Description

Ann Rowley

The year was 1856 Ann Rowley was a widow with a large family living in England. After being baptized a Latter-day Saint, Ann dreamed of going to Zion where she could be with the main body of the Saints. However, money was a problem. It cost more than she could muster to make such a journey and it took all she had to care for her large family. Everyone who could work—did, until finally, with the generous help of others there was enough to make the journey to Utah. Ann and eight children set sail on the ship Thornton in early May 1856 from Liverpool. After arriving in America they journeyed to the railroad terminus at Iowa City, and there the company was outfitted with handcarts and began their journey.

It was August 16, 1856 when the Willie Handcart Company left Florence, Nebraska bound for the Salt Lake Valley more than a thousand miles distant. At first the company journeyed in high spirits, but as they moved further west their spirits began to flag. The handcarts were heavy, and the road endless and always seeming to climb upward. Food—there was never enough. Day after day they would walk and pull the handcart, their strength waning with every step. They grew weaker and weaker until one cherished older daughter finally passed away. Ann described how it hurt to see her children go hungry, cutting strips of rawhide from the cart wheels and chewing it as they walked for a measure of nourishment.

One night somewhere in that vast cold wilderness, there was no food at all for the evening meal. Ann knelt to pray and as she did she remembered two old sea biscuits left over from their ocean voyage weeks before. She rummaged through their meager belongings and found them. They were very hard—so much in fact that they could not be broken, and they were so small. “Surely,” Ann said, “that was not enough to feed 8 people, but 5 loaves and 2 fishes were not enough to feed 5000 people either, but through a miracle, Jesus had done it.”

She took the two pieces of hardtack, placed them in a dutch oven, and covered them with water. She asked for God’s blessing and placed the pan in the coals. “When I took off the lid a little later,” she said, “I found the pan filled with food. I kneeled with my family and thanked God for his goodness. That night my family had sufficient food.”

This story reminds me of something Jesus said, “Every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him” (Matthew 7:8-11).

I am so grateful God is so generous.

Sources:

https://www.tellmystorytoo.com/member_pdfs/ann-jewell-rowley_1948_433.pdf

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/KWJH-5ZD