Our family got to the Fairfield Inn in Lincoln, Nebraska pretty late (around 10:00 p.m.), so we were going to go right to sleep, but the kids were too excited being that it was their 1st time sleeping in a hotel! I remember that I slept pretty well that night. The boys bunked out on the floor, the girls on one bed, and Rich and I on the other bed.
Well, after almost 1 1/2 hours (driving over nothing but flat terrain like what you see in this picture), we headed to Lincoln, Nebraska.
The kids had fun seeing the fort,
FORT SEMINOE that some of the men had to stay in all that winter to protect all the pioneer pocessions that they couldn't take with them back to SLC until spring came.
The boys in the Pioneer Bunkhouse!
Rachael is in the Washroom
This missionary told us what to do while we were there...he was very nice!
The kids took turns pulling the handcart around the Martin's Cove Visitor's Center.
July 24th- We started out by waking up that morning at 5 a.m. and left for our long road trip at 6 a.m following Rich's new GPS. We ate a breakfast of cinnamon bagels/milk in the car. We drove until about 11 a.m. when we got to our 1st destination of Devil's Gate/Martin's Cove (located in the middle of Wyoming). This is where the Willie and Martin Handcart pioneers couldn't go any further because of snow. Many died here because of starvation and/or cold winter weather. Rescuers soon came to the cove in the mountain which provided more shelter from the harsh weather. It was fun for the kids to pull the handcart around the area. My husband's ancestor, Janetta McBride's father died along the journey and so Rich watched a movie from Heber's account about the pioneer ordeal in the Visitor's Center. It was a sad and touching story! Heber's account (which is presented at Martin's Cove) gives a much better description of the hardships that they faced during their Handcart experience. The following story is one that I shortened to present to the Primary kids of our ward...
Janetta Ann McBride
Journey by Handcart-Story is found in the July 2000 Friend MagazineI’m very happy with my name, Janetta Ann McBride. Brigham Young gave me that name and blessed me when I was a baby. He was one of the elders who visited my parent’s home in Church Town, England, when I was born on Christmas Eve 1839. It isn’t everyone who can claim that a prophet gave them a name and a blessing. At the age of 16, we were commanded to gather to Zion, so we began our journey one step at a time. Our family first traveled to Liverpool England which was a great big seaport. Our ship that we sailed on was called the Horizon and we had fine weather all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. We arrived in Boston on June 30, 1856. From Boston, we traveled to Iowa City, Iowa by railroad which saved us weeks of traveling by wagon. From the train station, we walked 3 miles in mud and rain to meet the Church’s agent in charge of organizing the trek. We thought everything would be ready when we arrived, but the handcarts hadn’t even been built. So we camped and worked until all was ready. Our family was assigned to Captain Edward Martin’s company.
Near the end of July 1856, we cheerfully began our journey to Zion. Our family had 3 carts when we started out and each could carry about 120 pounds of baggage, 100 pounds of flour, cooking utensils, and additional food. There were 576 people in our company. I’d never been with so many members of the church.
Pulling handcarts wasn’t bad at first. But many of them broke down because they were built of green wood. We pulled those handcarts three hundred miles to Florence, Nebraska. The last members of our company and the Willie Company arrived there on August 22nd. As soon as we arrived, there was some disagreement as to whether we should continue on. Some said it was too late in the year and they thought we should set up a camp in Florence and wait until spring to travel to Salt Lake City. Most of us were ready and willing to keep going since we’d come so far already and only had 1,000 miles left to go. We left 3 days later on August 25th and headed to Salt Lake City. Everything went fine until mother got sick. She had to ride in one of the handcarts and I took her place pulling it. My 13 year old brother, Heber was also pulling a handcart. When we arrived at Fort Laramie, we were starting to run low on food. Members of the company purchased what additional food they could but our rations were cut from 1 pound of flour a day, to ¾ pound of flour. Later it was cut to ½ pound and finally to ¼ pound. As the journey continued, my father became very ill and weak. He could not pull the handcart anymore. We would find mother lying by the side of the road first, then we would get her on the cart and haul her along till we would find father lying, as if he were dead; then Mother would be rested a little and she would try to walk so father could get on and ride. Since I was the eldest, I had to care for the younger children, carrying water from the river for cooking, gathering firewood, etc. My shoes gave out and I walked through the snow barefoot, sometimes leaving bloody tracks in the snow. On October 17, just before crossing the North Platte River for the last time, we were told to lighten our loads so that we could travel more quickly. Blankets, extra clothing, and utensils were left behind. How I missed those blankets and clothing a few days later when it got even colder. That river was soooooo cold and swift. Father helped us cross it and made an additional 25 trips across that river. We were wet, cold, and hungry when the first snowstorm hit us! Father worked hard helping set up camp and gave away much- too- much of his food to those in greater need. Most of the men worked too hard and ate too little. They couldn’t bear to see the suffering of the women and children. The next morning there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground. Father was very bad that morning he could hardly sit up in the tent. My brother and I managed to get father into one of the few wagons that morning. That was the last we saw of him alive. That night, we set up camp and afterwards went in search of father. It was after dark, the wind was blowing the snow badly and the wagons hadn’t come in. We couldn’t find father. The next morning, the snow was 18 inches deep and awfully cold. While I prepared breakfast, Heber went to look for father. At last he found him under a wagon with snow all over him. He was stiff and dead. There we were, out in the middle of nowhere, with hardly anything to eat, father dead, and mother sick and a widow with 5 small children and not hardly able to live from one day to the next. Father was buried with 14 other men who had died that night. After stopping a few days, word came that ten wagons from Salt Lake had come to meet us. They were camped 40-50 miles from where we were. We received an extra ½ pound of flour, and orders to start out in the morning. This news seemed to put new life into all of us.
When we got as far as Devil’s Gate, the snow was getting too deep to pull the handcarts, so we camped in a cove in the mountains, where the wind wouldn’t get at us. Nearly all the children would cry themselves to sleep every night. My two little brothers would get the sack of flour and turn it wrongside out to suck the sack to get the last of the flour.
We left that place and our handcarts behind. The small children, the old, and the weak had the privilege to ride in the wagons. I walked alongside, but was glad I did because some others who rode in the wagon froze their toes and feet. My family, the McBride family arrived in the Valley on November 30, 1856. We were taken to the home of Samuel Ferrin to recuperate. My mother married Samuel Ferrin in May of the following year, and I married his son, Jacob Samuel Ferrin on March 29, 1857. We settled in Ogden and became the parents of 11 children.
