Our Great-Grandparents Conversion and Journey to Zion

by Josephine S Davis

Thomas & Ann Oakey

The Church was little more than three years old when Wilford Woodruff, destined to become its fourth president, entered the waters of baptism.  Under the voice of the Prophet Joseph Smith he grew in gospel knowledge.  When called to the apostleship six years after his baptism, he became intimately acquainted with the stirring events and powerful personalities that made up the early history of the Church.  From the beginning he sought to proclaim the new found truth to others.  That was a gospel obligation.  Successfully he filled mission after mission.  The large and remarkable results of his proselyting, especially in England, have become a Mormon classic.  He is surpassed by no missionary of these latter days.

On his first mission to England he converted one thousand people, among these were a sect called United Brethren.  I quote Elder Woodruff:  "I was called by revelation to go to John Bendows to preach the Gospel.  I went there and found over six hundred people called United Brethren and among them were eighty-three preachers and they were in the Gospel net.  I, through the blessing of God and with the assistance of Brother Young, George A Smith and Willard Richards caught the whole flock and baptized every soul except one solitary person into the church and kingdom of God.  Many of them are here in this room today.  I mention this just to show our position.  We traveled without purse and script, and we preached without money and without price.  Why?  Because the God of Heaven had called upon us to go forth and warn the World."  (Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, p 312)

Our great-grandparents Thomas and Ann Oakey were among these converts.  Thomas Oakey was one of these preachers and when someone asked him to preach a sermon he said, "No, I haven't the authority.  I will never preach again util I have the proper authority given to me."  Grandma Ludlum (Sarah Ann Oakey) told me this.  He was converted and baptized by Wilford Woodruff on the 5th of April 1840.  He later baptized his father-in-law William Collett and many others.  They were the parents of ten children, two died in England.  They worked hard and saved what little they could to gather to Zion with the saints.

On May 4th 1856 a sailing vessel, Thornton, left Liverpool, England with eight hundred Mormon immigrants and among them were Thomas and Ann Oakey and their large family.  Sarah Ann (our grandmother) spent her fourth birthday on the great Atlantic Ocean.  It was a long voyage for ships in those days, for it took six weeks before they landed in New York City.  Although Sarah Ann was only four years old, she could always remember walking off the gang plank of that ship.

They came by train to Iowa City, Iowa and stayed there for three weeks building handcarts and getting provisions ready for the journey ahead.  It was late in the season and carts were built of unseasoned wood.  They left in August, everyone walking except babies and children under six.  The provisions were taken in wagons pulled by oxen and mules.  Each night the father of the family would go to the provision wagon and get bacon and rice and they were allowed to have one pound of flour apiece.

When they arrived at Winter Quarters in Florence, Nebraska, the brethren in charge of the handcart companies were reluctant to let them continue on at such a late date.  The immigrants were wholly ignorant of the country ahead and unused to the rigors of camp life.

G D Grant and W H Kimball were superintending the season's emigration.  Should they attempt to cross the Rockies before Winter snows set in or delay util the following Spring?  Then their Captain, James G Willie, called for a vote.  As the vote was called these sons and daughters of foreign lands--simply clad, travel worn, and dusty--pressed eagerly upon their leader to render a decision in the affirmative.

Captain Willie himself was returning from a mission in England.  His family was in Utah and he too was eager to start.  Captain Willie was to guide them across the continent but there were sub-captains of ten, fifty, and one hundred.

They formed a colorful spectacle as the winding train of vehicles, drawn or pushed by men and women, moved forward between occasional supply wagons and small herds of milk cows.  They numbered 404 souls.

Sarah rode in the cart but her seven-year old brother Reuben walked every step of the way.  At night when Sarah would look ahead and see the Captain give the stopping signal, she would say, "I can get out and walk now mother, for I can see where we are camping."  The ladies would take their aprons full of buffalo chips into camp for fires.

After the evening meal, a circle would close around the community fire.  Then softly across the dying embers all voices joined in singing those lines which encouraged thousands to go on, when enthusiasm lagged.  It became the common heritage of foreign as well as native tongues:  "Come, come, ye saints, no toil nor labor fear, but with joy wend your way."

Their traveling across the plains was slow, making an average of twenty miles a day.  Pulling their handcarts loaded with their belongings through deep sand and over mountainous trails was too much for many of the saints, and many of them collapsed.  They had to stop where there was water not only for their own needs but also for their livestock.

After they had traveled several weeks, some of their cattle which pulled the wagons were lost.  Some thought they had been stampeeded by buffalo or Indians.  Scouts were sent out to find them which delayed their journey, but the animals were not found.  This delay made their food more scarce and their supply of flour was cut down to one-half and then to one-fourth pound per person.  In Wyoming they met Indians who had dried buffalo meat.  The captain said if they had a blanket or a trinket to spare they could trade, but that nothing from the provision wagon could be spared.

Sometimes an ox would give out and was killed.  Every part that was usable was used.  The boys around twelve years would cut pieces of hide off, burn off the hair, roast it a little and put it in their pockets for the next day.

One day a herd of buffalo came along in a straight line, and Captain Willie had part of the cart caravan stop and let them pass through.  One of the larger boys killed a cow and some of the families had a taste of fresh meat.  Their trials came when they were crossing Wyoming.

Fall came early with frosty nights.  Aspen groves turned yellow on the mountain slopes, and crimson patches of oak held foreboding of approaching Winter.  Far down on the plains of Wyoming the Willie Company moved hopefully up the Platte.

Emigration agents including Franklin D Richards, returning from England, having closed the business for the season at Iowa City, were hurrying to their homes in Salt Lake.  They passed the Martin and Willie handcart companies and realizing their predicament at this late date, promised that supplies would await them at Laramie and hastened on to Salt Lake to report their condition.

The morning of October 1st dawned upon a disappointed camp of men and women on the outskirts of Fort Laramie.  Provisions of food and clothing, upon which they depended, were not awaiting them.  The scant 17 pounds of clothing permitted each member gave little comfort on that frosty morning.  As they gathered shivering around the campfires to prepare a meager breakfast, there was lacking the usual banter.  The consciousness of threatening storms, decreased rations, and insufficient clothing was not easily shaken.

Day after day they pushed painfully forward.  "We traveled on in misery and sorrow," wrote one member, "sometimes we made a pretty good distance, but at other times we were able only to make a few miles progress."

The clouds grew darker and lowered.  A breeze from the North rustled through the last oak leaves clinging crisply to barren twigs.  The men cast anxious glances toward their mates.  Instinctively, children trudged more closely behind their parents.  A flurry of leaves broke through the moving line, and women drew their shawls a little more closely about them, bowed their heads a trifle lower, and plodded onward.

A gust of wind brought a flurry of snowflakes.  Their worst fear became a reality.  Hour after hour the treacherous snow piled up its death trap.  Shoes, worn through, exposed feet to its damp and chill.

Great-grandfather Thomas Oakey and two of his sons froze their feet and the ends of their toes were frozen off.  More serious still, cutting the food rations to a minimum could only preserve the supply a short while longer.

Thomas Oakey was ill part of the way and so Ann, his wife, had many hardships caring for him and her large family.  Ann waded and carried Sarah, Reuben and her husband on her back across the Sweetwater River.  He became so ill that on may days he was unable to finish the day's march and Ann would take her family to the campgounds and return to help her husband in.

It was conference time in Salt Lake City.  President Brigham Young stepped to the pulpit and addressed the saints gravely:  "My subject is this, on the fifth day of October, 1856 many of our brethren and sisters are on the pains with handcarts.  We must send them assistance.  The text will be 'to get them here.'  This is the salvation I am now seeking for, to save our brethren.  I do not want to send oxen.  I want good horses and mules.  They are in the territory and we mush have them.  Also twelve tons of flour and forty good teamsters."

Pioneer families recounted their scanty Winter stores, and within three days a relief train set out with their sacrifice.

Meanwhile the Willie Company was trapped in the earliest snowfall in the experience of the pioneers.  They had made a forced encampment two mile below Rocky Ridge on the Sweetwater.

Snow continued to pile up with recurrent storms.  The cry of babies against the bitter cold drove men in desperation through the blinding sleet for firewood.  Despite frozen feet and frost bitten fingers, the men maintained meager fires around which huddled mothers with feverish children.

The daily rations were cut again with a prayer that help would come on the morrow.  But the morrow, instead, brought death.  First one, then another, and another.  It was the men who died.  They were not sick, but chilled through, and among those who dug the graves in the morning were some who, before night had fallen, themselves required burial.  At one time, 13 were buried in one grave.  An evening came when each survivor received his portion of the remaining rations.  Their leader, Bro. James Willie went off by himself to supplicate the Lord in their behalf, and it was borne upon his mind that help was coming.

On October 20th, the first relief train drove into sight of the Willie Company.  It presented a pathetic spectacle.  One who was there wrote later, "Shouts of joy rent the air:  strong men wept till tears ran freely down their furrowed and sunburnt cheeks, and little children fairly danced around with gladness."  But not all rejoiced.  Already many had perished of whom nineteen were men.

Sarah Ann always remembered when a man cut off slices of dry bread and how good it tasted.

The emigrants were fed and given warm buffalo robes and were put into wagons and rode the remaining distance into Salt Lake.

The night before they arrived Thomas was very ill and Ann stayed up most of the night nursing him.  When she went to call the children she found her eleven-year old daughter, Rhoda Rebecca dead.  She had walked the entire distance without proper food and scant clothing and her frail body was unable to stand the grueling test and her Father in Heaven had called her home.  "And should we die before our journey's through, happy day, all is well."

The drivers wrapped the girl in a blanket and the parents were permitted to bring her into Salt Lake for burial.

They arrived in Salt Lake November 9th, 1856 and no pains were spared in Zion for their relief and comfort.

The Oakey family stayed in Salt Lake that Winter then moved to Lehi, Utah where they lived for ten years.  Thomas Oakey was ordained a patriarch.  They were called to help settle Paris, Bear Lake County, Idaho in 1865, just two years after Bear Lake County was settled by President Charles Coulson Rich.  They lived in Paris the remaining years of their lives.  They are buried in the Paris Cemetery.