
Lecturers at the Saturday symposium included BYU Church history professors Fred E. Woods, William G. Hartley and Susan Easton Black in addition to local historians Doug Atterberg, Jack Meister, Tom Gardner, L. Matthew Chatterley, Joseph D. Johnstun, Mike Trapp and Shalisse L. Johnstun.
Brother Hartley clarified eight distinct LDS connections to early Iowa, of which Keokuk outfittings were one. He then noted that in books by scholars of the California and Oregon trails and Church historians, the story of Keokuk as a major trail outfitting center in 1853 has been overlooked.
Brother Hartley said the average age of the travelers was 33 and an outfit of one wagon, four oxen, two milk cows and provisions cost in today's dollars about $8,400.
Brother Chatterley, a Church member who is the art director at the Des Moines Register newspaper in Iowa's capital city, spoke about Frederick Piercy, an British artist and Church member who made sketches of the Mormon emigrant trail from Liverpool, England, to the Salt Lake Valley.
Converted to the Church five years earlier, the 23-year-old artist was commissioned in 1853 "to work on an illustrated guide that would encourage and assist British converts emigrating to America," Brother Chatterly said.
"For me his journal, as well as [his] drawings, contain descriptions, insights and observations that bring the trip to life," he said. "I read the account, as did, I am sure, many early British members of the Church, picturing myself crossing the Atlantic aboard the Jersey, on the steamboats of the Mississippi River and traveling with teams of oxen across the prairies."
After the morning lectures a parade was held in Keokuk to mark the celebration. "The Nauvoo Brass Band played wonderfully, much to everyone's enjoyment," said Sister Hollingsworth of the group of missionaries who recreate the 1850s musical aggregation in Nauvoo. "There were Keokukians that were on their lawns and at the door of their homes waving and listening as the band and parade went by."
Historical markers were dedicated at Triangle Park in Keokuk, site of the Mormon pioneer encampment, and at Linger Longer Park in Montrose, Iowa, where Brigham Young and his followers landed after crossing the Mississippi River in the 1845 exodus. Another marker was dedicated at the historic Fort Des Moines in Montrose, where many Latter-day Saints stayed prior to the founding of Nauvoo across the river. Mayor Ron Dinwiddie of Montrose participated in that dedication.
