The Impact of the Mormon Battalion

The Mormom Battalion’s Impact on the Truckee Meadows

On the Mormon Battalion website, there is a written statement that sums up the Mormon Battalion’s total contribution. “In every sense, they of the battalion had marched into history. Behind them would come many thousands of immigrants who would follow the trail they so painstakingly—and painfully—pioneered. They had raised ‘Old Glory,’ the flag of their country, on the Pacific shore. And they had raised the ensign of Zion.”[P1] 

There is no doubt that the Mormon Battalion etched a presence in the Truckee Meadows area as well. The various groups of Mormons going back and forth between Utah and California during this period made the Truckee Meadows/Carson Valley a virtual highway and a necessary way station.

Battalion veterans painstakingly carved out the Emigrant Trail passing through the beautiful Carson Valley. As the men returned to their loved ones, they gave a favorable report about Carson Valley, promoting the area as a suitable place to settle. They were impressed with its beauty, fertility, and location—being located at the end of a strenuous trip through the mountains, or just after the dry difficult journey through the desert. Each person who wrote about the valley, exclaimed how luxuriant the grass was. The trees were plentiful as were the rivers and streams. A few of the battalion members later became guides to those passing through Nevada to California and some of them came back to settle, at least for a short time.

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The Battalion and the Donner Party

The Battalion and the Donner Party

Lavina Murphy and her husband, Jeremiah, joined the church in 1836 when Wilford Woodruff and Reed Smoot introduced them to the gospel in Tennessee. Their home was somewhat a center of activity and Elder Woodruff mentioned them several times in his missionary accounts. Not long after Jeremiah died in 1839, Lavina moved to Nauvoo with her small family. She was an active participant in church affairs including baptisms for the dead. Her name was recorded several times in the record books of Nauvoo.

 In 1842, Lavina found employment in nearby Warsaw, necessitating that she move her family to the neighboring town. According to her son William, she maintained an avid interest in the scriptures. William also indicated his mother heard of a wonderful land in the West, so the family readied themselves to move on. The Murphy’s joined with the Donner-Reed Party in St. Louis. Her children and son-in-laws became the largest family in the company.

The Donner/Reid vanguard group offered to provide for Lavina and her children if she would cook and do the wash for them. Thinking that California was to be the final destination of the saints, Lavina accepted the position feeling she would be less of a burden and still unite with the saints later.

Lavina’s two oldest daughters and their husbands, William Foster and William Pike with their children joined the Donner Party as well.

While the party was hindered with numerous difficulties, William and William, the brother-in-laws, offered to cross the summit ahead of the group and bring provisions back. As they camped in the Truckee Meadows, William Foster while cleaning his gun, accidently shot his brother-in-law, William Pike. That left Lavina’s daughter, Harriet, a widow with a baby of a few months and a three-year-old daughter, Naomi.

The early ensuing storms impeded their travel westward through the Sierra. As the  accumulating snow engulfed them, the company realized they were too ill equipped to trudge to the summit as a unit. They submitted to the mountains brutal force to hunker down, assembling a ramshackle cabin near Donner Lake.

When rescuers arrived, many were escorted down the mountain but Lavina remained due to blindness. By the fourth and final rescue, she was dead, her body badly mutilated. Of the 80 Donner Party members who camped in the Truckee Meadows in the fall of 1846, 44 survived. Of the thirteen members of the Murphy family, only seven of the thirteen survived.

Lavina Murphy’s daughter Mary, met Sergeant Daniel Tyler of the Mormon Battalion at Johnson’s ranch. She and several others marched out of the mountains to assemble a rescue party. These members are referred to as the “Forlorn Hope” group. In conversing with Mary, Daniel was informed of her family’s circumstances and concluded in his journal, “Alas, the example of Sister Murry [Murphy], although her motives were good, is an illustration of the truism that ‘it is better to suffer affliction with the people of God and trust in Him for deliverance than to mingle with the sinful for a season and be lured by human prospects of a better result’” (Tyler, A Concise History, 312).

When word of the Donner Party’s fate reached  the Thomas Rhoades family, two of his sons, John and Daniel, responded by volunteering as part of a rescue team.  There were to be principal players in rescuing several members  of the stranded group.

The rescuers endured the harsh conditions with treacherous cold and snow. None of them were experienced mountaineers who knew survival techniques. They labored to move forward through mounting exhaustion. Arriving at the camp on February 18, 1847, they were aghast at the conditions. Even so, it was impossible to take all the survivors; they could gather only twenty four.

“Big John Rhoads” carried little three-year-old Naomi Pike on his back for 40 miles. Naomi later wrote that she owed Big John her life for saving her. It is possible that John’s noble spirit had empathy for this beleaguered group since they had traveled from the East together until Fort Bridger. Not only did John make the first rescue attempt, but he volunteered for the fourth and final attempt as well.

 Next on the scene of the disaster was a small detachment of twelve Mormon battalion men. They were to accompany General Stephen Kearney as an armed escort for his return to the states from his post in California. Daniel Tyler wrote in his journal:

“On the 21^st, [the escort] traveled through snow from two to twelve feet deep and over rough mountains [the Sierra Nevadas] before reaching the Truckee River. There, a small lake was found . . . , now called Lake Tahoe. In the vicinity of this lake were several cabins built by . . . [the Donner-Reed Party], which was snowed in the previous fall. Their numbers were estimated at about eighty [82] souls, who all perished except about thirty. The General ordered a halt and detailed five men to bury the dead that were lying upon the ground.” (Tyler, A Concise History, 301–302)

When we contemplate the hardships and tragedies of the early Mormon pioneers in their treks cross country, it would be fitting to remember the Murphy family and their rescuers, much as we remember the members of the Willy, Martin Handcart companies and their ordeal in the winter wilds of Wyoming” (Quoted from Don Watts a local researcher and avid history buff).

The Donner Party tragedy left an indelible mark on all the battalion men who had contact with them either dead or alive. None of veterans had seen or heard of such a gruesome spectacle before. General Kearney commanded the men to gather the remains, dig a pit in one of the houses and burn the house with the remains. However, several other parties came upon the scene and found more evidence of the insanity that took place (Dorius, “Mormons in the Donner Party,”).

Reddick Allred was part of the newly discharged battalion party who traveled northward intent on finding their wives and families. His group came after General Kearney’s company who had already buried some of the dead in the mountains. Reddick records in his personal journal:

Proceeded on our journey on the 5^th [September 1847], and met Sam Brannan with an Epistle from President Young. All who did not intend to go to the Bluffs for their families should stay in California and get work through the winter. This broke up our organization and Andrew Lytle was our Captain.

When we passed the summit of the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, we found Hastings’[Donner Party’s] winter camp. At the base of the mountains we struck the Truckee River, then crossed an arm of the Great American Desert to the sink of the Humboldt River, passing the Hot Boiling Springs. (Family Papers.)

The Mormon Emigrant Trail

The following describes the difficulty of blazing this trail:

Saturday, July 22, Rock Creek. The climb was even steeper now. The wagons continue to break down and are in need of constant repair. Fifteen men worked the road to the top of the mountain.

       July 29, Summit Camp. Cliff with sharp drop, very hard going.

July 31. Impossible to build a road through this canyon. We had no hammers nor drills with which we could do anything with the stone. It seemed almost an impossibility to go farther. Finally someone suggested we build a fire on the rock. When the fire had died down we found as far as the heat had penetrated, the rocks were all broken in small pieces which were soon removed with pick and shovel. Another fire was built with the same result. After three or four fires, we found the rocks were not much in our way and we soon had a good wagon road right over them. (Norma Ricketts, Melissa’s Journey with the Mormon Battalion, 93)

It took five days to cut a wagon road through the seven-mile-long canyon not far from present day Grover’s Hot Springs. The canyon they worked diligently to render passable was tight and narrow, just wide enough for their wagons. Latter emigrants would never know of the exertions made by the hearty Mormons who blazed the trail before them. For the next 16 years, thousands of gold and land seekers, wagons, and livestock came into California over the Mormon Trail, following these battalion tracks. The company also blazed an estimated 170 miles of wagon road across trackless terrain in 40 days.

Most of the pioneers who wrote in diaries made mention of “The Back Bone.” It would later be dubbed “The Elephant Back” because of its apparent similarities to a pachyderm. Today it is known as the Carson Pass which reaches a grand height of 8,575 feet. The diarist of the Holmes-Thompson group who blazed this trail recorded it took another ten days to cross the Sierra Nevada. Today it is a 30-mile stretch that can be traversed by four-wheel drive between Highway 50 near Placerville, California, and Highway 88.

Henry Bigler, one of the battalion diarists wrote, “Sat. 5^th of Aug. . . .campt on Carson River though at the time we had no name for it only the one we gave it that was ‘Pilot River.’ Sun. 6^th. Continued down Carson River past a hot spring. Campt in the bend of the River. . .”( Journal of Henry William Bigler, Mormon Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.)

Melissa Coray and the Emigrant Trail

In addition to the necessary number of men in the battalion, there were women and children who accompanied them. In 1994 the U.S. government dedicated a mountain peak in the Sierra Nevada to Melissa Coray of the Mormon Battalion. The range is near the Emigrant Trail, behind Kirkwood Ski Resort. Even as a woman, Melissa came to idealize the courage and strength the battalion became known for.

Melissa was one of only four women to successfully complete the entire 2,030-mile military march accompanying her husband through dreadful exposure, exhaustion, lack of food and medicine. She was an 18-year-old bride, being married only four days, at the time they left. She said, “I didn’t mind it. I walked because I wanted to. My husband had to walk and I went along by his side” (Kenneth N. Owens, Gold Rush Saints, 197). “If he must go, I want to go,” she said. “Why must women always stay behind and worry about their husbands, when they could just as well march beside them.” (Ricketts, Melissa’s Journey with the Mormon Battalion). There were many sacrifices, but leaving her mother and father was extremely difficult for Melissa for she never saw her mother again. Hannah Burton died on the trail to Salt Lake before she could embrace her daughter Melissa again.

Melissa was wise beyond her years. During the never-ending miles of marching, she watched as others ate until they were satisfied without thinking or planning ahead. She, on the other hand, prudently planned to meet she and her husband’s needs. The young wife cooked their food cautiously so she never wasted. While many men suffered from starvation, Melissa and Will were never in danger, though they were never full. Her wisdom carried her through the bone dry conditions they were called to endure. “Thirst only gets worse when you think of it. When I was thirsty, I tried not to think of it.” It was at such a time that she learned to carry a pebble in her mouth. This caused the saliva to flow more freely and lessened her unquenchable thirst. (ibid, [pg#42]).

Toward the end of the trail, Melissa became pregnant. Nausea became another obstacle to overcome. She was anxious about her baby and wished for the day she and William could settle down to make a home for their new family. When the couple was discharged from their military service, they headed north. She delivered a baby boy named William Coray Jr. at Monterey. He lived a short while before being buried in a cemetery there.

By the time they reached Sutter’s Fort, Mormon Battalion veterans had discovered gold. William and Melissa stayed just long enough to gather two bags of gold, one of which was to be sent to some of their family back east. It would be enough to equip the family for the trip to Salt Lake.

The Corays did not linger in the gold fields long, they were anxious to reunite with the saints. The couple joined the Browett-Holmes Company with 45 men, two cannons, 17 wagons, 150 mules and horses, and about the same number of cattle. The lone woman was Melissa. The Truckee Route required 27 crossings over the mountains, so rather than ford the river with all the livestock and wagons they blazed a new trail, appropriately dubbed the Mormon Emigrant Trail.