| Elizabeth Uren: from St Keverne to Salt Lake City |
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Page 4 of 5 Personal possessions up to a weight of seventeen pounds per adult and ten pounds per child were permitted on each cart and normally five individuals were assigned to each cart. In addition to the handcarts, each journey was accompanied by ox wagons which carried additional provisions and tents. Twenty people were allocated to each tent for the duration of the journey. It was an extremely difficult means of travel, an extreme test of the Faith of all of those who undertook the journey across mountains and deserts, where there were no proper roads. The only comparison which comes anywhere near is to imagine pulling a pony trap across the highest and wildest parts of our Cornish Moors and adding in a few river crossings just for good measure over a total distance of 1,300 miles. Contemporary reports tell of previously strong men worn down by hunger, lack of clothing and proper bedding pulling their carts with their small children and their possessions on board until the day they simply died from the effort involved. Those who died were buried along the route and place names like Sweetwater, Martin’s Cove, Rock Creek and Rocky Ridge are etched forever in Mormon history. In the period from 1856 to 1860 almost 3,000 Mormon faithful made the journey in this way in a total of ten handcart companies. The company in which Elizabeth travelled in 1860 was the tenth and final handcart company to make this historic journey. Her journey from South Africa to the Salt Lake Valley in Utah was finally completed on 24th September 1860, almost six months to the day after she and her children had set out on the Alacrity. Once in her new home, Elizabeth quickly found work to support herself and her children. She became housekeeper to William Theobald, a widower with seven children. Very soon afterwards on 24th November that same year the couple married and their first child, a daughter they named Charlotte, was stillborn on 14th August 1861. Later that same year William and Elizabeth set out for a new home in Duncan’s Retreat, some 300 miles south of Salt Lake, where they lived for ten years. Life here was harsh. The flooding of the Rio Virgin River washed away their crops and their orchards and on occasions threatened to wash away the entire small community and its houses. One by one the settlers moved away and finally, in 1871, the Theobald family abandoned their home and set out for Toquerville. During their ten years at Duncan’s Retreat the size of the family had increased. One child had died as an infant but by the time of the move to Toquerville, Elizabeth’s family was now fourteen children, seven of her own and seven of William’s from his first marriage. |
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