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Lot 160
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Navigating the Mormon Trail from Liverpool, England to Utah
Navigating the Mormon Trail from Liverpool, England to Utah
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Description:

Mormons

1p ALS signed for Erastus Snow to James McGaw, May 21, 1855, St. Louis, Missouri.  7.75" x 9.75". This letter discusses the passage of Latter-day Saint James Mather and his family from Liverpool, England, to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1855. In very good condition, with expected paper folds and some grime. Small tear in upper left corner does not affect text.

Elder James M. Brown, writing for Apostle Erastus Snow, sent this receipt and order to Elder James McGaw in Atchison, Kansas Territory, to outfit Mather with wagons and oxen for the overland trip to Utah.

Please see below for a complete transcript:

"L D S Emigration Office

St Louis Mo 21 May 1855

No 34.

Elder James Macgaw / Agent

Dear Brother

The Bearer Mr James Mather has deposited at the Office in Liverpool the Sum of £110. Stg equal to $533. 50/100. Say Five hundred and thirty three 50/ dollars, on a/c of the following which you will please Supply him with (viz.) Two Wagons, Four Yokes of Oxen, Two yokes of Cows.

Should the cost of these amount to more than he has already paid, the difference you will collect of him, and pass it to his credit. Should it be less the balance you will refund him and thus settle his A/c on your Books.

I am very truly yours

for Erastus Snow

James M Brown

Atchison K T

[Endorsement:]

Delivered Four Yokes oxen Two Yokes Cows and return price

J. McGaw

W H Wilson

June 7 / 55".

The Church of the Latter-day Saints established the Perpetual Emigrating Fund in 1849 with the goal of assisting the mass emigration to Utah of Latter Day Saints who did not have the financial resources to do so. Companion to controversy wherever it appeared in the early days, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints nevertheless grew at a phenomenal rate. Hundreds of converts were baptized each month in 1850s England and Wales. But Brigham Young’s Zion—and the new proselytes’ surest refuge—was in America. As Arthur King Peters notes in his Seven Trails West, “the Mormon Trail of those years stretched all the way from Liverpool to Salt Lake City, making it by far the longest of any trail west.”

“And it shall come to pass that the righteous shall be gathered out from among all nations, and shall come to Zion, singing with songs of everlasting joy.” (Doctrine and Covenants 45:71).

Inherent to the belief of early Latter-day Saints was the spirit of gathering. They sought to build a centralized “Zion” community of fellow Saints safe from ridicule and strife. As the Church spread through Europe, tens of thousands of new converts emigrated to America, leaving everything behind them for their faith and desire to be with fellow members. Of the 60,000 to 70,000 Saints who emigrated to the Salt Lake Valley in the late 1800s, more than 98 percent of the survivors were from Europe, and 75 percent were from Britain. The British converts began to emigrate with the arrival of Brigham Young to Britain in 1840. As American members faced persecution, new European members brought strength and refreshment. “They have so much of the spirit of gathering,” Young said, “that they would go if they knew they would die as soon as they got there or if they knew that the mob would be upon them and drive them as soon as they got there.”

The Church’s Perpetual Emigrating Fund agents orchestrated the migration from Liverpool to Utah. An agent in Liverpool, England, chartered ships or arranged ocean passage. When the Saints reached New Orleans, another agent met them and arranged passage up the Mississippi River to St. Louis. A third agent met them in St. Louis and arranged passage up the Missouri River to the outfitting station for the wagon trip to Utah. Later, once the railroad reached St. Louis, the emigrants would travel to St. Louis via New York, Boston, or Philadelphia. The entire journey from Europe to Salt Lake City often took the better part of a year.

Because many British and other European emigrants were too poor to afford the costs of the migration, the Perpetual Emigrating Fund helped to pay their expenses. When they arrived in Utah, immigrants were expected to pay back to the Perpetual Emigrating Fund the cost of their voyage, thus making the fund perpetual. Between 1852 and 1887, the Fund assisted some 26,000 immigrants, more than one-third of the total Mormon emigrants from Europe in that period.

The Mathers left Liverpool on March 31, 1855, and arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, 1855. By May 21, 1855, they were in St. Louis, either traveling overland and down the Ohio River from Philadelphia, or sailing to New Orleans and then up the Mississippi River.

On September 12, 1855, the Deseret News listed among the immigrants “James Mather 6” indicating the number who arrived in Mather’s party, and reflecting the death of their thirteen-year-old daughter Alice on the trail. They traveled as part of the Second Company under Captain Noah T. Guyman. The dangers of the journey are evident in other notations in the list of the Second Company: “Jacob F Secrist (dead)…Daniel Horrock (died) 5…Edward Falconer (4 died) 8, James Welch (1 died) 6, Thomas Morgan (1 died) 7.”

Erastus Snow (1818-1888) was born in Vermont and joined the Church of Christ in the early 1830s. He moved to Kirtland, Ohio, headquarters of the church, but spent much of his time on missions in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. He later lived in Nauvoo, Illinois, before joining the first Mormon pioneer company to travel to the Salt Lake Valley. Ordained a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in February 1849, Snow then served as a missionary in Denmark. Returning to the United States, Snow served as the presiding church authority in the Midwest with St. Louis as his headquarters. He returned to Utah in 1857. In 1860-1861, he convinced many church members to migrate to Utah as the American Civil War began. He had sixteen wives.

James M. Brown was an elder in the Church of the Latter-day Saints and served as one of the general clerks for Mormon Emigration in St. Louis in 1855.

James McGaw (1824-1872) traveled to the Salt Lake Valley as captain of a company in 1852. He later served a mission and acted as an immigration officer before returning to the Salt Lake Valley in 1856.

James Higginson Mather (1811-1893) was born in Lancashire, England, and married Mary Ditchfield in 1840 in Manchester, England. He traveled with his wife Mary Ditchfield Mather (1811-1892), and their five children: John Mather (1838-1910), Alice Mather (1842-July 1855), Thomas Mather (1846-1917), Hannah Mather (1847-December 1855), and James Mather (1851-1856). Of their five children, the Mathers lost one daughter on the journey and a son and a daughter soon after arriving in Utah.

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