To hell and back with the Martin Handcart Company

“Our family was very, very lucky.”

That’s how my mother explains the experience of Josiah Rhead and his family during the summer and winter of 1856. That’s when Rhead, my great-great-great-grandfather, his wife, Sarah, and their children Eliza and Edward Henry attempted to cross the Great Plains pulling a handcart.

Part of the ill-fated Martin Handcart Company, my ancestors (through Edward) were among the more than 800 Mormons who initially set out from Liverpool, England, destined for Utah.

The company set up camp in Iowa City, Iowa, but it was late in the season to attempt a crossing of the plains and Rockies. But on July 28, 1856, the company left, most pulling handcarts loaded with an entire family’s belongings.

For my family, however, the harrowing handcart trek would take a terrifying — and ultimately life-saving — turn.

While still in Iowa and before the winter snow began to fly, Josiah became very sick. In deference to the remainder of the Martin Handcart Company, the company, which owned all the handcarts, decided the Rhead family would slow them down too much. So, they took the handcart and left them by the side of the trail.

Abandoned and with a sick husband, Sarah did the only thing she could. She decided to walk back for help. They’d passed a farmhouse about five miles back, and she needed to get her husband there as fast as she could.

It was getting dark and, as Edward, who was 5 at the time, would later recall in detail, they could hear wild beasts in the area. But Sarah didn’t have a choice. She dug a pit and put Edward and his younger sister Eliza into the pit, then surrounded that hole with brambles, thorns and branches. She then put Josiah on her back and carried and dragged him most of the night until they reached the farmhouse.

The next morning, they returned to the pit expecting to find wild animals had taken their children. Instead they found Eliza and Edward alive and well still inside that pit, and around the circle of brambles she had made were numerous wild boar tracks. The animals had come for the children, but couldn’t get to them.

Eventually, Josiah recovered from his sickness. He stayed and worked in Iowa for another couple of years, then the family caught on with another handcart company and finished their journey, settling in Coalville, Utah.

What seemed like a death sentence for the Rhead family in 1856 when they were cut from the Martin Handcart Company instead likely saved their lives, Edward would recall later. That’s because the Martin group lost hundreds of people to harsh winter conditions, including many of the younger children.

“What seemed to be a disastrous thing probably saved the family many hardships,” my mother says in recalling the story Edward, her great-grandfather, told.

Greg Johnson is assistant managing editor for the Frontiersman. Contact him at 352-2269 or greg.johnson@frontiersman.com.