Ronnie O'Brien recalls that before his death, her husband's grandfather admonished her on at least two occasions: "The O'Briens will always be friends with the Mormons. Do you understand?"

Photo by R. Scott Lloyd

Dressed as her husband's ancestor Emma, Ronnie O'Brien speaks at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City about her efforts to preserve trailside history of Mormon Trail in Nebraska. Part of mural in background depicts Nebraska portion of trail.

It is a charge that the 43-year-old Shelton, Neb., resident has fulfilled for the last two decades in her own special way: by making herself a recognized expert on what life was like for settlers who lived along the Mormon Trail in central Nebraska and thus helping to preserve this aspect of Church history.

What would turn into an absorbing labor of love originated soon after her marriage to her husband, Pat, a railroad worker, when she was still in her early 20s.

"We lived in Shelton; Grandpa lived in North Platte," she said in a Feb. 17 talk to history enthusiasts in Salt Lake City. "Every night at 7:20, Grandpa called to ask, 'What's going on with the railroad?' I started to interview him by phone about the Union Pacific Railroad. Almost always, before the conversation was over, we would end up talking about life along the trail, and before you knew it, railroad history went on the shelf. We would talk about the Mormon Trail and, once in a while, about the railroad."

That began an 11-year fascination that culminated with her involvement with the Nebraska Mormon Trails Association and its participation in the 1996-97 observance of the sesquicentennial of the exodus of Latter-day Saints from Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley.

During that 11-year period, she raised three children and obtained a college degree in business management, still finding time to piece together the story of life along the trail, striving each month to find some new bit of information, and usually fulfilling that goal.

She learned early on that, in 1858, President Brigham Young sent Joseph E. Johnson to start a way station at Wood River along the Mormon Trail to assist Church converts making their way to Salt Lake City. She learned that about the same time, her husband's Irish Catholic ancestors founded their own settlement they called Wood River, not to be confused with Wood River Center, which was the town Joseph E. Johnson founded, and which became Shelton.

Bit by bit, she found information about the "trailsiders," those who lived near the trail and who operated "road ranches" where travelers, for a price, could graze their livestock and, perhaps spend the night under a roof instead of the stars. She learned of Mormons who, for whatever reasons, did not continue all the way to Utah or who came back and settled in Nebraska.

She began to put on presentations, mostly for school children, in which she would enact the part of her husband's great-great-grandmother, Ellen O'Brien. She wrote songs about Ellen and her sisters.

One of her most often-told stories of the O'Briens occurred in February of 1864, when snow was still on the frozen ground. A wagon train of Mormon emigrants came through. In one of the families was a 9-year-old boy, sick with a malady, probably diphtheria, so common among trail travelers that it was known locally as the Mormon fever.

The O'Briens took him into their home and tried to warm him with blankets before sending the family down the trail to the home of Ellen's sister, Mary Moore.

Within a week after the departure of the wagon train, Mary's son died of the sickness. Then, the O'Brien's 5-year-old boy died. They built a bonfire to thaw the frozen ground for a grave. Wood was so scarce that they disassembled the wagon they had used to come west and placed him in the wagon box for a coffin.

A 6-year-old boy was the next to die; then an 18-month old boy. In turn, the family dug up the grave to place the newly deceased children in the wagon box.

Now, the O'Briens had just one boy left: 3-year-old Dennis. Desperate, the father, Edmund, made a hammock from a gunny sack to hang outside and placed Dennis in it to prevent him from contracting the fever. A Pawnee Indian chief, Many Blankets, came through with his hunting party. With the approval of the family, he took Dennis back to the Pawnee encampment, in the process exposing hundreds of his own tribe to the illness, while the O'Briens burned and scalded everything they could to destroy the contagion. Thus, Dennis survived.

Talking to her husband's grandfather one day, Ronnie expressed her amazement that the O'Briens and Chief Many Blankets would be so benevolent. "He said, 'That's just the way it was. There were so few people out here, that if they were going to make it, everyone had to take care of everyone else.' I think, after all that, Ellen O'Brien, would have taken care of someone again; she may have."

Preserving such information was Ronnie O'Brien's motivation during what she describes as a "lonely" 11 years.

"When I first started researching, I was still in my early 20s," she said. "I would pay for my children to go to day care and go about 172 miles to find major historians and ask questions."

She found among them an inexplicable aversion to talking about "the Mormon Trail." They preferred to call it "the Overland Trail," or "the Council Bluffs Road," or "the Military Road" or, occasionally "the Oregon-California Trail." She would reply, "But the settlers called it 'the Mormon Trail.' "

The historians, upon hearing the story about the deaths of the O'Brien children, would also express doubt that a wagon train would be moving that early in the year.

Later, while working at the Stuhr Museum in Grand Island, she encountered a volunteer whose ancestor, Squire Lamb, was a stage runner who operated a station between Grand Island and Wood River. What's more, the volunteer had a treasure trove in the form of a chest full of letters Squire Lamb had written to his brother in New York in the 1860s. Typed copies were furnished to Mrs. O'Brien, one of which, dated February 1864, indicated that the wagons were moving on the trail already, despite the snow and frost, and that it was going to be a big year for travel.

Here was clear corroboration that wagons were already moving at the time the O'Briens' encounter with Mormon fever took place. She showed the letter to the historians, who began to take her seriously.

"I started going down the Mormon Trail knocking on doors of modern houses asking the people, 'Do you know anything about the Mormon Trail?' "

She was amazed at the number of four-generation descendants of trailsiders she found, all of whom seemed to be waiting for someone to come along with whom they could share their Mormon Trail information.

Today, Ronnie O'Brien is vice president of the nearly defunct Nebraska Mormon Trails Association. Two years ago, at the group's most recent meeting, there was discussion about whether to keep it going. It had participated in the Pioneer Sesquicentennial of 1997, when the commemorative wagon train came through bound for Salt Lake City. And it had promoted the placement by the National Park Service of 12 signs to mark the Mormon Trail through Nebraska. Was there a need to continue?

"Like the O'Briens, I'm Catholic," Mrs. O'Brien said, "and at the meeting, most all were LDS. One of the guys said we don't need to keep going; we've accomplished what we need to accomplish. And nobody said anything. I could feel myself starting to turn red. I was getting mad. I said, 'You know, the 150th anniversary of the handcarts is coming up in just a couple of years. Maybe you don't realize how important that is in the history of all the trails. I don't know about the rest of you, but Ronnie O'Brien is going to be doing something. And if I'm doing something, I'm pretty sure the Archway in Kearney is going to be doing something.'

"And I'm proud to say, we are!"

Thus, the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument is taking a lead role in the 150th Anniversary of the Handcart Pioneers coming up June 2-3 in Kearney. (Please see accompanying article.)

The day after the meeting, her friend, Joseph Carlson, who serves on the high council of the Kearney Nebraska Stake, called Mrs. O'Brien to express regret that he had not said anything. He pledged to do anything he could to help. Thus Church members in Nebraska are supporting the celebration.

At a Feb. 17 gathering of historical group members at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, Mrs. O'Brien expressed what a privilege it is "to be able to promote the Mormon Trail — and call it the Mormon Trail — in the middle of Nebraska." She said it is an unsung trail. "Hopefully, this celebration will change things."

E-mail to: rscott@desnews.com