Elizabeth Sermon

[We] bought a handcart, paid [our] ration money, and started across Iowa with the Martin company. Elizabeth recalled: "My heart was happy, and I rejoiced in singing the songs of Zion. My only hope and desire was to reach the Valley, where my children could be raised in the true gospel." 

Elizabeth Sermon Story

Joseph and Elizabeth Sermon were some of the most unlikely members of the Martin company, and their story is one of the most compelling. Elizabeth joined the Church in 1852 and wanted her family to gather to Zion, even though it meant leaving their comfortable home near London. Joseph did not join the Church and did not want to leave. Nevertheless, seeing that Elizabeth was determined to emigrate, and not wanting her to go alone, Joseph reluctantly agreed to accompany her. Their four youngest children, ages 3 through 8, went with them. Their oldest son remained in England with a grandparent to finish an apprenticeship. "I never saw him again," Elizabeth later wrote.

The Sermons sold their home and went to Liverpool. They left England three months earlier than most members of the Martin company, sailing on the Caravan in February Joseph and Elizabeth Sermon Family. After arriving in New York on March 27, the Sermon family traveled to Iowa City. Because they planned to be part of an independent wagon company, they bought a wagon and team. However, as Elizabeth recalled, "after much discussion and counsel from the Elders, we were convinced (at least I was) that it was God's will that the [wagon] be sold and we buy handcarts so that more Saints could make the journey to Zion."The Sermon family was in Iowa City at least a month before the first handcart emigrants. If they had joined any of the first three companies, they probably would have experienced minimal troubles. But Joseph Sermon was "full of misgivings" about pulling a handcart, feeling that it was demeaning, so he decided not to go any farther. As a result, his family remained in Iowa City for several weeks as each of the handcart companies was organized and then departed. Eventually, knowing that the Martin company provided the last opportunity to finish their journey that season, Elizabeth persuaded Joseph to proceed. "I was faithful, and willing to draw a handcart," Elizabeth wrote. "I hungered for the gospel of Christ."  They bought a handcart, paid their ration money, and started across Iowa with the Martin company. Elizabeth recalled: "My heart was happy, and I rejoiced in singing the songs of Zion. My only hope and desire was to reach the Valley, where my children could be raised in the true gospel." "I think I pulled first rate for a new beginner in shafts and harness," Elizabeth Sermon wrote. Not only did she have to pull the handcart but she continued to have to pull along her husband's attitude. When the extra flour was put in the carts at Florence, the children had to walk, which greatly annoyed Joseph and even caused Elizabeth to wonder. She did not murmur, though, knowing it would only increase her husband's complaints. "I told you how it would be," he said many times.  During the journey across Nebraska, Joseph's health began to fail. "His heart was almost broken," Elizabeth wrote, and "he would say, 'What have you brought us to, you, yourself in the shafts, drawing like a beast of burden, your children hungry and almost naked, myself will soon be gone, and . . . what will become of you and the children?  You will find out how true all I have told you is, when it is too late.'" His words finally began to affect Elizabeth. She began to think about how hungry her family was, a hunger made even more acute by looking all day at the bag of flour in the handcart. She was troubled that her children had to walk while others were riding. Feeling that her first duty was to look after her family, she stopped the cart at noon that day, threw the bag of flour on the ground, and told Captain Martin she would not carry it any farther unless her family could have some. The family's trials continued to worsen, and Elizabeth continued to bear most of the burden. For a while, when her eight-year-old son and husband were ill, she pulled both of them, her two youngest sons, and the family's belongings, assisted only by a young man and later a young woman. Despite this physical burden, the lack of support from her husband, and other challenges, Elizabeth maintained her hopes of a better life in Zion. 

"Continuing her recollections of the journey in a letter to her children, Elizabeth wrote: "It was after wading a very wide river [that] the freezing commenced. We had no wood, only sagebrush. I went out and cut the sage to keep the fire all night, covering you all with your feet to the fire and [your] heads covered over, and then I went out and cut more sagebrush and kept the fire as well as I could—my clothes frozen stiff like starched clothing. Well, we got through that night. Next day we moved on our way again, painful and slow..."  While camped out awaiting rescue at Martin's Cove, Joseph would finally die. After her husband died, Elizabeth Sermon had much to do to care for her four children. Each night she would clear away the snow with a tin plate, gather wood, make a fire, carry her children to the fire, and make their beds. "We went to bed without supper," she wrote, "so that we could have more for breakfast. I found it some help to toast the rawhide on the coals and chew it. It kind of kept the terrible hunger away."Three of Elizabeth's children had severely frostbitten feet. What Elizabeth had to do for those children was unimaginable for a loving mother: "I had to take a portion of poor Robert's feet off, which pierced my very soul...At last the old handcart was laid by without a regret; we got to the wagons, were taken in, and some days we rode all day and got a little more food.  A severe storm came up. . . . My eldest boy John's feet decaying, my boys both of them losing their limbs, their father dead, my own feet very painful, I thought, 'Why can't I die?' My first thought of death."  Another setback occurred when Elizabeth arrived in Salt Lake City. She recalled that when people in the city came to take the handcart Saints into their homes, she was left until almost the last: "My case was deplorable; I don't wonder no one wanted [us]. Finally, I saw a young man from my own country passing. I had been raised in childhood with him. I knew him, but he did not know me. How could he? I looked 70 years old, worn out, shriveled, feet frozen, could not walk. My children, too, could not. Who would want us? Oh, I was crushed, but I called to him. He could not believe it was me, but he got a team and sent us to his own home. The Bishop came and provided for our wants—put my feet in tar, which I believe saved them, for the next morning I could move my toes."Soon after Elizabeth arrived in Utah, her brother learned where she was and took her to his home in Farmington. Elizabeth later wrote of this time, "Here we met with kind friends—Bishop Hess and many, many others, and I am ever grateful for their kindness to me and my children in my great trouble." 

Her feelings are perhaps most clearly indicated in the lengthy letter she wrote to her children in 1892: "My faith [is] still in my Father in Heaven. I have never lost faith in Him. It is as sweet today to trust in Him, and my prayers are that I may always trust Him. He is a Friend and has never failed me when asked. You may perhaps say, 'Why not have asked Him to save you then, when you needed it?' I did, and He spared me through many trials to my family." 

THOUGHT FROM THE STAKE:  Elizabeth Sermon's testimony that God had never failed her did not depend on having her trials removed. She made this declaration of faith despite a lifelong regret over her first husband's death and her sons being "made cripples" by the handcart trek. She also made her declaration despite the difficulties she encountered in the Zion she had sacrificed so much to come to. She is a great example of remaining faithful through difficult trials. I love that she expressed so clearly that while she HAD prayed to be saved, she willingly accepted the "but if not..." and understood that in retrospect she had been spared in many ways, just not always the ways she had hoped to be saved.