Description

Luman Andros Shurtliff

It was October 1846 when word reached Garden Grove, Iowa that Nauvoo ‘the beautiful’ had fallen, and the last of the Latter-Day Saints had been driven from the city. Those beleaguered people were forced into and then across the Mississippi River, and were now huddled, starving, and suffering on the west bank of the great river. Notwithstanding, they were refugees themselves.

Some 170 miles away, Luman Andros Shurtliff and a group of men from Garden Grove pulled together wagons and teams, and set out to rescue their stranded brethren on the river. Luman was elected the Captain of the company.
October 18, 1846, Luman set out for the river leaving behind a pregnant wife due to deliver at any time. He recorded that 75 cents was all the expense money raised to accomplish a journey of 340 miles round trip. They went out about 150 miles; they ran out of money and supplies and were forced to stop and work for a time to obtain the means to make it the rest of the way to the Mississippi and the poor camp.

When they arrived, Luman described the plight of the poor camp as follows, “I came to the camp of the poor, sick and persecuted Saints. Many places where there had been camps were now desolate and without inhabitants. In others, a ragged blanket or quilt laid over a few sticks or brush comprised all the house a whole family owned on earth. …The occupants lay stretched on the ground either sick or dying, others perhaps a little better off had a few boards laid up on something. [More were] sick than well.”

Continuing, Luman said, “I spent the first day in learning their circumstances and ascertaining who it was my duty to take away, as I could not take them all, and I learned that we were the last company that could be there this fall. I made up my mind to take the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick.”

After making preparations as best he could, Luman and his company prepared to leave. It was October 31, 1846. He loaded some 60 people and all they owned into the wagons. Most of those taking flight were sick.

Luman recorded this, “All the provisions put together would have made only one good meal and we were now about to start in November, with this poor sick company on a journey of 170 miles through an uncivilized and mostly uninhabited wilderness. I felt like crying, ‘O, God, help us’ as we left. I looked back and saw a few weeping Saints left behind; how to live through the winter I knew not, but God knew.”

Two weeks later, Luman Andros Shurtliff and company arrived in Garden Grove, having “accomplished a journey of 340 miles without means,” he said. Luman’s wife Altamira gave birth to a son while he was “away bringing in the poor saints.”

Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13:35) “Greater love.” He also said, “hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13).