The TREK - Friday Day 5

FRIDAY – Day 5


Oct 24

Travel: No travel recorded

Deaths: William James, age 46; Elizabeth Bailey, age 52; James Kirkwood, age 11; Samuel Gadd, age 10; Lars Wendin, age 60; Anne Olsen, age 46; Ella Nilson, age 22; Jens Nilson, age 6; Bodil Mortensen, age 9; Nils Anderson, age 41; Ole Madsen, age 41



Paul Lyman Commentary

The weather remained severe. Levi Savage described “the severe wind which blew enough to pierce us through.” Eleven more people had died since the base of Rocky Ridge. The day was spent resting and burying the 13 who had died on the 23rd and 24th in a mass grave.

Sadly, the two youngest Saints were part of the Nielson family. Jens Nielson, age 35, who was believed to be a large man, and his wife, Elsie Rasmussen Nielson, age 26, and under five feet in height, had earlier given up their considerable means to allow others to travel by handcart. As Jens and Elsie crossed Rocky Ridge, Jens’s feet became so frozen they were useless. He could not walk any more and his feet would never completely heal. When Elsie was faced with the choice of leaving him or staying with him to die, she chose to load him in their handcart and pull him to camp. He survived Rocky Ridge. Their son, Jens, age 6, and the young girl they had traveling with them, Bodil Mortensen, age 9, could not take the horrible strain and did not survive. Elsie hauled her husband in their handcart until there was room for him in a wagon at Fort Bridger

One close call with death involved John Stewart, Sr., age 31. He was placed with the frozen corpses for burial in the mass grave. While he was there his grief-stricken wife, Ann Stewart, age 29, noticed that he was still breathing. Fortunately, the error was discovered and he was carried to a fire and revived, thus avoiding a premature death.

The sacrifice of Archibald McPhail at Rocky Ridge (His daughter Henrietta related this story to her granddaughter, who recounts it as follows):

A terrible blizzard had been raging all day, and when they reached camp, [Archibald] found that one of his group was missing. [He] felt it was his duty to go back after her. It was indeed an undertaking for one so exhausted by the lack of food and nearly perishing cold, but he cheerfully accepted his responsibility and went in search of the women. He found her sitting by the wayside on the other side of a frozen stream they had crossed earlier. He pleaded with her to come on, but she refused, saying she was going to stay there and die. There was nothing to do but cross the stream and get her. He picked her up, and as they crossed the stream the ice broke and he was soaked with the icy water to the waist”.

“By the time he reached camp, his clothes were frozen to him and he was taking heavy chills. The air was cold and wet, and the men were so weak and hungry they could not go in search of dry wood to make a fire. Without anything warm to eat or drink, he was placed in a cold bed with a covering of a handcart pitched over him for a tent. There was a strong wind . . . which blew it over three times, and they stopped trying to keep it up, He was in high fever, and Henrietta [his 16-year old daughter] sat by his bed brushing the snow from his face as he lay dying”.

In his weakened condition, Archibald McPhail was taken into the rescue wagons after that night. He was never able to regain his strength, however, and died two later. His wife Jane often told the following story of his death;

“She was setting in the wagon that night beside her husband in the dim light of a small tallow candle. She prayed fervently that the candle might last until his suffering had ended. Her prayer was answered, for the light of the candle and the life of her husband went out at the same moment. At the time of his death he was just thirty-nine years of age”.

Levi Savage quit writing daily journal entries at this point. In summary he wrote, “nothing of much note transpired, except the people died daily.” He then left the sole source of a daily report to William Woodward and his entries in the company journal. It appears that many of the Saints were in a dazed relief. They knew they had been rescued, but were too worn out to function well.


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