Handcart Pioneers
William Henry Jackson, “Handcart Pioneer. Converts of the Mormon Faith pushing and pulling their laden carts to a new homeland in the valleys of the mountains” ca. 1930-1941. L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
Document Text |
Summary |
| Manifest Destiny
My parents left a comfortable home and surroundings for the Gospel’s sake and came out into a wilderness and endured every hardship in obedience to the call of God. |
My parents left our comfortable home and went to settle the west because they believed God wanted them to. |
| Crossing the Plains
The men set to work making handcarts and my father, being a carpenter, helped to make thirty-three of them. Ours was a small two wheeled vehicle with two shafts and a cover on top. . . . |
The men made handcarts to carry our belongings. My father was a carpenter. He helped make thirty-three carts. Our cart was small. It had four wheels and a cover on top. . . |
| When we came to load up our belongings we found that we had more than we could take. Mother was forced to leave behind her feather bed, the bolt of linen, two large trunks full of clothes, and some other valuable things that we needed so badly later. Father could take only his most necessary tools. . . . | We realized our cart could not hold all of our belongings. Mother had to leave behind her mattress, some cloth, two large trunks of clothing, and other things that we really needed later. Father could only take his most important tools. |
| We set out from Florence on July 6, 1860, for our thousand mile trip. There were six to our cart. Father and mother pulled it; Rosie (two years old) and Christian (six months old) rode; John (nine) and I (six) walked.” | We started our 1,000 mile walk on July 6, 1860. There were six people traveling with our cart. Mother and Father pulled the cart. The babies rode in the cart. My brother and I walked. |
| Living Space
“Father’s next interest was to provide us a better shelter. The dugout he built was about six feet deep, twelve feet square, with a slanting roof. Crevices between the roof poles were filled with small compact bundles of rushes held in place by a weaving of young willows. About a six-inch layer of dirt which had been excavated from the cellar was then put on the roof. There were no windows. The front and only door had one small pane of glass to light up the cool cozy room within. |
When we arrived, Father built us a small dugout to live in. The roof was made of willow branches covered in grass. There was a layer of dirt on top. The dugout had no windows and only one door. The door had a small glass window. This was the only way light could shine in. |
| Beds were made by driving corner posts into the dirt floor. Black willow poles split were nailed close together to serve as slats on the bed and fresh straw was used for mattresses. Comfortable pillows were made from the fluff of cattails which were gathered from the sloughs along the creek. To save space in this little room of all purposes, an improvised table was made by laying a large plank on top of the posts of one of the beds. Two benches made of boards, a shelf cupboard, and a small sheet iron stove with two holes and a tiny oven completed the furnishings.” | We made beds by hammering wooden posts into the dirt floor. Willow poles held up our mattresses. Our mattresses were made of fresh straw. We made pillows from the fluffy plants that grew by the creek. There was only one room in our home, so we made a table by laying a board across the bed posts. The rest of the room was filled with two benches made of boards, a shelf, and a simple iron stove. |
Winkler, Kurt (2013) “Mary Ann Hafen, Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860: A Woman’s Life on the Mormon Frontier,” Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 49: No. 1 , Article 10.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol49/iss1/10
Background
In 1847, religious leader Brigham Young led 148 followers into the Great Salt Lake Valley, which at the time was still part of Mexico. His goal was to establish a new religious settlement centered on the religion known today as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. Followers of this religion are commonly referred to as Mormons.
Over the following decade, thousands more Mormons traveled west to join Brigham’s settlement. In the early days, many of these settlers were too poor to afford the covered wagons used by other people heading west. Instead, they made handcarts to push their belongings the final 1,000 miles from Florence, Nebraska, to the Great Salt Lake.
About 3,000 people crossed the plains using handcarts between 1856 and 1860. It was a brutal journey, and at least 200 settlers died before they made it to their final destination.
About the Document
Mary Ann Hafen was only six years old when her parents met Mormon missionaries and converted to the Mormon faith. They decided to move their family from Switzerland to Utah to help build the Mormon community that was being established there. They were part of a wave of settlers who believed that they were fulfilling God’s plan by settling the American West.
Mary crossed the Atlantic in a steamship, and then took a train to Nebraska. But the final leg of her journey, from Nebraska to Utah, would be the most harrowing. Mary traveled in the tenth and final company of handcart pioneers. She later wrote a book about her experiences called Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860. These passages are excerpts from her book. They provide insight into what motivated Mary and her family, as well as what her daily life was like.
The illustration was made by William Henry Jackson, a famous painter and photographer who documented life in the American West. It is an idealized depiction of what a handcart crossing looked like, but it does help viewers imagine what some of the challenges might have been.
Vocabulary
- Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints: A Christian church founded by Joseph Smith in 1830.
Discussion Questions
- Why did Mary Ann Hafen’s parents choose to immigrate to Utah in 1860?
- What do these sources teach us about the experience of settlers who moved west?
- How does Mary Ann Hafen’s story fit into the larger history of Manifest Destiny?
Suggested Activities
- Teach these sources in any lesson about Manifest Destiny.
- For a larger lesson about the experiences of settlers in the West, combine these sources with any of the following:
- The movement of white American settlers westward had a devastating impact on the Indigenous communities that already inhabited those lands. To learn more, see:
Themes
IMMIGRATION, MIGRATION, AND SETTLEMENT
New-York Historical Society Curriculum Library Connections
To learn more about the history of Mormons in the U.S., see Our Composite Nation: Frederick Douglass’ America
