Description
My Teams Start Now!
It was October 1856, and Anson Call had just returned to Salt Lake City from a colonizing mission. No sooner had he arrived the President Young called Anson to leave immediately and help emigrants stranded on the high plains of Wyoming.
He left Salt Lake on October 28, with a company of thirteen wagons supplied by the North Canyon ward. The weather was forbidding. The snow was deep, the temperatures were cold, and the storms kept marching in.
On November 3, Anson’s party met the Willie Handcart Company at Fort Bridger. Some of the men in his company felt they had fulfilled their obligation to rescue and wanted to return to Salt Lake with the Willie Company, but Anson is reported to have said: “This company [Willie] with a little help… will reach the Valley. Those following never can. We must push on. My teams start now!”
Anson’s company made it to the Green River where storms, snow, and cold stalled them for a few days, but instead of turning back as so many had, Anson pushed them forward into the unknown. They did not know where or even if the remaining companies were still on the trail ahead of them. Every mile Anson’s men journeyed east further endangered their own lives, and yet they pushed on.
Unbeknownst to Anson and his company, on November 9, 1856, Captain George D. Grant and his team of rescuers had loaded up the spent emigrants and departed Martin’s Cove. There was not enough of anything to sustain life the 300 plus miles into Salt Lake—not enough food, blankets, or even wagon space to go around. Yet, they either moved forward or they died where they were.
Where were the other rescue teams that President Young had promised would follow?
Those teams had turned around, assuming that the lost emigrants and Captain Grant’s rescue team had either wintered or perished. Seventy-seven teams turned around and were driving west back to Salt Lake City. Anson Call pushed through the crowd, as it were, and continued on to the east in faith.
November 16, 1856, the Martin Handcart Company crossed over the infamous Rocky Ridge. John Jacques recorded, “It was a bitterly cold day.” The “snow fell fast and the wind blew piercingly from the north.” Their ordeal would not be as life-threatening as had been the Willie Company four weeks before over that terrible stretch of the trail because they had left their handcarts behind, and many were now riding in wagons. The wagons were both a blessing and a curse, however, for as they relieved the emigrants from having to walk, it also allowed the cold to reach them from above and below and prevented any exertion to generate body heat. People continued to die.
It was at Rocky Ridge that Anson Call and his party of determined rescuers met the 900 souls of the combined Martin, Hunt, and Hodgett companies. They were the first “substantial reinforcement” that Captain Grant and his team of rescuers had received since finding the emigrants on October 19.
What was the reaction of Anson and his men when he saw the suffering emigrants? He wrote, “We found them starving, freezing, and dying, and the most suffering that I ever saw among human beings.”
Have you been called to minister to someone in the Lord’s name? If you have then I ask you to remember Anson Call.
Source: Andrew D. Olsen, The Price We Paid, (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book, 2006) p. 391-392
