BOUNTIFUL, Utah — In a message to her posterity, handcart pioneer Elizabeth Horrocks Jackson Kingsford wrote in later life: "I desire to leave a record of those things and events through which I have passed that my children down to my latest posterity may know of what their ancestors were willing to suffer and did suffer patiently for the gospel's sake."
The legacy of sacrifice left by Sister Kingsford — and other members of the ill-fated Martin and Willie handcart companies — is preserved in "Fresh Courage Take," a new orchestral suite composed by Marden Pond, adjunct professor of Music at Utah Valley State College in Orem, where he has taught for the past 18 years.
His work premiered Oct. 27 and Nov. 3, first at the Provo Utah Tabernacle and subsequently at the Bountiful Utah Regional Center, performed by the college's Symphony Orchestra and Masterworks Chorale, with Brother Pond doing the conducting.
With a commission supported in part by the Sons of Utah Pioneers, Dr. Pond composed the hour-long suite with three months of intensive work beginning last spring. In a Church News interview, he said he essentially went "on tour" during that time, meaning that the work occupied his full attention.
The text for the work was taken from the journals and personal writings of Sister Horrocks and other pioneers such as Susanna Stone Lloyd, George Cunningham, Levi Savage, Patience Loader and President Brigham Young. It focuses on the heroism of Ephraim Hanks, who experienced a divine call in a dream to go out and help rescue the handcart people, who provided buffalo meat to some of them through a sequence of miracles, and who performed healings and painless amputations by the power of the priesthood. It also highlights the experience of Nellie Unthank, who despite having lost both feet due to the extreme exposure to the elements, remained a patient and faithful wife, mother and Latter-day Saint throughout her life.
At the Nov. 3 performance in Bountiful sponsored by the Sons of Utah Pioneers, an audience heard remarks from Elder Roger Fluhman, secretary to the Quorum of the Twelve and an Area Seventy, who filled in for Elder Merrill J. Bateman of the Presidency of the Seventy, who was unable to attend.
Elder Fluhman shared an account he said Elder Bateman would have given of S. S. Jones, a member of the Martin company. He said the story "illustrates the challenge of enduring."
Writing of the company's experience after reaching a stockade fort at Devil's Gate in present-day Wyoming, Brother Jones recounted: "I never shall forget that silence, as we trudged along, each footstep deadened by the fallen snow which was getting a little deeper at every step. There was no sound, save the faint creak of the little handcarts as they were tugged along. Where were we going? What should we do? God only knew. We did not."
Brother Jones wrote of the company gathering around a log house which was soon filled with women and children. Several of the women inside fainted from the steam and heat from their wet clothing and had to be carried out.
He recounted: "I remember the pinched, hungry faces, the stolid, absent stare that foretold the end was near, the wide and shallow open grave awaiting its numerous consignments."
"Let the curtain fall gently," he wrote. "This is not written in any spirit of complaint. I cannot recall a rebellious spirit or feeling on the trip. We started for Zion to help build up the same in the valleys of the mountains, and thank God we are here."
In conclusion, Brother Jones altered the words of the hymn "Come, Come, Ye Saints," as follows:
What if they died before their trip was o'er?
Happy day! All is well.
They will endure no toil or sorrow more.
With the just in peace they dwell.
And as our lives were spared again to see the Saints their joys obtain,
Come, let us make the chorus swell: All is well, all is well."
E-mail to: rscott@desnews.com
