I've been doing this genealogy stuff for close to forty years now, off and on; but while that's long enough for me to have learned a thing or two about my family history — and to have acquired some limited skill at researching — I'm still basically a dilettant. My beloved aunt, my late mother's sister, is the real genealogist in the family.
Anyway, last week she sent me copies of several old family photographs, and as I studied their faces I got to thinking about some of the women in my tree. Some of what follows has been known to me for a long time; some of it is the result of more recent research.
The writer and historian of the American West Wallace Stegner once said this about the Mormon pioneers:
That I do not accept the faith that possessed them does not mean I doubt their frequent devotion and heroism in its service. Especially their women. Their women were incredible.
Like Ann Knox Gardner, who emigrated to America from Scotland in 1856. Her husband Alexander had left for America a few years before to prepare the way for his family, but was never heard from again. (He may have been a passenger on the steamboat "Saluda," which exploded on the Missouri River in 1852.)
The loss of husband and father notwithstanding, Ann and her five children took passage at Liverpool on the clipper ship "Enoch Train" (pictured here), arriving at Boston in May of 1856. From there they traveled by train to New York and on to Iowa City (then as far west as one could go by rail), where they joined a handcart company and walked the remaining 1,000 miles to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, which they reached on September 26 of that year.
She didn't stay put for long: on June 26, 1858 the Union Army entered Salt Lake City.
The rays of the rising sun slant athwart the bayonets of the 5th infantry as, forming the van of the Union army, it approaches the outskirts of Salt Lake City. At dusk is still heard in its streets the rumble of caissons and baggage-wagons. But no other sound is heard, save the murmur of the creek; nor is there sign of life in the city of the saints. Zion is deserted.
Thirty thousand of the Mormons had left their homes in Salt Lake City and the northern settlements, taking with them all their movable effects, and, leaving only in the former a score of men, with instructions to apply the torch if it should be occupied by the troops. The outer doors were locked, and in the vacant dwellings were heaps of straw, shavings, and wood ready for the work of destruction.
~ Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah (1889)
Ann and her family were part of that "Move South," settling near Utah Lake, about 75 miles south of Salt Lake City. While most of Salt Lake's citizens returned to their homes as soon as peace was assured, the Gardners, who had perhaps had enough of traveling, chose to remain in their new location. Like many immigrant-emigrants, in Europe they had been working-class city dwellers; now they transformed themselves into farmers.
Ann Knox Gardner (1805-1895)
Two years later another woman made a similar journey. Eliza Rogers, a young Londoner,
...emigrated to America in 1860, crossing the Atlantic in the ship "Underwriter" and the plains in Captain Daniel Robinson's handcart company, which arrived in Salt Lake City Aug. 27, 1860. She emigrated together with her two brothers, George and William, and their respective wives, and in crossing the plains she pulled a handcart the entire distance. On the journey they were attacked by Indians a number of times and [her] experience in fording streams and walking at times beyond her strength taxed her physical powers to such an extent that she has been somewhat crippled ever since.
~ from a biographical sketch written in 1914
The British explorer Sir Richard Burton visited America that same summer, recording his impressions in The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California (1861).
The road was now populous with Mormon emigrants; some had good teams, others hand-carts, which looked like a cross between a wheel-barrow and a tax-cart. There was nothing repugnant in the demeanor of the party; they had been civilized by traveling, and the younger women, who walked together and apart from the men, were not too surly to exchange a greeting.
I like to think that the 22-year-old Eliza might have been one of those who, "civilized by traveling," were "not too surly" to say hello to her famous countryman.
By the end of 1860 Eliza Rogers had met Ann's son, James Alexander Gardner (who I wrote about in a previous post); they were married on Christmas Day of that year. Eliza, who was my grandmother's grandmother, raised six of her seven children to adulthood, and (according to the documents I've read) devoted much of her time to helping the poor and the sick — two adjectives which could with some justification have been employed to describe Eliza herself.
Eliza Rogers Gardner (1838-1917)
———
In addition to Stegner, Bancroft and Burton, other sources for this post include The Women of Mormondom (Edward W. Tullidge, 1877); The Genteel Gentile: Letters of Elizabeth Cumming, 1857-1858 (Beverly Beeton, Ray C. Canning, editors, 1977); and, of course, family papers and photographs.