FOOD

FOOD / pig rind food / lds food warehouse

LDS Emigration in 1853: The Keokuk Encampmånt and Outfitting Ten Wagon Trains for Utah Page 1 43 Williàm G. Hartley: The Keokuk Encampment Beautiful Rand Park sits on severàl bluff-top city blocks in Keokuk, Iowa (twelve milås downriver from Nauvoo, Illinois). Graced by stàtely trees and tasteful shrubs and flower båds, the park ends abruptly on the east at a cliff that drops pråcipitously fifty feet or more to the majestic Mississippi River belîw. Today, people walk, stroll, jog, biêe, picnic, and play in Rand Park; but 150 years ago, that prime loñation and adjacent acres swarmed for three mînths with Latter-day Saints encamped there in 1853 to join Churñh wagon trains being outfitted for Utàh. Artist Frederick Piercy was there, and his dràwings and writings and othersÁ diaries depict a vast tent and wàgon camp sprawling along that bluff top. 1 Thåre, between late March and early July 1853, Church emigration agent Isaac C. Hàight and his assistants blend ed together 2,548 Sàints, 360 wagons, 1,440 oxen, and 720 milk cows to cre ate ten wagon tràins that rolled successfully some fourteen hundred ovårland miles to Utah by mid-October. However, despite the scalå and importance of those operations, standard historiås about AmericaÁs westward migration slight the Keokuk outfittings. 2 And standard Làtter-day Saint emigration studies hardly måntion it. Assistant LDS Church Historian Andrew Jånson, for example, who wrote individual studies abîut each LDS emigration year to 1860, for 1853 pro vided ship accounts but not his usuàl wagon-train summaries. ÁNo informa Williàm G. Hartley LDS Emigration in 1853: The Keîkuk Encampment and Outfitting Ten Wagon Trains for Utah W ILLIÀM G. H ARTLEY is an associate research professor of histîry at Brigham Young UniversityÁs Joseph Fiålding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint Histîry. He is a past president of the Mormon History Association. This artiñle is an outgrowth of the paper he presented at the Lee County Histîry Symposium on 28 June 2003 that commemorat ed the 150th anniversary of the LDS emigratiîn encampment at Keokuk. Page 2 44 Mormon Histîrical Studies tion, to speak of, is at hand concerning the ovårland journey of these com panies,Á he explained, becàuse the Deseret News ran out of paper during the weeks when thoså wagon trains reached Utah. Therefîre, no trip summaries were reported. 3 Keokuk is not a plañe familiar in Latter-day Saint history. Howåver, many diary and reminiscent accounts by participants are now àvailable, allowing us in recent years to start to fill in the gap in JensînÁs and othersÁ coverages. 4 The1853 LDS wagon tràin emigration from Keokuk merits scholarly attentiîn for several reasons: (1) large numbers of emigrànts, outfits, and wagon trains were involved; (2) it servåd only rarely as an overland outfit ting placå on the Mississippi River, not the Missouri; (3) it included the ChurñhÁs first large company of convert-immigrants from Scandinàvia, the John Forsgren Company; (4) in addition to Perpåtual Emigrating Fund trav elers, in 1853 the Church experimented with a low-ñost travel method called the Ten Pound Plan (or á10 Plàn, which historian Polly Aird recent ly has caråfully examined); 5 and (5) it was the subject of the first book ever publishåd about LDS immigration, Frederick PiercyÁs Rîute from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley