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William H. Kimball: Return with Honor

All of us have made mistakes. It is a measure of our character and courage what we do about them.

August 13, 1856, There was a meeting held on the banks of the Missouri River. It was not your normal gathering rather it was high drama and life and death decisions. Members of the Willie Handcart Company were trying to decide whether they should stay or attempt to make it to the Salt Lake Valley before winter overtook them. It was not an easy decision. Most of their leaders were encouraging them to have faith and push on. One man however, Levi Savage, stood and urged them strongly not to go on. “Tears commenced to flow down his cheeks, and he prophesied that if [they] undertook the journey at that late season of the year,…their bones would strew the way.”

This ominous prophesy gave the people pause, but then other leaders arose and overrode him and exhorted the people to go on. One man, the oldest son of Heber C. Kimball arose and according to diary accounts “delivered a speech in which he sternly rebuked those of little faith, and he promised that he would stuff into his mouth all the snow they would ever get to see on their journey to the valleys.”

With this every doubt was vanquished and the decision was made to go on. The Willie Company set out. Meanwhile, William Kimball and others of the leaders traveled on ahead reaching the Salt Lake Valley on October 4, 1856, where they reported to Brigham Young that there were still two large companies of handcarts emigrants and two wagon trains on the plains.

The weather was warm; the temperature above 70 degrees when Brigham Young set to with prophetic urgency and called for men and teams to go out and “bring in those people now on the plains.” Within two days 27 men and 16 loaded wagons were headed east to the relief of those emigrants.

Then Sunday October 19, 1856, the snow came to Wyoming with a vengeance, catching the emigrants hundreds of miles from safety, out of food, and deathly weak. It was late in the day of October 21 when that small band of rescuers finally made their way into the handcart company camp. The joy and relief of those 400 emigrants was indescribable. So pitiable was their condition that Daniel Jones, one of the rescuers, said it was a sight that “would stir the feelings of the hardest heart.”

The rescuers went to work with heroic vigor to relieve the sufferers. They warmed and fed them, carried them, cheered them and ultimately saved them. Among those rescuers was William H. Kimball, the very man who had prophesied that he would stuff in his mouth all the snow they encountered on the plains. He was in Salt Lake less than three days, having been gone from his family for more than two years, when he volunteered and went back for his friends. And that is not all, it was he who was assigned to lead the Willie Company into the Salt Lake Valley. He delivered them on November 9, 1856. Then two days later he turned around again and rode into the Wyoming winter to rescue the Martin Company.

All of us, like William Kimball, make mistakes, sometimes big and costly ones, but when we can admit, like he did, that we were wrong, and then do all in our power to right that wrong—that is Godly character!