Track daily progress of handcart pioneers

Willie Company journal entries of 1856 put on Web

This year's LDS Church focus on the 150th anniversary of the handcart pioneers' trek across the Great Plains to Utah is being celebrated online through a virtual history project at Brigham Young University that tracks the daily events of the Willie Handcart Company.

BYU Studies, a quarterly magazine that chronicles research and activities at the church-owned school, has set up the Web site — handcart.byu.edu — that allows users to read about the daily activity of the handcart company from journal entries kept by a company clerk and three other writers. Written commentary on the day's events is offered by Paul Lyman, a juvenile court judge in Richfield whose research into the company's daily activities will be published in book form this fall and was the basis for the project.

The Willie Company became famous in Western history not only for its arduous trek, but because the group was caught in early winter snows on the high plains of Wyoming in October 1856. Scores of company members died of exposure, exhaustion and starvation. Rescue parties sent from Salt Lake City brought the survivors to Utah.

Today, thousands of Latter-day Saints gather each summer in Wyoming on church-owned land where the pioneers perished to pull handcarts across dusty trails, paying homage to their spiritual forbears and learning more about their sacrifice. Lyman said his own research into the details of what the Willie Company experienced came as a result of his family's desire to learn more about the handcart pioneers.

During a 1994 trip to Wyoming, they decided to check out the Willie handcart rescue site. At the time, there were few clues as to where the events transpired, but they eventually found the area, now owned by the LDS Church. A few years later, the church purchased Martin's Cove, about an hour's drive from the Willie site, near where Martin Handcart Company members also perished. It has since developed both properties for use by modern-day "trekkers."

A few years ago, Lyman's extended family decided Martin's Cove would be the site for their family reunion, so he researched the handcart pioneer stories and put together some information. Two years later, he plunged into handcart history again when youths from his LDS ward were planning a trek.

"I found very little in-depth research done into any of it. In particular, I found that historians (who chronicled the events of the Willie Company) always relied on John Chislett's account, which is very negative and covers only the two-week window of the disaster. So I started digging and, by 2002, put together the outline of what would be in the book."

Lyman said he has no direct ancestors in either the Willie or Martin companies but was compelled to investigate because he found the details of their determination fascinating. He focused his research on the Willie group simply because he found more available information, particularly in the details of what happened where.

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