My Pioneer Heritage

Our weekend trip to Utah helped me to feel more grateful and thoughtful about my ancestors for the things they've done! I'll talk more about what we did this weekend tomorrow, but today with it being Pioneer Day and all, I want to honor one of those ancestors.

This is Thomas E. Ricks. He is my great-great-great-grandfather. He was an amazing man. He helped to settle many areas in Utah and Idaho. When I was younger I really wanted to go to school in Rexburg because then I could go to the school my relative had started. (I did go there, but after a semester of commuting everyday, I dropped out.) Anyway, he did many things and is one of my many heroes.
After the initial migration of Latter Day Saints to the Salt Lake Valley, there was a need to make the trip quicker and cheaper for those immigrants coming to this area from other countries. So in 1856 Brigham Young came up with an idea. The coming Saints would cross the country in handcarts.

These handcarts were easy to make, and needed no animal power to pull. The Saints could even make them themselves. It was a brilliant plan.

In the fall of 1856 there were a few companies who came along too late in the season. Those faithful and amazing Saints came anyway, not knowing what lay ahead of them. They got caught in Wyoming with an early, bitter winter swirling around them. Those early Saints came with very little anyway, but as they traveled they left more and more along the way, including extra clothing and blankets. Their thought was that the less they had to pull in their handcarts, the easier the way would be. Unfortunately, they didn't realize that those things that they left behind would be beneficial to them later on. These handcart pioneers were hungry as well. There wasn't enough food and there was little rations to go around. So, when these two handcart companies came along, they were already hungry and tired, and now, because of the storms, they were freezing. They went as far as they could before they stopped. The plan for the handcart pioneers was that once they got to a certain point in the trail, wagons from Salt Lake would meet them and refill their low reserves. But since these companies came so late in the season, so the supply wagons turned around and headed back to the Valley, not knowing there were others out on the plains. Those poor people were in a bad situation, and didn't know that the situation wouldn't get any better.
Eventually, Brigham Young found out about these stranded Saints and immediately called for the people to prepare to take desperately needed supplies to those people. The call also went out for strong and willing men to go, and Thomas E. Ricks volunteered to go with this rescue company. Within two weeks they had caught up to these people, but not before death had taken many of these handcart pioneers.
The rescuers followed along with these people and took them the rest of the way to the Valley. They came to a place called the crossing of the Sweetwater River. Those poor people had been through so much and crossing a frozen river was not something that they wanted to do. Many of them just sat down in the snow and cried at the thought of crossing this obstacle. Some of the men who had come to save them carried those people across the river so that they wouldn't have to do it alone.
In the end they had lost over 200 people from both companies. They came to Salt Lake and were welcomed and taken care of. On a whole, the handcart experiment worked wonderfully with little loss of life. These two handcart companies, the Willie and Martin companies, were the only disasters to hit this great experiment.

At this time in our church's history, many men practiced polygamy, and my great-great-great-grandfather was a part of this practice. (To see what our church's stand is now on this practice visit this website.) Thomas was already married, but wanted to take another wife...one that came from the rescued handcart companies. In order to take another wife, he had to get the permission of his first wife. I think I would have gotten along well with this woman...she did NOT want him to marry Tamar Loder, this beautiful woman who had just come in with these other handcart pioneers, so she had a plan. She told him that he could marry Tamar as long as he also married Elizabeth Jane. She didn't think he'd go through with it because Elizabeth Jane was very homely. She was even said to have a cocked eye. Thomas E. was such a rascal though...he ended up taking her offer and married both women on the same day! Marrying wife 2 and 3 out of his total five wives.
You're probably wondering what this has to do with me, well, I'm going to tell you...I came from one of those great women who married that great man....can you guess? Do I come from the brilliantly devious Tabitha, the first wife? Do I come through Tamar, the beautiful newly rescued brave handcart pioneer? Or do I come through the humble cock-eyed Elizabeth Jane?
Well, I guess I'll dispense with the suspense...I come through that humble cock-eyed woman, Elizabeth Jane. I've always thought that story was kind of silly, but I still admire Thomas's get-it-done attitude. He was a man who I admire and look up to and I'm SO grateful for his, and my many other ancestors', sacrifice on my behalf!