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The Beginning of our Courtship

Jemima Cook was born March 10, 1828, in Stokes Damerel, England, the seventh of nine children. She was born and reared in the very village where her parents had been born. Being in a large family everyone was expected to contribute when they were old enough to work. Jemima grew to be small of stature but strong in spirit. She learned the trade of a tailor and was very skilled at it.

Then about 1853, Jemima heard missionaries teach the restored Gospel. Jemima was “excited and enthusiastically desired to share [her] newfound faith with [her] family.” But her family had also heard of the Church and believed those things “negative and untrue.” They opposed her listening or attending anymore meetings. Jemima, however, would not be deterred. Being small of stature she would go to her room “then steal away—often through my window—attend the meetings of the Church and then slip back in with no one missing me at all.”

Just before she turned 25, Jemima was baptized—“much against my parent’s wishes,” she said. After baptism, she began to save money to go to Zion. In early 1856, she gathered her savings, wrote her parents a note of her intentions, and quietly slipped away. Her parents read the note and went after her but before they could catch her, Jemima had boarded the ship Horizon and set sail for America.

At Iowa City, Iowa, she became a part of the Martin Handcart Company, and when the incessant snows came months later in Wyoming, Jemima described,

I often pushed a handcart through 18 inches of snow. At night when we stopped our clothing was covered with ice and snow and frozen to our bodies. Then men would build large fires to thaw us out, but we would wake up in the morning only to find 2 to 3 feet of snow on our beds. Some of the saints were so exhausted they would beg to die. They felt they couldn’t take another step forward.

On November 4, 1856, the snow was deep, and the temperature was very cold near Devils Gate, Wyoming. Jemima sat down on the icy bank of the Sweetwater River to remove her shoes in preparation for wading across. The night before, when the decision to cross had been made known in the camp, an acquaintance—a returning missionary and sub-captain of the group—John Toone, asked Jemima if she was going to cross the river. She answered Yes! Just then, John Toone walked over, picked Jemima up and carried her across the stream to safety. After that, John helped her push her handcart up into the Cove.

Jemima said, “This was the beginning of our courtship.” A few months later they were married. Together they had seven children. John and Jemima lived out their days in the little town of Croydon, Utah.

Sources: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KWJH-ZFS