Wearing bonnets and dressed like pioneer women and children, Sister Lori Robinson and her granddaughters, 12-year-old Scarlett Hodgman and 8-year-old Stella Hodgman, demonstrated how to make little dolls out of colorful hollyhock flowers.
One blossom makes the skirt. Use a toothpick to connect the blossom to a bud for a head. Then attach another blossom as a bonnet. It’s easy and fun.
“Back in the day when you couldn’t run to Walmart for a doll, you had hollyhock dolls,” said Robinson, a service missionary at the Church History Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “We have had hollyhock doll waltzes, weddings, you name it.”
Across the table, the four young children of Matthew and Sarah Jensen admired the hollyhock doll-making demonstration, then accepted a small bag of seeds to take home and plant in their garden. The family, who recently moved from California to North Salt Lake, Utah, was not fazed by the 100-degree heat in downtown Salt Lake City.
“We love Pioneer Day,” Matthew Jensen said. “We love our pioneer heritage, and we felt like we really wanted to embrace and learn as much as we could to appreciate the sacrifices and the example that the pioneers set for us.”
The Jensens were one of many families that attended A Pioneer Fair, held outside the Church History Museum on Saturday, July 22, two days before Pioneer Day. Those who attended participated in various pioneer activities designed to help people appreciate the skill, ingenuity and industry of Utah’s early settlers.
A Pioneer Fair activities
The Church History Museum began hosting A Pioneer Fair in July 2017 with the intention to hold one annually, but it was interrupted by the onset of the pandemic in 2020. This is the first fair since it was postponed due to pandemic precautions, said Tiffany Bowles, an educator with the Church History Museum.
“We wanted to do it around the 24th of July to celebrate the pioneers’ arrival in the Salt Lake Valley and to celebrate the skills, ingenuity and industry they brought with them,” she said.
Individuals and families attending the event had the option of choosing from a variety of pioneer activities, including:
- Cyanotypes, a historic photo process.
- Making hollyhock dolls.
- Pottery.
- Wood graining.
- Watercoloring.
- Pioneer-era clothes washing.
- Quilting.
- Lace tatting.
- Blacksmithing.
- Handcarts.
- The Mormon Battalion.
- Pioneer children toys and games.
‘They love it’
In one corner of the plaza outside the Church History Museum, Sister Shirley Jamiel, a service missionary, taught 4-year-old Brielle Hancock of Chandler, Arizona, how pioneers used a washboard to clean their clothing.
The little girl dipped an item of clothing in the soapy water, worked it along the washboard, then rinsed it in another bucket before hanging it to dry. She immediately returned to the clothing basket to grab another item to repeat the process.
“They just can’t get enough. They love it,” Jamiel said of the children. “It helps them appreciate what we have and what the pioneers went through.”
Tatting, games and the Mormon Battalion
In a grassy area with trees on the backside of the Church History Museum, Heidi Sugden sat in the shade at a table covered with materials for tatting, a technique for handcrafting lace from a series of knots and loops.
Another service missionary, Elder Roy Welty, sat at a table covered with pioneer children’s games, including kendama, whimmydiddle, stick pull, a wooden-spinning top, dancing wooden dolls and hoops.
“All these toys were designed originally for children to learn skills, rhythm, for instance,” Welty said.
A few feet away, father Mark Asay and his son Scott, dressed in costumes, re-created a Mormon Battalion campsite, complete with a tent, an American flag and other historic items possibly used by members of the battalion.
“I’d like to think we are fulfilling Brigham Young’s promise that future generations would appreciate these men and what they did and they would never be forgotten,” Mark Asay said.
Appreciating the pioneers
For those needing a break from the blistering heat, one canopy provided free water bottles and another offered a spray of water mist and shade.
“The weather today is definitely giving people an appreciation for everything the pioneers went through,” Bowles said.
Robinson agreed.
“Wow, bless the pioneers who came across the Plains, in the heat or the cold,” she said.
Despite the heat, Sarah Jensen hopes the activities will help her children embrace and appreciate their pioneer heritage.
“As we just moved to Utah, we want to embrace the things that make Utah so unique and special,” she said. “Having these free activities where we can learn a little bit about our ancestry and try to be inspired by them, I think, is important.”
