The Margery Smith Family

One day, perhaps when they crossed Rocky Ridge, Margery carried six-year-old Alexander on her back for 15 miles because the snow was too deep for him to walk.

The Margery Smith Family

Margery Smith was a 51-year-old widow from Dundee, Scotland, who was emigrating with five children and a close friend of the family, Euphemia Mitchell. Margery’s first husband had been lost at sea, and her second husband had died in 1850. Neither of them had joined the Church.
Margery’s oldest son, Robert Bain, had emigrated in 1854, working as a cook on a ship for his passage and then driving an ox team across the plains. Soon after arriving in Salt Lake City, he went to Lehi, where he farmed as a sharecropper. In a letter to his mother, Robert encouraged the rest of the family to emigrate. “He says he is trying to raise as much [money] as he can for our comfort,” Margery told her other children. “He bids us exert ourselves to emigrate, next season, and says he will pray while we work.”
Betsey and the other girls laughed at that, saying Robert had the easier job. They would soon learn that in addition to praying for them, he would work on their behalf in ways they never imagined would be necessary.

Yearning to join the Saints in Zion, Margery and her daughters began working and saving to emigrate. “The spirit of gathering to Zion was strong upon us,” Betsey wrote, “and we worked at our looms by day, our fancy work by night, and saved the proceeds. By this means, we gathered enough in six months to pay our passage across the sea; and in many ways we realized that God helps those who help themselves.”
Betsey recalled that when the family told their Uncle Thomas good-bye, “he went white to the lips. He called mother a fanatic. He prophesied mother would die on the plains."

In Iowa City, 13-year-old Betsey Smith came down with scarlet fever. Unable to open her eyes as she lay sick in camp, she overheard a conversation that made her fear for her life. "I am sorry she is dying,” Betsey heard a woman say. Betsey knew that a baby had just died, and four other children had also passed away while the Willie company was in Iowa City preparing for the handcart journey. “Another death in camp soon,” the woman continued. Hearing this, Betsey thought her own death was inevitable and began to cry.
Betsey’s mother, Margery, soon brought her daughter some broth. Seeing Betsey’s tears, she asked, “Are you worse?”
“Mother, they think I am dying,” Betsey answered. “I want to live and go to the Valley.”  Betsey’s mother acted decisively and with faith. “My dear mother ... went and brought the elders,” Betsey later wrote. “[They] administered to me and rebuked the disease, commanding it to leave both me and the camp. My recovery was rapid. I was able to travel.”

Betsey had recovered sufficiently from her illness to help pull the cart and care for her six-year-old brother, Alexander. Some days they walked more than 20 miles, and when Alexander’s legs got weary, Betsey kept him going by “taking his hand to encourage him, and by telling him stories of the future and the good things in store for us.”
“While fair weather and full rations lasted, we were all right,” Betsey wrote. But twice in October the Willie company had to reduce their daily flour rations, trying to conserve their dwindling provisions until resupply wagons from Salt Lake City could reach them. On October 19 they ate the last of their flour, still nearly 300 miles short of their destination. Their only remaining food was a one-day supply of crackers. Seven people had died during the previous week, and many others were at the point of collapse. If help didn’t come soon, they would all perish.

When the Willie company broke camp on October 19, they didn’t know that their predicament would soon become even worse. Within an hour they were hit by the first snowstorm. Howling winds blew the snow in fitful gusts, forcing them to stop for a time. Then, with hope fading by the hour, they finally found reason to renew their courage. Four men rode up from the west, two on horseback and two in a light wagon. “Such a shout as was raised in camp I never before heard,” wrote Joseph Elder. Five days earlier, these men had hurried ahead as an express from the rescue company. Betsey recalled that one of them, Joseph Young, asked her, “Have you any provisions?”
“All gone but some crackers,” Betsey replied.
“Well, cheer up,” Joseph said. “Help is coming!”
Betsey turned to her sister Jane and asked, “What ailed that man? I saw him wiping his eyes.”
“It may be that he is sorry for us,” Jane said. “Let us hurry to camp and hear him speak.”
Joseph Young and Cyrus Wheelock delivered the cheering news that many wagons loaded with supplies were not far behind them. Despite the good news they bore, both men were overcome with emotion. Euphemia Mitchell recalled that Cyrus Wheelock “said how he never expected to see brethren and sisters in such a condition as we were. Tears ran down his cheeks as he spoke to us and encouraged us.”
The rescue wagons arrived two days later, and Betsey said the famished people rejoiced and “thanked the Lord in prayer.” Several men and six wagons stayed with the Willie company. The rest hurried east to search for the Martin company.
Margery Smith and her family had to pull their handcart another 10 days through the snow. One day, perhaps when they crossed Rocky Ridge, Margery carried six-year-old Alexander on her back for 15 miles because the snow was too deep for him to walk. Betsey recalled that through all these trials, “we never forgot to pray, and we sang ‘Come, Come, Ye Saints’ with great zeal and fervor. We realized that we needed the help of God to see us through.”

Margery became very sick, and Betsey was burdened with worry. “Many are dying; mother may die, and what a dark world it would be without our dear mother!” she thought. While gathering sagebrush for a fire, Betsey couldn’t keep from crying. Margery saw her tears and asked what was the matter. When Betsey explained, her mother said, “Do not feel like that; pray for me. I have been out yonder in the snow praying to the Lord to spare our lives, that we might get through to the Valley.”

On October 30 the Willie company reached the Green River crossing, still 169 miles from the Salt Lake Valley. As she had done from Iowa City, that day Betsey led young Alexander by the hand and encouraged him forward with stories about their future. With the innocence and impatience of a six-year-old, Alex said, “When we get to that creek, I wish we could see our brother Rob”—the brother who had encouraged them to emigrate and had promised to pray for them.
Betsey knew how unlikely that was. Nevertheless, she said, “Come along, maybe we will, when we get to the top of the bank.” At the top they looked down and saw a wagon with just one yoke of oxen. “We had never seen the like before,” Betsey said, since most wagons had two or three yokes of oxen. They waited at the summit, watching the wagon advance until it came beside them. The driver stared at them briefly and then yelled for his oxen to stop. “It was then we knew him,” Betsey wrote. “He jumped off the wagon and caught his sisters in his arms as they came up with the cart. How we all wept with joy! ... Little Alex climbed in to the wagon as happy as a prince, instead of a poor, tired child.”

This joyful, improbable reunion was not yet complete. Robert asked where his mother and sister Mary were. “They are behind somewhere, Robby,” Betsey answered. Margery was still sick, and during her stops to rest, she was so weak that she had to lie down. Having seen others go to sleep this way and never awaken, Mary stayed with her mother to help her keep going. When Mary saw the wagon coming, she told her mother to get up and look.
“Never mind, Mary; don’t bother me; I am so tired,” Margery said.
“Well, mother, the man is running this way,” Mary replied. “It surely is Robert.”
“Oh, no, Mary; that would be too good to be true!” Margery answered.
But it was indeed true. Describing the reunion with his mother, Robert wrote:
I ... drove on to find Mother laying in the sagebrush nearly gone. I gathered her up in my arms and got her in the wagon. My heart overflowed with love and gratitude to God. My mother said to me, “I couldn’t be more happy and thankful to see you than if I were to be in the highest kingdom in heaven.” [God] had preserved them ... in the midst of death, and I had been able to find them. The bread and butter [in my wagon] was a sweet morsel to them. Mother gained in health every day.

Robert Bain had prayed for his family, as promised. And he had worked for them, coming to their rescue. But the work was not easy or convenient. While his family was traveling across the plains, Robert was suffering from mountain fever in Lehi. For four weeks he had to be waited on. Brigham Young’s call for rescuers came when Robert was just beginning to recover. He borrowed a yoke of oxen and a wagon from Lorenzo Hatch, who filled the wagon with supplies, and set out to find his family. “I was so weak they had to lift me into the wagon [and] put the whip in my hand,” Robert recalled. He gradually got stronger as he made his way east. Perhaps in part due to Robert’s efforts, everyone in Margery Smith’s family survived, as did their friend Euphemia Mitchell, who soon married Robert.
Throughout the rest of her long life, Betsey chose not to focus on the tribulations of the handcart journey. She chose not to second-guess, murmur, or complain. Instead she wrote, “I will not dwell on the hardships we endured, nor the hunger and cold, but I like to tell of the goodness of God unto us.”

Betsey concluded her narrative by explaining why she wrote it. Her purpose went far beyond telling a good story. Rather, she wrote it “for the benefit of the youth of Zion who may read this.” In her final words, she reinforced what she hoped the youth of Zion would learn from her experience: “I bear testimony that I know God hears and answers prayers, and the Lord will help those who help themselves.”

THOUGHT FROM THE STAKE:  Some of the greatest rescues ever made will be within our own families.  In many cases the reach of one family member to another is a long arduous journey that may span years and years.  But, oh how sweet the reunion of souls when the rescuer and the rescued "see" each other for the very first time.  May we never give up in our efforts to reach and rescue those we love and have faith that God loves them, knows them and is working to preserve their spiritual lives as they struggle and wander, until the time when a rescue can be made.