The 24th of July is a natural time for us to reflect on our family history. Many of us may not have Utah pioneer ancestors, however, one dictionary definition of “pioneer” is one who “prepares the way for others to follow.” We all have stories of “those who have prepared the way for us to follow” in our families–ancestors that have made a difference in our lives and in the lives of others. President Dallin H. Oaks once stated of pioneers, “With faith in God, they did what every pioneer does — they stepped forward into the unknown: a new religion, a new land, a new way of doing things. With faith in their leaders and in one another, they stood fast against formidable opposition.”
This makes me think of two very different pioneer stories about women from my own ancestry. Mary Hedrick and Philip Garner joined the Church in 1841 and moved to Illinois to be with the Saints. In 1846 when the persecution was intense, they moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where her husband was called to be in the Mormon Battalion. He was injured in New Mexico and was part of the “Sick Detachment” that went to Pueblo, Colorado then to Salt Lake City. After being gone 15 months, he returned to Council Bluffs.
While Philip was gone, Mary Hedrick Garner remained back in Council Bluffs with the rest of the family “unprovided for and shelterless.” The Battalion departed suddenly, so Mary was left alone with a canvas covered wagon they had brought from Nauvoo for shelter. She also had to care and provide for her eight children. The oldest child was fourteen at the time, the youngest was a baby, and her oldest son was seriously ill with chills and fever and was not expected to live. Because of the lateness of the season, no crops were harvested, so it was a winter of cold and hunger. That is about all we know of Mary Garner, but we can imagine her struggles. She was truly someone who stepped into the unknown and stood fast against formidable opposition.
When Philip Garner returned, the family traveled to the Salt Lake Valley; they had a wagon and an ox team, but the family members walked most of the way to Utah. They arrived in Utah on October 25, 1849, and settled in Ogden. With other pioneers, they built a fort to protect themselves from the Indians. In those first years they relate that they fought “crickets, grasshoppers, snakes, and Indians” in order to survive.
My grandmother Mary Anne Hamilton Frost was a different kind of pioneer. In 1911, she joined the Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland at the age of 27. Her father, a religious man who read the Bible with his family daily, was not happy and made her life difficult enough that she immigrated first to Canada in 1912, then to the U.S. the following year. She married a non-member but remained active in the Church despite the many moves their family experienced. She served as a Sunday School teacher, member of the Genealogy Committee, Relief Society president and, most importantly, taught my father the Gospel and prepared him for a life of service in the church. She fixed dinner for the missionaries almost weekly and gave them rides to appointments. She records that one of the first meetings of the Newport, Rhode Island Branch was held in their home. After 40 years of marriage, her husband joined the church, and their family was finally sealed in the temple in 1958. In a very different way, she stepped into the unknown and stood fast against formidable opposition.
In a Tabernacle Choir broadcast, Lloyd Newell noted, “It is not easy to leave behind what we know and travel into the unknown, but it’s a step we all must take at some point in our lives. How did the…pioneers do it? The answer is the fire of faith that burned in their hearts. So, when the time comes for us to cross our own oceans, to find our own ‘place which God for us prepared,’ perhaps we can remember the. . .[pioneers] whose every step was a step of faith.”
This Pioneer Day I remembered two very different kinds of pioneers whose travels into the unknown and steps of faith have strengthened my own testimony. Their examples of standing fast against formidable opposition continue to influence me as I navigate my life.
Sources:
Oaks, Dallin H. “Following the Pioneers.” General Conference, October 1997, URL: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1997/10/following-the-pioneers?lang=eng
Newell, Lloyd. “A Step of Faith.” Music And the Spoken Word. 25 July 2021. URL: https://www.thetabernaclechoir.org/videos/july-25-2021-4793-music-and-the-spoken-word.html
– Marianne Bates, Consultant, Granite FamilySearch Center