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Samuel Jacob Gould was born during the middle of the American Revolution on a hot summer Saturday, the 15th of August 1778 in the State of Connecticut. Nothing is known of his life as a young man other than he claimed that he enlisted in the War of 1812 and fought pirates off the Barbary Coast of Africa. Then around 1818, when he was forty years old, he married twenty-year old Sarah Childs (called Sally) who was born on May 4, 1798 in Medina, Orleans, New York. Sally and Samuel raised a family of four boys and three girls: Maria (b. July 13, 1819 in Stafford, Genesse, New York), John (b. around 1820 probably in New York [Mormon Battalion records show his place of birth as Berryville, West Virginia]), Harriet (b. 1826 in New York), Reuben (b. August 14, 1829 in Lockport, Orleans, New York), Sylvester G. (b. 1833 in Canada), and James B. (b. 1836 in Madison, Madison, New York). In 1836, the Gould family moved to the Territory of Michigan, the home of Indians and still at that time comparatively unknown to white settlers. They settled fifteen miles south of Ann Arbor in Milan, Monroe County where three years later, on October 29, 1839, their youngest child, Jane Elizabeth (called Jennie), was born.
Three years later, in August 1842, Samuel was one of the four hundred and five people who converted that year to Mormonism. A relatively new religion, The Church of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) was founded in 1829 by Joseph Smith, Jr. in Palmyra, New York. On Monday, the 28th of January 1844, Joseph Smith formally decided to run for president of the United States on an independent third-party platform. Frustrated by the continual refusals of President Martin van Buren in 1840 and the five leading candidates running for president in 1843 to address the Mormons' grievances for the religious persecution they were suffering in the state of Missouri, Joseph Smith prepared a political platform for the 1844 election that offered solutions to many of the nation's most pressing problems. Without mentioning the Mormons, the main plank on their platform proposed that the chief executive have the power to quell violence and preserve civil order in the states when the states failed to do so.
The year 1844 was pivotal for Samuel and his large family. They found themselves directly involved in and pulled apart by events happening far away from them in Missouri and Washington, D. C. To ensure that Smith's campaign for the presidency was successful, on Tuesday, the 9th of April, LDS President, Brigham Young, announced that Mormon elders would be called on to be "electioneer missionaries." As elders, a priesthood office of the LDS, the men's duties were to "teach, expound, exhort, baptize, and watch over the church." A month later, on Thursday, the 9th of May, Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith (a cousin of Joseph Smith, Jr.) were among the elders who left Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois for a nine-week mission that included Michigan. Samuel was one of eighty-nine individuals who, on Saturday, the 8th of June, joined Elders Woodruff , Smith and Zebedee Coltrin at the Pleasant Valley conference held at Breed B. Searles' home in Brighton Township, Livingston County. On that Saturday, Samuel was ordained an elder along with Charles Alphonzo Terry and his brother Lysander Terry, Isaac Williamson, and Samuel Harrington.
In late June, Joseph Smith's candidacy for president was cut short after only five months of campaigning. As mayor of Nauvoo, he ordered the suppression of church dissidents who had formed their own competing church and were then excommunicated from the LDS. When the outcome was violence, he declared martial law and called out the Nauvoo militia to protect the residents in the city. The town of Carthage responded by mobilizing a small detachment of the Illinois Militia. At first Joseph Smith fled across the Mississippi River into Iowa, but when the Governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford, appeared, Joseph and his brother Hyrum turned themselves in. On Tuesday, the 25th of June, they were arrested on charges of treason for inciting a riot and put into the Carthage jail while they awaited a trial. Two days later, on Thursday the 27th of June, both Joseph and his brother Hyrum were assassinated by an armed mob. Although it would be nearly five years before Brigham Young emerged as the new leader of the Mormons, the Church continued to attract new converts.
By the fall of 1845, Brigham Young, President of the Quorum, along with its Twelve Apostles decided to make preparations to move to the Rocky Mountains. Orson Pratt, one of the Twelve Apostles, left Nauvoo on Wednesday, the 12th of November, 1845 for New York City to organize the LDS church members on the Atlantic Seaboard. He authorized Elder Samuel Brannan, a printer by trade, to charter a ship to sail around Cape Horn for Upper California. Abel W. Richardson, captain of the Brooklyn, a 370-ton vessel bound for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) was hired for $1200 a month to take the Mormons to California.
Brigham Young then wrote to Jessie C. Little, the presiding elder over the New England and Middle States Mission in New Hampshire. In his letter dated Monday, the 26th of January 1846, President Young directed Elder Little to travel to Washington, D.C. to meet with President James K. Polk and his administration with the instruction to seek aid in the form of compensation for the Mormons who offered to build trails and forts to defend the west.
During the general council called by Brigham Young on the 21st of April 1846 to discuss western migration, Thomas Foster Rhodes requested the opportunity of leading an exploration party to Upper California. Granted permission, Rhodes left Nauvoo in the spring of 1846 with twelve wagons and 38 members, and entered the Sacramento Valley on the 5th of October.
Sometime before 1846, Samuel left his wife and family in Michigan, and taking his oldest son with him, joined the nearly 15,000 Mormons living in Nauvoo. They were among the Mormons who began the westward exodus on Wednesday, the 4th of February. A temporary camp, known as Winter Quarters, was located on the western banks of the Missouri River in the unorganized territory of the United States across from Kanesville (called Council Bluffs after 1852) in the Iowa Territory. The same day, Sam Brannan set sail from New York with 238 men, women and children, and a cargo that included machinery and tools sufficient to serve 800 men. They took with them plows, plow irons, a grist mill, Sam Brannan's printing press along with a two-year supply of paper and ink, seeds for planting, dry goods and merchandise for resale in stores, a 179-volume Harper's Library, textbooks, two milk cows, 40 pigs, and several crates of fowl.
In the four months after Brigham Young sent his letter to Elder Little, President Polk ordered General Zachery Taylor to the disputed Nueces Strip, on the Texas border between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Negotiations with Mexico failed, and on Saturday, the 25th of April, Mexican forces attacked the U.S. Patrol. In response, President Polk wrote a message to Congress and on Wednesday the 13th of May, Congress approved Polk's declaration of war on Mexico. Elder Little arrived in Washington on Thursday, the 21st of May, 1846. After three weeks of negotiations with President Polk and his administration, on Monday, the 8th of June, President Polk agreed to authorize the Mormons to raise a battalion of a few hundred men to serve in General Stephen W. Kearny's Army of the West. Polk's orders were for the battalion to march to Upper California, then still part of Mexico. Elder Little then returned to Winter Quarters with instructions from President Polk. When Captain James Allen presented the assignment to Brigham Young on Wednesday, the 1st of July, they were ready to recruit troops.
Over 500 men, along with fifteen to sixteen families and forty-five to fifty children volunteered. On Thursday, the 16th of July, five companies of men were mustered into service at Kanesville. Samuel, almost sixty-eight years old and the oldest member of the Battalion, and his son, John, now twenty-six years old, were assigned to Company C under Captain James Brown. The following Monday, the Mormon Battalion left on a 200-mile, ten-day march for Fort Leavenworth (Kansas) where the new recruits were equipped with one blanket, a knapsack, a canteen that held three pints of water, smoothbore flint-lock muskets, a few cap-lock rifles for sharpshooting and hunting purposes and thirty six rounds of ammunition in a cartridge box for each soldier, one hundred tents, and all the necessary equipment for a long journey. Because the soldiers were allowed to wear civilian clothing, most donated their $42 yearly clothing allowance to the Church general fund. The money raised was used to purchase wagons, teams of oxen, and supplies for the Mormons' move west. The Battalion finally set out on Wednesday, the 12th of August, two months after President Polk declared war on Mexico for a 1900-mile trek that would be the longest and most difficult infantry march in history.
The Mormon Battalion marched south to the Missouri River to what is now Kansas, and then followed the Santa Fe Trail. When they reached the Arkansas River on Wednesday, the 16th of September, the first detachment of families were sent under guard of ten men to Fort Pueblo (Colorado) to spend the winter with a small community of Mormons (the Mississippi Saints). The Battalion continued on into the high desert of New Mexico where they arrived in Santa Fe by Monday, the 12th of October. Kearny easily took control of the city as the Mexican forces in New Mexico had retreated to Mexico without a fight. While in Santa Fe, Kearny learned that on Thursday, the 23rd of June, the Mexicans in Monterey, California had already surrendered without resistance to Commodore Robert F. Stockton. Kearny then ordered Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke to assume command of the Mormon Battalion for the rest of the march. Aware of the rugged trail between Santa Fe and California, Lt. Colonel Cooke decided that a second sick detachment of eighty-six men, including Samuel and John, and five more women should be sent to Fort Pueblo under Captain James Brown. The Brown Sick Detachment arrived in Pueblo by Wednesday, the 17th of November before winter set in. The remaining 340 soldiers left Santa Fe for California the following Wednesday, the 19th of October, 1846, anticipating that they would arrive in San Diego, a distance of about seven hundred miles in about sixty days.
The following spring, on Thursday, the 3rd of June, 1847, Brigham Young dispatched Amasa Lyman and a small party from Winter Quarters to intercept the soldiers at Fort Pueblo. The soldiers were directed to join Brigham Young and the first Pioneer Company that had already left Winter Quarters for the move west. Amasa Lyman found Samuel with a small group pursuing trader Tim Goodale and few other traders who had stolen horses from the Mormons. The Battalion Advance Party caught up with Brigham Young and the Pioneer Company of 142 men, three women and two children at the Green River (Wyoming) on Saturday, the Fourth of July.
Five days earlier, on Wednesday, the 30th of June, Sam Brannan and his two traveling companions, Charles Smith and Isaac Goodwin, had ridden into the Pioneers' camp in Green River. Sam Brannan enthusiastically shared all that the passengers of the Brooklyn had experienced on their trip around Cape Horn. They sailed into San Francisco Bay on Wednesday, the 29th of July the previous year. Knowing that the United States was at war with Mexico, the Brooklyn waited two days before going ashore until they finally sighted the flag of the United States flying in the cove of the tiny village of Yerba Buena. When they landed they discovered that just three weeks earlier, on Thursday the 9th of July, Captain John B. Montgomery and the soldiers and marines from the U.S.S. Portsmouth had landed and marched to the plaza, raised the stars and stripes, and taken possession of Yerba Buena in the name of the United States. Samuel Brannan set up his printing office in an adobe building and on the 9th of January 1847, published the first edition of his weekly newspaper, the California Star. Sam Brannan carried copies of the paper with him bound for readers in the east. He reported that the Mormon Battalion had arrived in San Diego on Friday, the 29th of January 1847, and that some of the soldiers were now in the Pueblo de Los Angeles. They had a hard journey, but were in good health. He described the sad ordeal of the Jacob Donner party who had become stranded in the Sierra Nevada snow that winter. Those who survived were rescued by the few Americans who were in California. He also reported that on Saturday, the 30th of January, by order of the Alcalde, the village of Yerba Buena officially changed its name to San Francisco. On the 3rd of April, Sam Brannan told the Mormons in San Francisco he would travel east to meet Brigham Young to let him know that the Brooklyn Saints had reached the Promised Land.
The Pioneer Company continued to travel west. After three weeks, on Saturday, the 24th of July 1847, they entered the Great Salt Lake Valley. Although Sam Brannan tried his best to convince Brigham Young that the Mormons should continue on to California, it was here that Brigham Young declared, "This is the right place." Samuel and John arrived the following day, with the rest of the Sick Detachments of the Mormon Battalion following four days later. Within a week of their arrival in the valley, the pioneers plowed and planted eighty-four acres with potatoes, peas, beans, corn, oats, buckwheat, and other garden seeds. Having learned the irrigation practices used by the Navajos, almost immediately about three acres of corn, beans and potatoes began to sprout. Work then turned to building a stockade to protect the settlers. Sam Brannan described how, by using adobe brick, he was able to quickly build his printing office. Samuel Gould and James Dunn were appointed "lime burners." Their job was to crush and burn the lime in a kiln to make plaster that would cover the adobe brick walls. A ten-acre lot was laid out for a fort where about 160 families would spend the winter. The first two-room, 16-foot by 24-foot house foundation was laid on Tuesday the 10th of August. Almost fifteen hundred Mormons continued to pour into the Great Salt Lake Valley from the east through Saturday, the 2nd of October in 1847. Another two hundred members of the Mormon Battalion returned from Los Angeles by way of Sutter's Fort and the Sierra Mountains by Saturday, the 16th of October.
The Mormon Battalion's year of duty was over on Friday, the16th of July. Brigham Young put Captain James S. Brown in charge of a small company of six soldiers and one civilian to travel back with Sam Brannan and one of his companions to California to make sure that members of the Sick Detachment were properly discharged and paid. The six soldiers who were chosen were Captain Brown's son, Jesse Sowell Brown, Abner Blackburn, William Gribble, Gilbert Hunt, Williams Squires, and Lysander Woodworth. The soldiers and John S. Fowler left the Great Salt Lake on Saturday, the 9th of August for San Francisco.
Two weeks later, on Thursday, 26th of August, after just one month in the Salt Lake Valley, 107 men including Samuel and John, were sent back to Winter Quarters with the "horse and mule train." After two long and difficult months of travel and with winter already setting in, the "Returning Pioneers" marched into Winter Quarters on Tuesday, the 31st of October. The streets of town were lined with people welcoming them.
Rumors began to surface in the spring of 1848 about the discovery of gold on the American River at Coloma, California on the 24th of January, 1848. Interest in the rumors increased after brief articles about James Marshall's discovery appeared in the March 15th edition of the Californian and another the March 27th edition of the California Star, but most people in San Francisco laughed at them. In May however, with a bottle of gold dust in his hands, Sam Brannan ran through the streets of the City shouting, "Gold! Gold from the American River!" He published a special "booster edition" of the California Star dated April 1, 1848, with a long article titled "Prospects of California." Written primarily to attract people to California, mention of the discovery of a gold mine on the American River appeared, almost as an afterthought, at the end of the article on the fourth page. Nathan Hawk, a Mormon Battalion veteran who made the entire march to San Diego, was hired to carry 2,000 copies of the newspaper back east for readers in Winter Quarters, Missouri and Mississippi River regions. Sam Brannan's article was picked up as a letter from a California correspondent and published in the August 19, 1848 edition of the New York Herald. Two days earlier California Governor Richard Barnes Mason left California with his report of the discovery of gold for President Polk.
When the winter was finally over and frost off the ground, Samuel and John accompanied the three companies of Mormons that left Winter Quarters for Salt Lake beginning on Monday, the 5th of June 1848. The first company with 1220 emigrants to cross the plains was led by Brigham Young. Heber C. Kimball's company left two days later with 662 individuals. By Monday the 3rd of July, Winter Quarters was nearly empty when 526 more individuals left with Willard Richardson. Young's company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on Wednesday, the 20th of September, while Kimball's reached Salt Lake four days later on the 24th of September. By the time the last of Richardson's company arrived between Tuesday, the 10th and Thursday, the 19th of October, more than 2,400 individuals had migrated to the Salt Lake Valley.
When Samuel and John returned to the Great Salt Lake from Winter Quarters, Captain Brown had already returned from California in November 1847 with only his son, Jesse Sowell Brown, Abner Blackburn, and Lysander Woodworth. On the trip to California, Captain Brown and Samuel Brannan had quarreled and eventually went their separate ways. The soldiers who did not make the return trip to Salt Lake remained in California. After spending several days in San Francisco, Captain Brown prepared to leave for Salt Lake with four men for the return trip. At Sutter's Fort, the company was convinced to take an alternate route through Hastings Cutoff (Nevada), the same route followed by the ill-fated Donner Party. Along with the soldiers' pay and provisions for 23 days travel, they carried wheat, corn and other grains for their families in Salt Lake. Rather than being a shortcut, taking the Hastings Cutoff made the trip more than twice as long. The four men nearly starved to death in the desert because they refused to eat the grains intended for their families, instead subsisting the last few days on soup made by boiling buckskin and leather from their saddles.
The soldiers of the Mormon Battalion Sick Detachments collected their back-pay in the form of Spanish doubloons, probably in the denomination of 8-escudo. Samuel turned 70 that summer, and with his pay in hand and instructions from Brigham Young, instead of heading for California, he and John left for Michigan with the mission of convincing his wife, Sally, and his other children to convert to Mormonism and move to Utah with him. Samuel and John arrived back in Michigan in the fall of 1848, after a nearly five-year absence. Sally was now 50 years old. Jennie, just 9, barely remembered her father. James was 12, Sylvester 16, and Reuben 19. Harriet, now 23, and married to Henry (called Harry) Allen in 1841, was the mother of Nelson A. (b. 1842), Richard (b. 1844), and John (b. 1846). The eldest child, Maria, now 29 years old, married to Samuel Youngs Denton in 1841, was the mother of two children: Mary (b. 1842), and Harriet (b. 1846). Her third daughter, Ellen, was born on Saturday, the 19th of November 1848, just as Samuel arrived back in Michigan. Samuel and John stayed with the Denton family at their home in the outskirts of Ypsilanti, about ten miles from Ann Arbor, near present day Rawsonville. Samuel and John shared their stories of adventure and hardships with the Mormons. They talked enthusiastically about Utah and their new home in the Great Salt Lake, and hoped to convince Sally and their family to return with him. Word quickly spread that Samuel and John had returned from the west after a long absence.
By this time, the discovery of gold had been carried in all three Ann Arbor newspapers, and President Polk finally made official the discovery in his farewell address of the 5th of December 1848. Because few people had first hand experience in the west or how to get there, they were curious. They asked Samuel many questions: How far is it? What equipment do we really need to get across the desert and the mountains? Do we know the trail to take when we get to Missouri? What time of year is best to go? Were there Indians?
Samuel placed an advertisement in the Wednesday, January 24, 1849 edition of the Ann Arbor Whig. "HO FOR CALIFORNIA!" the headline read. All who were interested in knowing how to get to California from someone who knew from actual observations of the country were invited to meet Samuel three days hence at Hawkin's Tavern in Ypsilanti.
At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, the 27th of January, Samuel with John at his side told the crowd at Hawkin's Tavern that he would plan and direct the expedition all the way through to California. By taking his favorite route, San Francisco would be about 2,700 miles from Ann Arbor. Averaging twenty-five miles a day, California could be reached in 108 days with no difficulty. The route west would take them through White Pigeon (Michigan), South Bend (Indiana), Joliet, Ottawa, and Monmouth (Illinois), across the Mississippi at Burlington to Keosanque and Soap Creek (Iowa) then across the Missouri at Kanesville to Pawnee Station, Grand Island, River Platt, Fort Laramie (Wyoming), over the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, and across the Green River and on to Fort Hall (Idaho). From here, the Gold Placer mines would be two or three hundred miles and it would be another four hundred to San Francisco. On this route, Samuel described the ground as so good for traveling that any gentleman could go through in a light buggy on a trot with no obstructions except a few spots in the South Pass. Samuel offered to escort 15 to 100 men to California for a reasonable compensation to be paid in advance. Each man must provide himself with two blankets, a horse, a rifle carrying balls as large as 40 per pound, a holster pistol, and $100 in his pocket for the end of the journey. If required and before they started, he would provide ample security, and he promised faithful and skillful performance of his duty.
Everyone at Hawkin's Tavern listened to Samuel intently as he described his two trips west with his son. Samuel told them he planned to leave Ann Arbor on Thursday, the 15th of February, 1849, but several men had already caught gold fever and were anxious to start out for the West immediately. George Corselius, a printer, politician and bookseller, wanted to leave sooner and get there faster so he planned to leave immediately by going to New Orleans and taking a steamship to the Isthmus of Panama to reach the Pacific Ocean. Robert Davidson, a mason and contractor, needed more time because he wanted to sell a house to raise funds. His two nephews, DeWitt and James Downer, wanted to join their uncle. David T. McCollum, a bookkeeper and conveyancer who transferred property titles, needed to sell some land before he would be prepared to go. Dr. John S. Ormsby and Dr. Thomas Blackwood, both physicians, said they wanted to go to San Francisco, as did Edward Brown, Dr. Ormsby's stepson, and Cyrus Hamilton, a University of Michigan student. Ann Arbor founder, John Allen said he might be ready to go to California the following year. But when everyone learned that after leaving Kanesville (Iowa), Samuel expected the implicit obedience of each one to all his rules and requirements, all became suspicious. They believed that Samuel was really looking for converts to join the Mormon Church. Despite their initial enthusiasm, no one was willing to join Samuel on his expedition back to California.
The winter of 1848-49 was so cold that the temperatures in January and February sometimes dipped below zero. The frost was finally off the ground on Monday, the 12th of March. By the end of March, David T. McCollum was ready to leave Michigan. He had sold some land, put his business affairs in order, and joined the Pioneer Line that left Independence, Missouri on Wednesday, the 9th of May. Robert Davidson sold a house. He and his two nephews followed Samuel's route, leaving Kanesville (Iowa) in early May. For whatever their reasons, neither Sally nor any of their children would take the long journey back to Utah. Samuel and John left Michigan without his family or a gold exploring party bound for California.
It took Samuel and John three months travel for them to return to Utah by the route he described to his audience at Hawkin's Tavern. They joined the Mormons at Kanesville again to guide the new converts many of whom where emigrating from England. These immigrants had arrived at the port of New Orleans, traveled up the Mississippi River, and then headed for the Great Salt Lake by wagon train. In 1849, one quarter of the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people, mostly men, who were headed for the California gold fields, passed through Salt Lake City.
Brigham Young wanted to build up his "kingdom" in the Great Salt Lake, and he believed that gold mining was an occupation not fit for his church members. Nevertheless, in September of 1849, he decided to pick two groups of men who would be sent on two independently organized companies to the gold fields using the southern route. The very men he picked to go to the gold mines were the ones who did not want to go. The first company of about twenty men captained by James M. Flake left Salt Lake City on Thursday, the 11th of October. The second group of about thirty men with Samuel's son, John, in the company and captained by Simpson D. Huffaker left Salt Lake a month later on Monday, the 12th of November, 1849.
At the same time as the two Gold Missions left for California, with a view to settlement and acquiring a seaport, Brigham Young made plans for another company to explore the valleys three hundred miles south of Salt Lake and as far away as the Gulf of California. By November, Brigham Young secured the provisions for a mid-winter expedition and raised $238.50, the amount needed to finance Parley Pratt's Southern Exploring Expedition as far as Las Vegas. On Friday, the 23rd of November, Samuel, now 71 years old, was one of the fifty men who assembled at John Brown's adobe house on his farm situated between Big and Little Cottonwood Creeks that flow east from the Wasatch Mountains and merge into Salt Lake Valley.
The next day, outfitted, provisioned, organized—and in high spirits—Parley Pratt and men set out on a 526-mile journey to explore the Virgin River area and look for desirable locations for settlement. From Fort Utah on the Provo River, they turned up Chalk Creek and crossed the mountains, reaching the only house in Sanpitch in the Sanpete valley on Monday, the 3rd of December. Continuing along the Sevier River, they camped with Ute Indian Chief Walker who gave them useful information about the country and the route. The weather was bitterly cold that winter, yet they continued on their journey along the Spanish Trail where they faced the daunting task of crossing the snow-choked high country between the Tushar Mountains and the Markagunt Plateau. After a month on the trail, they reached the Little Salt Lake Valley. Realizing the oxen were too worn down to continue, the company split. Parley Pratt took twenty men over the rim of the Great Basin on horseback to explore the Virgin River country while the others remained with the wagons and oxen. Edward Everett, Isaac Haight, Joseph Horn, and Samuel, explored the Parowan and Cedar Canyons. On Sunday, the 30th of December, Samuel and Edward Everett explored Center Creek, which heads on the heavily forested Markagunt Plateau, while Isaac Haight and Joseph Horne explored Parowan Creek. The Indians in the area advised Parley Pratt and his men that the country to the south of them, north of the Grand Canyon, was worthless, so they returned going through the Santa Clara River to Mountain Meadows. They rejoined the party at Parowan where they shared a memorable feast and celebration.
The men started back for home on Thursday, the 10th of January, 1850 as the storms were increasing and snow was getting deeper. They were in trouble, though, as the oxen could no longer drag the wagons and their provisions were dangerously low. On Monday, the 21st of January, the decision was made to split the party into two groups. Parley Pratt and half the men, most of whom had families, rushed ahead on the strongest horses to send back a rescue party from Fort Utah. The wagon party left behind with Hail K. Gay, Sylvester Hewlett, Seth Tanner and Samuel, was snowbound for seven weeks. On Sunday, the 10th of March and for the next three days, the men were confined by a violent storm. Temperatures reached 30 degrees below zero, yet their days were spent shoveling snow, doubling teams and shuttling wagons off the mountain to what they called Port Necessity, a relatively snow-free campsite in the southwest corner of Round Valley. The old men, William Henrie (age 50), Christopher Williams (age 60), and Samuel (71), stayed in camp melting snow for the cattle. Two weeks later by Sunday, the 24th of March with the weather feeling warm and sultry, the party reached Pateatneat Creek. Once again on a familiar road, the men were energized with the nearness of home. Mornings were pleasant and green grass was two and three inches high. The men pushed on sighting American Fork, their first settlement after three and a half months, where they camped. On Thursday, the 28th of March, the last of the men finally rolled into the Cottonwood settlement. The trip was more arduous and rugged than they could have imagined, but despite all the obstacles and hardships, they completed their mission.
Cottonwood was the home where John Tanner, Samuel's old friend and colleague from Connecticut had settled with his large family. Two of John Tanner's sons, Myron and Albert, had served with Samuel in the Mormon Battalion. Myron was part of the Sick Detachment while Albert continued on with Lt. Colonel Cooke to San Diego and returned to Utah by way of Sutter's Fort and the Sierra Nevada. While Nathan and Seth Tanner were with Parley Pratt's Expedition, their brother Myron stayed behind to help care for his father who was suffering from an attack of rheumatism. When he returned from Southern Utah at the end of March, Seth found his father alert but very ill and confined to his bed Two weeks later, at the age of seventy-one, John Tanner died on Saturday, the 13th of April. Because there was no cemetery in Cottonwood yet, he was taken ten miles north to Salt Lake City for burial.
A week later, around Saturday, the 20th of April, Myron and Seth Tanner joined Ephraim Hanks who was in charge of his own company going to the California gold fields. Ephraim was another member of the Mormon Battalion who had recently returned from California. Also in this company was his brother Ebenezer Hanks, another member of the Sick Detachment, as well as Benjamin F. Stoddard, Ashel Thorne, Thomas Blackburn, and Henry Green. Although there is little documentation about the Ephraim Hanks Company, it is more than likely that Samuel was a member of this company bound for California.
Two weeks later, a much larger company captained by William D. Huntington escorted Louisa Barnes Pratt, wife of Addison Pratt, and her sister Caroline Barnes Crosby, wife of Jonathan Crosby, over the Sierra Nevada to San Francisco. The wives, who traveled by carriage, were accompanied by their families and traveling companions on their way to a mission in the Sandwich Islands and Polynesia. Huntington's company included Ephraim's brother Sidney Alvarus Hanks, Hail K. Gay and Sylvester Hewlett. They left Fort Utah on Tuesday, the 7th of May, 1850.
To be continued.
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This biography is a work-in-progress. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Melinda Gould, the author, at her email or through FindAGrave.
Samuel Jacob Gould was born during the middle of the American Revolution on a hot summer Saturday, the 15th of August 1778 in the State of Connecticut. Nothing is known of his life as a young man other than he claimed that he enlisted in the War of 1812 and fought pirates off the Barbary Coast of Africa. Then around 1818, when he was forty years old, he married twenty-year old Sarah Childs (called Sally) who was born on May 4, 1798 in Medina, Orleans, New York. Sally and Samuel raised a family of four boys and three girls: Maria (b. July 13, 1819 in Stafford, Genesse, New York), John (b. around 1820 probably in New York [Mormon Battalion records show his place of birth as Berryville, West Virginia]), Harriet (b. 1826 in New York), Reuben (b. August 14, 1829 in Lockport, Orleans, New York), Sylvester G. (b. 1833 in Canada), and James B. (b. 1836 in Madison, Madison, New York). In 1836, the Gould family moved to the Territory of Michigan, the home of Indians and still at that time comparatively unknown to white settlers. They settled fifteen miles south of Ann Arbor in Milan, Monroe County where three years later, on October 29, 1839, their youngest child, Jane Elizabeth (called Jennie), was born.
Three years later, in August 1842, Samuel was one of the four hundred and five people who converted that year to Mormonism. A relatively new religion, The Church of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) was founded in 1829 by Joseph Smith, Jr. in Palmyra, New York. On Monday, the 28th of January 1844, Joseph Smith formally decided to run for president of the United States on an independent third-party platform. Frustrated by the continual refusals of President Martin van Buren in 1840 and the five leading candidates running for president in 1843 to address the Mormons' grievances for the religious persecution they were suffering in the state of Missouri, Joseph Smith prepared a political platform for the 1844 election that offered solutions to many of the nation's most pressing problems. Without mentioning the Mormons, the main plank on their platform proposed that the chief executive have the power to quell violence and preserve civil order in the states when the states failed to do so.
The year 1844 was pivotal for Samuel and his large family. They found themselves directly involved in and pulled apart by events happening far away from them in Missouri and Washington, D. C. To ensure that Smith's campaign for the presidency was successful, on Tuesday, the 9th of April, LDS President, Brigham Young, announced that Mormon elders would be called on to be "electioneer missionaries." As elders, a priesthood office of the LDS, the men's duties were to "teach, expound, exhort, baptize, and watch over the church." A month later, on Thursday, the 9th of May, Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith (a cousin of Joseph Smith, Jr.) were among the elders who left Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois for a nine-week mission that included Michigan. Samuel was one of eighty-nine individuals who, on Saturday, the 8th of June, joined Elders Woodruff , Smith and Zebedee Coltrin at the Pleasant Valley conference held at Breed B. Searles' home in Brighton Township, Livingston County. On that Saturday, Samuel was ordained an elder along with Charles Alphonzo Terry and his brother Lysander Terry, Isaac Williamson, and Samuel Harrington.
In late June, Joseph Smith's candidacy for president was cut short after only five months of campaigning. As mayor of Nauvoo, he ordered the suppression of church dissidents who had formed their own competing church and were then excommunicated from the LDS. When the outcome was violence, he declared martial law and called out the Nauvoo militia to protect the residents in the city. The town of Carthage responded by mobilizing a small detachment of the Illinois Militia. At first Joseph Smith fled across the Mississippi River into Iowa, but when the Governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford, appeared, Joseph and his brother Hyrum turned themselves in. On Tuesday, the 25th of June, they were arrested on charges of treason for inciting a riot and put into the Carthage jail while they awaited a trial. Two days later, on Thursday the 27th of June, both Joseph and his brother Hyrum were assassinated by an armed mob. Although it would be nearly five years before Brigham Young emerged as the new leader of the Mormons, the Church continued to attract new converts.
By the fall of 1845, Brigham Young, President of the Quorum, along with its Twelve Apostles decided to make preparations to move to the Rocky Mountains. Orson Pratt, one of the Twelve Apostles, left Nauvoo on Wednesday, the 12th of November, 1845 for New York City to organize the LDS church members on the Atlantic Seaboard. He authorized Elder Samuel Brannan, a printer by trade, to charter a ship to sail around Cape Horn for Upper California. Abel W. Richardson, captain of the Brooklyn, a 370-ton vessel bound for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) was hired for $1200 a month to take the Mormons to California.
Brigham Young then wrote to Jessie C. Little, the presiding elder over the New England and Middle States Mission in New Hampshire. In his letter dated Monday, the 26th of January 1846, President Young directed Elder Little to travel to Washington, D.C. to meet with President James K. Polk and his administration with the instruction to seek aid in the form of compensation for the Mormons who offered to build trails and forts to defend the west.
During the general council called by Brigham Young on the 21st of April 1846 to discuss western migration, Thomas Foster Rhodes requested the opportunity of leading an exploration party to Upper California. Granted permission, Rhodes left Nauvoo in the spring of 1846 with twelve wagons and 38 members, and entered the Sacramento Valley on the 5th of October.
Sometime before 1846, Samuel left his wife and family in Michigan, and taking his oldest son with him, joined the nearly 15,000 Mormons living in Nauvoo. They were among the Mormons who began the westward exodus on Wednesday, the 4th of February. A temporary camp, known as Winter Quarters, was located on the western banks of the Missouri River in the unorganized territory of the United States across from Kanesville (called Council Bluffs after 1852) in the Iowa Territory. The same day, Sam Brannan set sail from New York with 238 men, women and children, and a cargo that included machinery and tools sufficient to serve 800 men. They took with them plows, plow irons, a grist mill, Sam Brannan's printing press along with a two-year supply of paper and ink, seeds for planting, dry goods and merchandise for resale in stores, a 179-volume Harper's Library, textbooks, two milk cows, 40 pigs, and several crates of fowl.
In the four months after Brigham Young sent his letter to Elder Little, President Polk ordered General Zachery Taylor to the disputed Nueces Strip, on the Texas border between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Negotiations with Mexico failed, and on Saturday, the 25th of April, Mexican forces attacked the U.S. Patrol. In response, President Polk wrote a message to Congress and on Wednesday the 13th of May, Congress approved Polk's declaration of war on Mexico. Elder Little arrived in Washington on Thursday, the 21st of May, 1846. After three weeks of negotiations with President Polk and his administration, on Monday, the 8th of June, President Polk agreed to authorize the Mormons to raise a battalion of a few hundred men to serve in General Stephen W. Kearny's Army of the West. Polk's orders were for the battalion to march to Upper California, then still part of Mexico. Elder Little then returned to Winter Quarters with instructions from President Polk. When Captain James Allen presented the assignment to Brigham Young on Wednesday, the 1st of July, they were ready to recruit troops.
Over 500 men, along with fifteen to sixteen families and forty-five to fifty children volunteered. On Thursday, the 16th of July, five companies of men were mustered into service at Kanesville. Samuel, almost sixty-eight years old and the oldest member of the Battalion, and his son, John, now twenty-six years old, were assigned to Company C under Captain James Brown. The following Monday, the Mormon Battalion left on a 200-mile, ten-day march for Fort Leavenworth (Kansas) where the new recruits were equipped with one blanket, a knapsack, a canteen that held three pints of water, smoothbore flint-lock muskets, a few cap-lock rifles for sharpshooting and hunting purposes and thirty six rounds of ammunition in a cartridge box for each soldier, one hundred tents, and all the necessary equipment for a long journey. Because the soldiers were allowed to wear civilian clothing, most donated their $42 yearly clothing allowance to the Church general fund. The money raised was used to purchase wagons, teams of oxen, and supplies for the Mormons' move west. The Battalion finally set out on Wednesday, the 12th of August, two months after President Polk declared war on Mexico for a 1900-mile trek that would be the longest and most difficult infantry march in history.
The Mormon Battalion marched south to the Missouri River to what is now Kansas, and then followed the Santa Fe Trail. When they reached the Arkansas River on Wednesday, the 16th of September, the first detachment of families were sent under guard of ten men to Fort Pueblo (Colorado) to spend the winter with a small community of Mormons (the Mississippi Saints). The Battalion continued on into the high desert of New Mexico where they arrived in Santa Fe by Monday, the 12th of October. Kearny easily took control of the city as the Mexican forces in New Mexico had retreated to Mexico without a fight. While in Santa Fe, Kearny learned that on Thursday, the 23rd of June, the Mexicans in Monterey, California had already surrendered without resistance to Commodore Robert F. Stockton. Kearny then ordered Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke to assume command of the Mormon Battalion for the rest of the march. Aware of the rugged trail between Santa Fe and California, Lt. Colonel Cooke decided that a second sick detachment of eighty-six men, including Samuel and John, and five more women should be sent to Fort Pueblo under Captain James Brown. The Brown Sick Detachment arrived in Pueblo by Wednesday, the 17th of November before winter set in. The remaining 340 soldiers left Santa Fe for California the following Wednesday, the 19th of October, 1846, anticipating that they would arrive in San Diego, a distance of about seven hundred miles in about sixty days.
The following spring, on Thursday, the 3rd of June, 1847, Brigham Young dispatched Amasa Lyman and a small party from Winter Quarters to intercept the soldiers at Fort Pueblo. The soldiers were directed to join Brigham Young and the first Pioneer Company that had already left Winter Quarters for the move west. Amasa Lyman found Samuel with a small group pursuing trader Tim Goodale and few other traders who had stolen horses from the Mormons. The Battalion Advance Party caught up with Brigham Young and the Pioneer Company of 142 men, three women and two children at the Green River (Wyoming) on Saturday, the Fourth of July.
Five days earlier, on Wednesday, the 30th of June, Sam Brannan and his two traveling companions, Charles Smith and Isaac Goodwin, had ridden into the Pioneers' camp in Green River. Sam Brannan enthusiastically shared all that the passengers of the Brooklyn had experienced on their trip around Cape Horn. They sailed into San Francisco Bay on Wednesday, the 29th of July the previous year. Knowing that the United States was at war with Mexico, the Brooklyn waited two days before going ashore until they finally sighted the flag of the United States flying in the cove of the tiny village of Yerba Buena. When they landed they discovered that just three weeks earlier, on Thursday the 9th of July, Captain John B. Montgomery and the soldiers and marines from the U.S.S. Portsmouth had landed and marched to the plaza, raised the stars and stripes, and taken possession of Yerba Buena in the name of the United States. Samuel Brannan set up his printing office in an adobe building and on the 9th of January 1847, published the first edition of his weekly newspaper, the California Star. Sam Brannan carried copies of the paper with him bound for readers in the east. He reported that the Mormon Battalion had arrived in San Diego on Friday, the 29th of January 1847, and that some of the soldiers were now in the Pueblo de Los Angeles. They had a hard journey, but were in good health. He described the sad ordeal of the Jacob Donner party who had become stranded in the Sierra Nevada snow that winter. Those who survived were rescued by the few Americans who were in California. He also reported that on Saturday, the 30th of January, by order of the Alcalde, the village of Yerba Buena officially changed its name to San Francisco. On the 3rd of April, Sam Brannan told the Mormons in San Francisco he would travel east to meet Brigham Young to let him know that the Brooklyn Saints had reached the Promised Land.
The Pioneer Company continued to travel west. After three weeks, on Saturday, the 24th of July 1847, they entered the Great Salt Lake Valley. Although Sam Brannan tried his best to convince Brigham Young that the Mormons should continue on to California, it was here that Brigham Young declared, "This is the right place." Samuel and John arrived the following day, with the rest of the Sick Detachments of the Mormon Battalion following four days later. Within a week of their arrival in the valley, the pioneers plowed and planted eighty-four acres with potatoes, peas, beans, corn, oats, buckwheat, and other garden seeds. Having learned the irrigation practices used by the Navajos, almost immediately about three acres of corn, beans and potatoes began to sprout. Work then turned to building a stockade to protect the settlers. Sam Brannan described how, by using adobe brick, he was able to quickly build his printing office. Samuel Gould and James Dunn were appointed "lime burners." Their job was to crush and burn the lime in a kiln to make plaster that would cover the adobe brick walls. A ten-acre lot was laid out for a fort where about 160 families would spend the winter. The first two-room, 16-foot by 24-foot house foundation was laid on Tuesday the 10th of August. Almost fifteen hundred Mormons continued to pour into the Great Salt Lake Valley from the east through Saturday, the 2nd of October in 1847. Another two hundred members of the Mormon Battalion returned from Los Angeles by way of Sutter's Fort and the Sierra Mountains by Saturday, the 16th of October.
The Mormon Battalion's year of duty was over on Friday, the16th of July. Brigham Young put Captain James S. Brown in charge of a small company of six soldiers and one civilian to travel back with Sam Brannan and one of his companions to California to make sure that members of the Sick Detachment were properly discharged and paid. The six soldiers who were chosen were Captain Brown's son, Jesse Sowell Brown, Abner Blackburn, William Gribble, Gilbert Hunt, Williams Squires, and Lysander Woodworth. The soldiers and John S. Fowler left the Great Salt Lake on Saturday, the 9th of August for San Francisco.
Two weeks later, on Thursday, 26th of August, after just one month in the Salt Lake Valley, 107 men including Samuel and John, were sent back to Winter Quarters with the "horse and mule train." After two long and difficult months of travel and with winter already setting in, the "Returning Pioneers" marched into Winter Quarters on Tuesday, the 31st of October. The streets of town were lined with people welcoming them.
Rumors began to surface in the spring of 1848 about the discovery of gold on the American River at Coloma, California on the 24th of January, 1848. Interest in the rumors increased after brief articles about James Marshall's discovery appeared in the March 15th edition of the Californian and another the March 27th edition of the California Star, but most people in San Francisco laughed at them. In May however, with a bottle of gold dust in his hands, Sam Brannan ran through the streets of the City shouting, "Gold! Gold from the American River!" He published a special "booster edition" of the California Star dated April 1, 1848, with a long article titled "Prospects of California." Written primarily to attract people to California, mention of the discovery of a gold mine on the American River appeared, almost as an afterthought, at the end of the article on the fourth page. Nathan Hawk, a Mormon Battalion veteran who made the entire march to San Diego, was hired to carry 2,000 copies of the newspaper back east for readers in Winter Quarters, Missouri and Mississippi River regions. Sam Brannan's article was picked up as a letter from a California correspondent and published in the August 19, 1848 edition of the New York Herald. Two days earlier California Governor Richard Barnes Mason left California with his report of the discovery of gold for President Polk.
When the winter was finally over and frost off the ground, Samuel and John accompanied the three companies of Mormons that left Winter Quarters for Salt Lake beginning on Monday, the 5th of June 1848. The first company with 1220 emigrants to cross the plains was led by Brigham Young. Heber C. Kimball's company left two days later with 662 individuals. By Monday the 3rd of July, Winter Quarters was nearly empty when 526 more individuals left with Willard Richardson. Young's company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on Wednesday, the 20th of September, while Kimball's reached Salt Lake four days later on the 24th of September. By the time the last of Richardson's company arrived between Tuesday, the 10th and Thursday, the 19th of October, more than 2,400 individuals had migrated to the Salt Lake Valley.
When Samuel and John returned to the Great Salt Lake from Winter Quarters, Captain Brown had already returned from California in November 1847 with only his son, Jesse Sowell Brown, Abner Blackburn, and Lysander Woodworth. On the trip to California, Captain Brown and Samuel Brannan had quarreled and eventually went their separate ways. The soldiers who did not make the return trip to Salt Lake remained in California. After spending several days in San Francisco, Captain Brown prepared to leave for Salt Lake with four men for the return trip. At Sutter's Fort, the company was convinced to take an alternate route through Hastings Cutoff (Nevada), the same route followed by the ill-fated Donner Party. Along with the soldiers' pay and provisions for 23 days travel, they carried wheat, corn and other grains for their families in Salt Lake. Rather than being a shortcut, taking the Hastings Cutoff made the trip more than twice as long. The four men nearly starved to death in the desert because they refused to eat the grains intended for their families, instead subsisting the last few days on soup made by boiling buckskin and leather from their saddles.
The soldiers of the Mormon Battalion Sick Detachments collected their back-pay in the form of Spanish doubloons, probably in the denomination of 8-escudo. Samuel turned 70 that summer, and with his pay in hand and instructions from Brigham Young, instead of heading for California, he and John left for Michigan with the mission of convincing his wife, Sally, and his other children to convert to Mormonism and move to Utah with him. Samuel and John arrived back in Michigan in the fall of 1848, after a nearly five-year absence. Sally was now 50 years old. Jennie, just 9, barely remembered her father. James was 12, Sylvester 16, and Reuben 19. Harriet, now 23, and married to Henry (called Harry) Allen in 1841, was the mother of Nelson A. (b. 1842), Richard (b. 1844), and John (b. 1846). The eldest child, Maria, now 29 years old, married to Samuel Youngs Denton in 1841, was the mother of two children: Mary (b. 1842), and Harriet (b. 1846). Her third daughter, Ellen, was born on Saturday, the 19th of November 1848, just as Samuel arrived back in Michigan. Samuel and John stayed with the Denton family at their home in the outskirts of Ypsilanti, about ten miles from Ann Arbor, near present day Rawsonville. Samuel and John shared their stories of adventure and hardships with the Mormons. They talked enthusiastically about Utah and their new home in the Great Salt Lake, and hoped to convince Sally and their family to return with him. Word quickly spread that Samuel and John had returned from the west after a long absence.
By this time, the discovery of gold had been carried in all three Ann Arbor newspapers, and President Polk finally made official the discovery in his farewell address of the 5th of December 1848. Because few people had first hand experience in the west or how to get there, they were curious. They asked Samuel many questions: How far is it? What equipment do we really need to get across the desert and the mountains? Do we know the trail to take when we get to Missouri? What time of year is best to go? Were there Indians?
Samuel placed an advertisement in the Wednesday, January 24, 1849 edition of the Ann Arbor Whig. "HO FOR CALIFORNIA!" the headline read. All who were interested in knowing how to get to California from someone who knew from actual observations of the country were invited to meet Samuel three days hence at Hawkin's Tavern in Ypsilanti.
At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, the 27th of January, Samuel with John at his side told the crowd at Hawkin's Tavern that he would plan and direct the expedition all the way through to California. By taking his favorite route, San Francisco would be about 2,700 miles from Ann Arbor. Averaging twenty-five miles a day, California could be reached in 108 days with no difficulty. The route west would take them through White Pigeon (Michigan), South Bend (Indiana), Joliet, Ottawa, and Monmouth (Illinois), across the Mississippi at Burlington to Keosanque and Soap Creek (Iowa) then across the Missouri at Kanesville to Pawnee Station, Grand Island, River Platt, Fort Laramie (Wyoming), over the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, and across the Green River and on to Fort Hall (Idaho). From here, the Gold Placer mines would be two or three hundred miles and it would be another four hundred to San Francisco. On this route, Samuel described the ground as so good for traveling that any gentleman could go through in a light buggy on a trot with no obstructions except a few spots in the South Pass. Samuel offered to escort 15 to 100 men to California for a reasonable compensation to be paid in advance. Each man must provide himself with two blankets, a horse, a rifle carrying balls as large as 40 per pound, a holster pistol, and $100 in his pocket for the end of the journey. If required and before they started, he would provide ample security, and he promised faithful and skillful performance of his duty.
Everyone at Hawkin's Tavern listened to Samuel intently as he described his two trips west with his son. Samuel told them he planned to leave Ann Arbor on Thursday, the 15th of February, 1849, but several men had already caught gold fever and were anxious to start out for the West immediately. George Corselius, a printer, politician and bookseller, wanted to leave sooner and get there faster so he planned to leave immediately by going to New Orleans and taking a steamship to the Isthmus of Panama to reach the Pacific Ocean. Robert Davidson, a mason and contractor, needed more time because he wanted to sell a house to raise funds. His two nephews, DeWitt and James Downer, wanted to join their uncle. David T. McCollum, a bookkeeper and conveyancer who transferred property titles, needed to sell some land before he would be prepared to go. Dr. John S. Ormsby and Dr. Thomas Blackwood, both physicians, said they wanted to go to San Francisco, as did Edward Brown, Dr. Ormsby's stepson, and Cyrus Hamilton, a University of Michigan student. Ann Arbor founder, John Allen said he might be ready to go to California the following year. But when everyone learned that after leaving Kanesville (Iowa), Samuel expected the implicit obedience of each one to all his rules and requirements, all became suspicious. They believed that Samuel was really looking for converts to join the Mormon Church. Despite their initial enthusiasm, no one was willing to join Samuel on his expedition back to California.
The winter of 1848-49 was so cold that the temperatures in January and February sometimes dipped below zero. The frost was finally off the ground on Monday, the 12th of March. By the end of March, David T. McCollum was ready to leave Michigan. He had sold some land, put his business affairs in order, and joined the Pioneer Line that left Independence, Missouri on Wednesday, the 9th of May. Robert Davidson sold a house. He and his two nephews followed Samuel's route, leaving Kanesville (Iowa) in early May. For whatever their reasons, neither Sally nor any of their children would take the long journey back to Utah. Samuel and John left Michigan without his family or a gold exploring party bound for California.
It took Samuel and John three months travel for them to return to Utah by the route he described to his audience at Hawkin's Tavern. They joined the Mormons at Kanesville again to guide the new converts many of whom where emigrating from England. These immigrants had arrived at the port of New Orleans, traveled up the Mississippi River, and then headed for the Great Salt Lake by wagon train. In 1849, one quarter of the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people, mostly men, who were headed for the California gold fields, passed through Salt Lake City.
Brigham Young wanted to build up his "kingdom" in the Great Salt Lake, and he believed that gold mining was an occupation not fit for his church members. Nevertheless, in September of 1849, he decided to pick two groups of men who would be sent on two independently organized companies to the gold fields using the southern route. The very men he picked to go to the gold mines were the ones who did not want to go. The first company of about twenty men captained by James M. Flake left Salt Lake City on Thursday, the 11th of October. The second group of about thirty men with Samuel's son, John, in the company and captained by Simpson D. Huffaker left Salt Lake a month later on Monday, the 12th of November, 1849.
At the same time as the two Gold Missions left for California, with a view to settlement and acquiring a seaport, Brigham Young made plans for another company to explore the valleys three hundred miles south of Salt Lake and as far away as the Gulf of California. By November, Brigham Young secured the provisions for a mid-winter expedition and raised $238.50, the amount needed to finance Parley Pratt's Southern Exploring Expedition as far as Las Vegas. On Friday, the 23rd of November, Samuel, now 71 years old, was one of the fifty men who assembled at John Brown's adobe house on his farm situated between Big and Little Cottonwood Creeks that flow east from the Wasatch Mountains and merge into Salt Lake Valley.
The next day, outfitted, provisioned, organized—and in high spirits—Parley Pratt and men set out on a 526-mile journey to explore the Virgin River area and look for desirable locations for settlement. From Fort Utah on the Provo River, they turned up Chalk Creek and crossed the mountains, reaching the only house in Sanpitch in the Sanpete valley on Monday, the 3rd of December. Continuing along the Sevier River, they camped with Ute Indian Chief Walker who gave them useful information about the country and the route. The weather was bitterly cold that winter, yet they continued on their journey along the Spanish Trail where they faced the daunting task of crossing the snow-choked high country between the Tushar Mountains and the Markagunt Plateau. After a month on the trail, they reached the Little Salt Lake Valley. Realizing the oxen were too worn down to continue, the company split. Parley Pratt took twenty men over the rim of the Great Basin on horseback to explore the Virgin River country while the others remained with the wagons and oxen. Edward Everett, Isaac Haight, Joseph Horn, and Samuel, explored the Parowan and Cedar Canyons. On Sunday, the 30th of December, Samuel and Edward Everett explored Center Creek, which heads on the heavily forested Markagunt Plateau, while Isaac Haight and Joseph Horne explored Parowan Creek. The Indians in the area advised Parley Pratt and his men that the country to the south of them, north of the Grand Canyon, was worthless, so they returned going through the Santa Clara River to Mountain Meadows. They rejoined the party at Parowan where they shared a memorable feast and celebration.
The men started back for home on Thursday, the 10th of January, 1850 as the storms were increasing and snow was getting deeper. They were in trouble, though, as the oxen could no longer drag the wagons and their provisions were dangerously low. On Monday, the 21st of January, the decision was made to split the party into two groups. Parley Pratt and half the men, most of whom had families, rushed ahead on the strongest horses to send back a rescue party from Fort Utah. The wagon party left behind with Hail K. Gay, Sylvester Hewlett, Seth Tanner and Samuel, was snowbound for seven weeks. On Sunday, the 10th of March and for the next three days, the men were confined by a violent storm. Temperatures reached 30 degrees below zero, yet their days were spent shoveling snow, doubling teams and shuttling wagons off the mountain to what they called Port Necessity, a relatively snow-free campsite in the southwest corner of Round Valley. The old men, William Henrie (age 50), Christopher Williams (age 60), and Samuel (71), stayed in camp melting snow for the cattle. Two weeks later by Sunday, the 24th of March with the weather feeling warm and sultry, the party reached Pateatneat Creek. Once again on a familiar road, the men were energized with the nearness of home. Mornings were pleasant and green grass was two and three inches high. The men pushed on sighting American Fork, their first settlement after three and a half months, where they camped. On Thursday, the 28th of March, the last of the men finally rolled into the Cottonwood settlement. The trip was more arduous and rugged than they could have imagined, but despite all the obstacles and hardships, they completed their mission.
Cottonwood was the home where John Tanner, Samuel's old friend and colleague from Connecticut had settled with his large family. Two of John Tanner's sons, Myron and Albert, had served with Samuel in the Mormon Battalion. Myron was part of the Sick Detachment while Albert continued on with Lt. Colonel Cooke to San Diego and returned to Utah by way of Sutter's Fort and the Sierra Nevada. While Nathan and Seth Tanner were with Parley Pratt's Expedition, their brother Myron stayed behind to help care for his father who was suffering from an attack of rheumatism. When he returned from Southern Utah at the end of March, Seth found his father alert but very ill and confined to his bed Two weeks later, at the age of seventy-one, John Tanner died on Saturday, the 13th of April. Because there was no cemetery in Cottonwood yet, he was taken ten miles north to Salt Lake City for burial.
A week later, around Saturday, the 20th of April, Myron and Seth Tanner joined Ephraim Hanks who was in charge of his own company going to the California gold fields. Ephraim was another member of the Mormon Battalion who had recently returned from California. Also in this company was his brother Ebenezer Hanks, another member of the Sick Detachment, as well as Benjamin F. Stoddard, Ashel Thorne, Thomas Blackburn, and Henry Green. Although there is little documentation about the Ephraim Hanks Company, it is more than likely that Samuel was a member of this company bound for California.
Two weeks later, a much larger company captained by William D. Huntington escorted Louisa Barnes Pratt, wife of Addison Pratt, and her sister Caroline Barnes Crosby, wife of Jonathan Crosby, over the Sierra Nevada to San Francisco. The wives, who traveled by carriage, were accompanied by their families and traveling companions on their way to a mission in the Sandwich Islands and Polynesia. Huntington's company included Ephraim's brother Sidney Alvarus Hanks, Hail K. Gay and Sylvester Hewlett. They left Fort Utah on Tuesday, the 7th of May, 1850.
To be continued.
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This biography is a work-in-progress. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Melinda Gould, the author, at her email or through FindAGrave.
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Samuel Jacob Gould was born during the middle of the American Revolution on a hot summer Saturday, the 15th of August 1778 in the State of Connecticut. Nothing is known of his life as a young man other than he claimed that he enlisted in the War of 1812 and fought pirates off the Barbary Coast of Africa. Then around 1818, when he was forty years old, he married twenty-year old Sarah Childs (called Sally) who was born on May 4, 1798 in Medina, Orleans, New York. Sally and Samuel raised a family of four boys and three girls: Maria (b. July 13, 1819 in Stafford, Genesse, New York), John (b. around 1820 probably in New York [Mormon Battalion records show his place of birth as Berryville, West Virginia]), Harriet (b. 1826 in New York), Reuben (b. August 14, 1829 in Lockport, Orleans, New York), Sylvester G. (b. 1833 in Canada), and James B. (b. 1836 in Madison, Madison, New York). In 1836, the Gould family moved to the Territory of Michigan, the home of Indians and still at that time comparatively unknown to white settlers. They settled fifteen miles south of Ann Arbor in Milan, Monroe County where three years later, on October 29, 1839, their youngest child, Jane Elizabeth (called Jennie), was born.
Three years later, in August 1842, Samuel was one of the four hundred and five people who converted that year to Mormonism. A relatively new religion, The Church of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) was founded in 1829 by Joseph Smith, Jr. in Palmyra, New York. On Monday, the 28th of January 1844, Joseph Smith formally decided to run for president of the United States on an independent third-party platform. Frustrated by the continual refusals of President Martin van Buren in 1840 and the five leading candidates running for president in 1843 to address the Mormons' grievances for the religious persecution they were suffering in the state of Missouri, Joseph Smith prepared a political platform for the 1844 election that offered solutions to many of the nation's most pressing problems. Without mentioning the Mormons, the main plank on their platform proposed that the chief executive have the power to quell violence and preserve civil order in the states when the states failed to do so.
The year 1844 was pivotal for Samuel and his large family. They found themselves directly involved in and pulled apart by events happening far away from them in Missouri and Washington, D. C. To ensure that Smith's campaign for the presidency was successful, on Tuesday, the 9th of April, LDS President, Brigham Young, announced that Mormon elders would be called on to be "electioneer missionaries." As elders, a priesthood office of the LDS, the men's duties were to "teach, expound, exhort, baptize, and watch over the church." A month later, on Thursday, the 9th of May, Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith (a cousin of Joseph Smith, Jr.) were among the elders who left Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois for a nine-week mission that included Michigan. Samuel was one of eighty-nine individuals who, on Saturday, the 8th of June, joined Elders Woodruff , Smith and Zebedee Coltrin at the Pleasant Valley conference held at Breed B. Searles' home in Brighton Township, Livingston County. On that Saturday, Samuel was ordained an elder along with Charles Alphonzo Terry and his brother Lysander Terry, Isaac Williamson, and Samuel Harrington.
In late June, Joseph Smith's candidacy for president was cut short after only five months of campaigning. As mayor of Nauvoo, he ordered the suppression of church dissidents who had formed their own competing church and were then excommunicated from the LDS. When the outcome was violence, he declared martial law and called out the Nauvoo militia to protect the residents in the city. The town of Carthage responded by mobilizing a small detachment of the Illinois Militia. At first Joseph Smith fled across the Mississippi River into Iowa, but when the Governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford, appeared, Joseph and his brother Hyrum turned themselves in. On Tuesday, the 25th of June, they were arrested on charges of treason for inciting a riot and put into the Carthage jail while they awaited a trial. Two days later, on Thursday the 27th of June, both Joseph and his brother Hyrum were assassinated by an armed mob. Although it would be nearly five years before Brigham Young emerged as the new leader of the Mormons, the Church continued to attract new converts.
By the fall of 1845, Brigham Young, President of the Quorum, along with its Twelve Apostles decided to make preparations to move to the Rocky Mountains. Orson Pratt, one of the Twelve Apostles, left Nauvoo on Wednesday, the 12th of November, 1845 for New York City to organize the LDS church members on the Atlantic Seaboard. He authorized Elder Samuel Brannan, a printer by trade, to charter a ship to sail around Cape Horn for Upper California. Abel W. Richardson, captain of the Brooklyn, a 370-ton vessel bound for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) was hired for $1200 a month to take the Mormons to California.
Brigham Young then wrote to Jessie C. Little, the presiding elder over the New England and Middle States Mission in New Hampshire. In his letter dated Monday, the 26th of January 1846, President Young directed Elder Little to travel to Washington, D.C. to meet with President James K. Polk and his administration with the instruction to seek aid in the form of compensation for the Mormons who offered to build trails and forts to defend the west.
During the general council called by Brigham Young on the 21st of April 1846 to discuss western migration, Thomas Foster Rhodes requested the opportunity of leading an exploration party to Upper California. Granted permission, Rhodes left Nauvoo in the spring of 1846 with twelve wagons and 38 members, and entered the Sacramento Valley on the 5th of October.
Sometime before 1846, Samuel left his wife and family in Michigan, and taking his oldest son with him, joined the nearly 15,000 Mormons living in Nauvoo. They were among the Mormons who began the westward exodus on Wednesday, the 4th of February. A temporary camp, known as Winter Quarters, was located on the western banks of the Missouri River in the unorganized territory of the United States across from Kanesville (called Council Bluffs after 1852) in the Iowa Territory. The same day, Sam Brannan set sail from New York with 238 men, women and children, and a cargo that included machinery and tools sufficient to serve 800 men. They took with them plows, plow irons, a grist mill, Sam Brannan's printing press along with a two-year supply of paper and ink, seeds for planting, dry goods and merchandise for resale in stores, a 179-volume Harper's Library, textbooks, two milk cows, 40 pigs, and several crates of fowl.
In the four months after Brigham Young sent his letter to Elder Little, President Polk ordered General Zachery Taylor to the disputed Nueces Strip, on the Texas border between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Negotiations with Mexico failed, and on Saturday, the 25th of April, Mexican forces attacked the U.S. Patrol. In response, President Polk wrote a message to Congress and on Wednesday the 13th of May, Congress approved Polk's declaration of war on Mexico. Elder Little arrived in Washington on Thursday, the 21st of May, 1846. After three weeks of negotiations with President Polk and his administration, on Monday, the 8th of June, President Polk agreed to authorize the Mormons to raise a battalion of a few hundred men to serve in General Stephen W. Kearny's Army of the West. Polk's orders were for the battalion to march to Upper California, then still part of Mexico. Elder Little then returned to Winter Quarters with instructions from President Polk. When Captain James Allen presented the assignment to Brigham Young on Wednesday, the 1st of July, they were ready to recruit troops.
Over 500 men, along with fifteen to sixteen families and forty-five to fifty children volunteered. On Thursday, the 16th of July, five companies of men were mustered into service at Kanesville. Samuel, almost sixty-eight years old and the oldest member of the Battalion, and his son, John, now twenty-six years old, were assigned to Company C under Captain James Brown. The following Monday, the Mormon Battalion left on a 200-mile, ten-day march for Fort Leavenworth (Kansas) where the new recruits were equipped with one blanket, a knapsack, a canteen that held three pints of water, smoothbore flint-lock muskets, a few cap-lock rifles for sharpshooting and hunting purposes and thirty six rounds of ammunition in a cartridge box for each soldier, one hundred tents, and all the necessary equipment for a long journey. Because the soldiers were allowed to wear civilian clothing, most donated their $42 yearly clothing allowance to the Church general fund. The money raised was used to purchase wagons, teams of oxen, and supplies for the Mormons' move west. The Battalion finally set out on Wednesday, the 12th of August, two months after President Polk declared war on Mexico for a 1900-mile trek that would be the longest and most difficult infantry march in history.
The Mormon Battalion marched south to the Missouri River to what is now Kansas, and then followed the Santa Fe Trail. When they reached the Arkansas River on Wednesday, the 16th of September, the first detachment of families were sent under guard of ten men to Fort Pueblo (Colorado) to spend the winter with a small community of Mormons (the Mississippi Saints). The Battalion continued on into the high desert of New Mexico where they arrived in Santa Fe by Monday, the 12th of October. Kearny easily took control of the city as the Mexican forces in New Mexico had retreated to Mexico without a fight. While in Santa Fe, Kearny learned that on Thursday, the 23rd of June, the Mexicans in Monterey, California had already surrendered without resistance to Commodore Robert F. Stockton. Kearny then ordered Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke to assume command of the Mormon Battalion for the rest of the march. Aware of the rugged trail between Santa Fe and California, Lt. Colonel Cooke decided that a second sick detachment of eighty-six men, including Samuel and John, and five more women should be sent to Fort Pueblo under Captain James Brown. The Brown Sick Detachment arrived in Pueblo by Wednesday, the 17th of November before winter set in. The remaining 340 soldiers left Santa Fe for California the following Wednesday, the 19th of October, 1846, anticipating that they would arrive in San Diego, a distance of about seven hundred miles in about sixty days.
The following spring, on Thursday, the 3rd of June, 1847, Brigham Young dispatched Amasa Lyman and a small party from Winter Quarters to intercept the soldiers at Fort Pueblo. The soldiers were directed to join Brigham Young and the first Pioneer Company that had already left Winter Quarters for the move west. Amasa Lyman found Samuel with a small group pursuing trader Tim Goodale and few other traders who had stolen horses from the Mormons. The Battalion Advance Party caught up with Brigham Young and the Pioneer Company of 142 men, three women and two children at the Green River (Wyoming) on Saturday, the Fourth of July.
Five days earlier, on Wednesday, the 30th of June, Sam Brannan and his two traveling companions, Charles Smith and Isaac Goodwin, had ridden into the Pioneers' camp in Green River. Sam Brannan enthusiastically shared all that the passengers of the Brooklyn had experienced on their trip around Cape Horn. They sailed into San Francisco Bay on Wednesday, the 29th of July the previous year. Knowing that the United States was at war with Mexico, the Brooklyn waited two days before going ashore until they finally sighted the flag of the United States flying in the cove of the tiny village of Yerba Buena. When they landed they discovered that just three weeks earlier, on Thursday the 9th of July, Captain John B. Montgomery and the soldiers and marines from the U.S.S. Portsmouth had landed and marched to the plaza, raised the stars and stripes, and taken possession of Yerba Buena in the name of the United States. Samuel Brannan set up his printing office in an adobe building and on the 9th of January 1847, published the first edition of his weekly newspaper, the California Star. Sam Brannan carried copies of the paper with him bound for readers in the east. He reported that the Mormon Battalion had arrived in San Diego on Friday, the 29th of January 1847, and that some of the soldiers were now in the Pueblo de Los Angeles. They had a hard journey, but were in good health. He described the sad ordeal of the Jacob Donner party who had become stranded in the Sierra Nevada snow that winter. Those who survived were rescued by the few Americans who were in California. He also reported that on Saturday, the 30th of January, by order of the Alcalde, the village of Yerba Buena officially changed its name to San Francisco. On the 3rd of April, Sam Brannan told the Mormons in San Francisco he would travel east to meet Brigham Young to let him know that the Brooklyn Saints had reached the Promised Land.
The Pioneer Company continued to travel west. After three weeks, on Saturday, the 24th of July 1847, they entered the Great Salt Lake Valley. Although Sam Brannan tried his best to convince Brigham Young that the Mormons should continue on to California, it was here that Brigham Young declared, "This is the right place." Samuel and John arrived the following day, with the rest of the Sick Detachments of the Mormon Battalion following four days later. Within a week of their arrival in the valley, the pioneers plowed and planted eighty-four acres with potatoes, peas, beans, corn, oats, buckwheat, and other garden seeds. Having learned the irrigation practices used by the Navajos, almost immediately about three acres of corn, beans and potatoes began to sprout. Work then turned to building a stockade to protect the settlers. Sam Brannan described how, by using adobe brick, he was able to quickly build his printing office. Samuel Gould and James Dunn were appointed "lime burners." Their job was to crush and burn the lime in a kiln to make plaster that would cover the adobe brick walls. A ten-acre lot was laid out for a fort where about 160 families would spend the winter. The first two-room, 16-foot by 24-foot house foundation was laid on Tuesday the 10th of August. Almost fifteen hundred Mormons continued to pour into the Great Salt Lake Valley from the east through Saturday, the 2nd of October in 1847. Another two hundred members of the Mormon Battalion returned from Los Angeles by way of Sutter's Fort and the Sierra Mountains by Saturday, the 16th of October.
The Mormon Battalion's year of duty was over on Friday, the16th of July. Brigham Young put Captain James S. Brown in charge of a small company of six soldiers and one civilian to travel back with Sam Brannan and one of his companions to California to make sure that members of the Sick Detachment were properly discharged and paid. The six soldiers who were chosen were Captain Brown's son, Jesse Sowell Brown, Abner Blackburn, William Gribble, Gilbert Hunt, Williams Squires, and Lysander Woodworth. The soldiers and John S. Fowler left the Great Salt Lake on Saturday, the 9th of August for San Francisco.
Two weeks later, on Thursday, 26th of August, after just one month in the Salt Lake Valley, 107 men including Samuel and John, were sent back to Winter Quarters with the "horse and mule train." After two long and difficult months of travel and with winter already setting in, the "Returning Pioneers" marched into Winter Quarters on Tuesday, the 31st of October. The streets of town were lined with people welcoming them.
Rumors began to surface in the spring of 1848 about the discovery of gold on the American River at Coloma, California on the 24th of January, 1848. Interest in the rumors increased after brief articles about James Marshall's discovery appeared in the March 15th edition of the Californian and another the March 27th edition of the California Star, but most people in San Francisco laughed at them. In May however, with a bottle of gold dust in his hands, Sam Brannan ran through the streets of the City shouting, "Gold! Gold from the American River!" He published a special "booster edition" of the California Star dated April 1, 1848, with a long article titled "Prospects of California." Written primarily to attract people to California, mention of the discovery of a gold mine on the American River appeared, almost as an afterthought, at the end of the article on the fourth page. Nathan Hawk, a Mormon Battalion veteran who made the entire march to San Diego, was hired to carry 2,000 copies of the newspaper back east for readers in Winter Quarters, Missouri and Mississippi River regions. Sam Brannan's article was picked up as a letter from a California correspondent and published in the August 19, 1848 edition of the New York Herald. Two days earlier California Governor Richard Barnes Mason left California with his report of the discovery of gold for President Polk.
When the winter was finally over and frost off the ground, Samuel and John accompanied the three companies of Mormons that left Winter Quarters for Salt Lake beginning on Monday, the 5th of June 1848. The first company with 1220 emigrants to cross the plains was led by Brigham Young. Heber C. Kimball's company left two days later with 662 individuals. By Monday the 3rd of July, Winter Quarters was nearly empty when 526 more individuals left with Willard Richardson. Young's company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on Wednesday, the 20th of September, while Kimball's reached Salt Lake four days later on the 24th of September. By the time the last of Richardson's company arrived between Tuesday, the 10th and Thursday, the 19th of October, more than 2,400 individuals had migrated to the Salt Lake Valley.
When Samuel and John returned to the Great Salt Lake from Winter Quarters, Captain Brown had already returned from California in November 1847 with only his son, Jesse Sowell Brown, Abner Blackburn, and Lysander Woodworth. On the trip to California, Captain Brown and Samuel Brannan had quarreled and eventually went their separate ways. The soldiers who did not make the return trip to Salt Lake remained in California. After spending several days in San Francisco, Captain Brown prepared to leave for Salt Lake with four men for the return trip. At Sutter's Fort, the company was convinced to take an alternate route through Hastings Cutoff (Nevada), the same route followed by the ill-fated Donner Party. Along with the soldiers' pay and provisions for 23 days travel, they carried wheat, corn and other grains for their families in Salt Lake. Rather than being a shortcut, taking the Hastings Cutoff made the trip more than twice as long. The four men nearly starved to death in the desert because they refused to eat the grains intended for their families, instead subsisting the last few days on soup made by boiling buckskin and leather from their saddles.
The soldiers of the Mormon Battalion Sick Detachments collected their back-pay in the form of Spanish doubloons, probably in the denomination of 8-escudo. Samuel turned 70 that summer, and with his pay in hand and instructions from Brigham Young, instead of heading for California, he and John left for Michigan with the mission of convincing his wife, Sally, and his other children to convert to Mormonism and move to Utah with him. Samuel and John arrived back in Michigan in the fall of 1848, after a nearly five-year absence. Sally was now 50 years old. Jennie, just 9, barely remembered her father. James was 12, Sylvester 16, and Reuben 19. Harriet, now 23, and married to Henry (called Harry) Allen in 1841, was the mother of Nelson A. (b. 1842), Richard (b. 1844), and John (b. 1846). The eldest child, Maria, now 29 years old, married to Samuel Youngs Denton in 1841, was the mother of two children: Mary (b. 1842), and Harriet (b. 1846). Her third daughter, Ellen, was born on Saturday, the 19th of November 1848, just as Samuel arrived back in Michigan. Samuel and John stayed with the Denton family at their home in the outskirts of Ypsilanti, about ten miles from Ann Arbor, near present day Rawsonville. Samuel and John shared their stories of adventure and hardships with the Mormons. They talked enthusiastically about Utah and their new home in the Great Salt Lake, and hoped to convince Sally and their family to return with him. Word quickly spread that Samuel and John had returned from the west after a long absence.
By this time, the discovery of gold had been carried in all three Ann Arbor newspapers, and President Polk finally made official the discovery in his farewell address of the 5th of December 1848. Because few people had first hand experience in the west or how to get there, they were curious. They asked Samuel many questions: How far is it? What equipment do we really need to get across the desert and the mountains? Do we know the trail to take when we get to Missouri? What time of year is best to go? Were there Indians?
Samuel placed an advertisement in the Wednesday, January 24, 1849 edition of the Ann Arbor Whig. "HO FOR CALIFORNIA!" the headline read. All who were interested in knowing how to get to California from someone who knew from actual observations of the country were invited to meet Samuel three days hence at Hawkin's Tavern in Ypsilanti.
At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, the 27th of January, Samuel with John at his side told the crowd at Hawkin's Tavern that he would plan and direct the expedition all the way through to California. By taking his favorite route, San Francisco would be about 2,700 miles from Ann Arbor. Averaging twenty-five miles a day, California could be reached in 108 days with no difficulty. The route west would take them through White Pigeon (Michigan), South Bend (Indiana), Joliet, Ottawa, and Monmouth (Illinois), across the Mississippi at Burlington to Keosanque and Soap Creek (Iowa) then across the Missouri at Kanesville to Pawnee Station, Grand Island, River Platt, Fort Laramie (Wyoming), over the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, and across the Green River and on to Fort Hall (Idaho). From here, the Gold Placer mines would be two or three hundred miles and it would be another four hundred to San Francisco. On this route, Samuel described the ground as so good for traveling that any gentleman could go through in a light buggy on a trot with no obstructions except a few spots in the South Pass. Samuel offered to escort 15 to 100 men to California for a reasonable compensation to be paid in advance. Each man must provide himself with two blankets, a horse, a rifle carrying balls as large as 40 per pound, a holster pistol, and $100 in his pocket for the end of the journey. If required and before they started, he would provide ample security, and he promised faithful and skillful performance of his duty.
Everyone at Hawkin's Tavern listened to Samuel intently as he described his two trips west with his son. Samuel told them he planned to leave Ann Arbor on Thursday, the 15th of February, 1849, but several men had already caught gold fever and were anxious to start out for the West immediately. George Corselius, a printer, politician and bookseller, wanted to leave sooner and get there faster so he planned to leave immediately by going to New Orleans and taking a steamship to the Isthmus of Panama to reach the Pacific Ocean. Robert Davidson, a mason and contractor, needed more time because he wanted to sell a house to raise funds. His two nephews, DeWitt and James Downer, wanted to join their uncle. David T. McCollum, a bookkeeper and conveyancer who transferred property titles, needed to sell some land before he would be prepared to go. Dr. John S. Ormsby and Dr. Thomas Blackwood, both physicians, said they wanted to go to San Francisco, as did Edward Brown, Dr. Ormsby's stepson, and Cyrus Hamilton, a University of Michigan student. Ann Arbor founder, John Allen said he might be ready to go to California the following year. But when everyone learned that after leaving Kanesville (Iowa), Samuel expected the implicit obedience of each one to all his rules and requirements, all became suspicious. They believed that Samuel was really looking for converts to join the Mormon Church. Despite their initial enthusiasm, no one was willing to join Samuel on his expedition back to California.
The winter of 1848-49 was so cold that the temperatures in January and February sometimes dipped below zero. The frost was finally off the ground on Monday, the 12th of March. By the end of March, David T. McCollum was ready to leave Michigan. He had sold some land, put his business affairs in order, and joined the Pioneer Line that left Independence, Missouri on Wednesday, the 9th of May. Robert Davidson sold a house. He and his two nephews followed Samuel's route, leaving Kanesville (Iowa) in early May. For whatever their reasons, neither Sally nor any of their children would take the long journey back to Utah. Samuel and John left Michigan without his family or a gold exploring party bound for California.
It took Samuel and John three months travel for them to return to Utah by the route he described to his audience at Hawkin's Tavern. They joined the Mormons at Kanesville again to guide the new converts many of whom where emigrating from England. These immigrants had arrived at the port of New Orleans, traveled up the Mississippi River, and then headed for the Great Salt Lake by wagon train. In 1849, one quarter of the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people, mostly men, who were headed for the California gold fields, passed through Salt Lake City.
Brigham Young wanted to build up his "kingdom" in the Great Salt Lake, and he believed that gold mining was an occupation not fit for his church members. Nevertheless, in September of 1849, he decided to pick two groups of men who would be sent on two independently organized companies to the gold fields using the southern route. The very men he picked to go to the gold mines were the ones who did not want to go. The first company of about twenty men captained by James M. Flake left Salt Lake City on Thursday, the 11th of October. The second group of about thirty men with Samuel's son, John, in the company and captained by Simpson D. Huffaker left Salt Lake a month later on Monday, the 12th of November, 1849.
At the same time as the two Gold Missions left for California, with a view to settlement and acquiring a seaport, Brigham Young made plans for another company to explore the valleys three hundred miles south of Salt Lake and as far away as the Gulf of California. By November, Brigham Young secured the provisions for a mid-winter expedition and raised $238.50, the amount needed to finance Parley Pratt's Southern Exploring Expedition as far as Las Vegas. On Friday, the 23rd of November, Samuel, now 71 years old, was one of the fifty men who assembled at John Brown's adobe house on his farm situated between Big and Little Cottonwood Creeks that flow east from the Wasatch Mountains and merge into Salt Lake Valley.
The next day, outfitted, provisioned, organized—and in high spirits—Parley Pratt and men set out on a 526-mile journey to explore the Virgin River area and look for desirable locations for settlement. From Fort Utah on the Provo River, they turned up Chalk Creek and crossed the mountains, reaching the only house in Sanpitch in the Sanpete valley on Monday, the 3rd of December. Continuing along the Sevier River, they camped with Ute Indian Chief Walker who gave them useful information about the country and the route. The weather was bitterly cold that winter, yet they continued on their journey along the Spanish Trail where they faced the daunting task of crossing the snow-choked high country between the Tushar Mountains and the Markagunt Plateau. After a month on the trail, they reached the Little Salt Lake Valley. Realizing the oxen were too worn down to continue, the company split. Parley Pratt took twenty men over the rim of the Great Basin on horseback to explore the Virgin River country while the others remained with the wagons and oxen. Edward Everett, Isaac Haight, Joseph Horn, and Samuel, explored the Parowan and Cedar Canyons. On Sunday, the 30th of December, Samuel and Edward Everett explored Center Creek, which heads on the heavily forested Markagunt Plateau, while Isaac Haight and Joseph Horne explored Parowan Creek. The Indians in the area advised Parley Pratt and his men that the country to the south of them, north of the Grand Canyon, was worthless, so they returned going through the Santa Clara River to Mountain Meadows. They rejoined the party at Parowan where they shared a memorable feast and celebration.
The men started back for home on Thursday, the 10th of January, 1850 as the storms were increasing and snow was getting deeper. They were in trouble, though, as the oxen could no longer drag the wagons and their provisions were dangerously low. On Monday, the 21st of January, the decision was made to split the party into two groups. Parley Pratt and half the men, most of whom had families, rushed ahead on the strongest horses to send back a rescue party from Fort Utah. The wagon party left behind with Hail K. Gay, Sylvester Hewlett, Seth Tanner and Samuel, was snowbound for seven weeks. On Sunday, the 10th of March and for the next three days, the men were confined by a violent storm. Temperatures reached 30 degrees below zero, yet their days were spent shoveling snow, doubling teams and shuttling wagons off the mountain to what they called Port Necessity, a relatively snow-free campsite in the southwest corner of Round Valley. The old men, William Henrie (age 50), Christopher Williams (age 60), and Samuel (71), stayed in camp melting snow for the cattle. Two weeks later by Sunday, the 24th of March with the weather feeling warm and sultry, the party reached Pateatneat Creek. Once again on a familiar road, the men were energized with the nearness of home. Mornings were pleasant and green grass was two and three inches high. The men pushed on sighting American Fork, their first settlement after three and a half months, where they camped. On Thursday, the 28th of March, the last of the men finally rolled into the Cottonwood settlement. The trip was more arduous and rugged than they could have imagined, but despite all the obstacles and hardships, they completed their mission.
Cottonwood was the home where John Tanner, Samuel's old friend and colleague from Connecticut had settled with his large family. Two of John Tanner's sons, Myron and Albert, had served with Samuel in the Mormon Battalion. Myron was part of the Sick Detachment while Albert continued on with Lt. Colonel Cooke to San Diego and returned to Utah by way of Sutter's Fort and the Sierra Nevada. While Nathan and Seth Tanner were with Parley Pratt's Expedition, their brother Myron stayed behind to help care for his father who was suffering from an attack of rheumatism. When he returned from Southern Utah at the end of March, Seth found his father alert but very ill and confined to his bed Two weeks later, at the age of seventy-one, John Tanner died on Saturday, the 13th of April. Because there was no cemetery in Cottonwood yet, he was taken ten miles north to Salt Lake City for burial.
A week later, around Saturday, the 20th of April, Myron and Seth Tanner joined Ephraim Hanks who was in charge of his own company going to the California gold fields. Ephraim was another member of the Mormon Battalion who had recently returned from California. Also in this company was his brother Ebenezer Hanks, another member of the Sick Detachment, as well as Benjamin F. Stoddard, Ashel Thorne, Thomas Blackburn, and Henry Green. Although there is little documentation about the Ephraim Hanks Company, it is more than likely that Samuel was a member of this company bound for California.
Two weeks later, a much larger company captained by William D. Huntington escorted Louisa Barnes Pratt, wife of Addison Pratt, and her sister Caroline Barnes Crosby, wife of Jonathan Crosby, over the Sierra Nevada to San Francisco. The wives, who traveled by carriage, were accompanied by their families and traveling companions on their way to a mission in the Sandwich Islands and Polynesia. Huntington's company included Ephraim's brother Sidney Alvarus Hanks, Hail K. Gay and Sylvester Hewlett. They left Fort Utah on Tuesday, the 7th of May, 1850.
To be continued.
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This biography is a work-in-progress. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Melinda Gould, the author, at her email or through FindAGrave.
Samuel Jacob Gould was born during the middle of the American Revolution on a hot summer Saturday, the 15th of August 1778 in the State of Connecticut. Nothing is known of his life as a young man other than he claimed that he enlisted in the War of 1812 and fought pirates off the Barbary Coast of Africa. Then around 1818, when he was forty years old, he married twenty-year old Sarah Childs (called Sally) who was born on May 4, 1798 in Medina, Orleans, New York. Sally and Samuel raised a family of four boys and three girls: Maria (b. July 13, 1819 in Stafford, Genesse, New York), John (b. around 1820 probably in New York [Mormon Battalion records show his place of birth as Berryville, West Virginia]), Harriet (b. 1826 in New York), Reuben (b. August 14, 1829 in Lockport, Orleans, New York), Sylvester G. (b. 1833 in Canada), and James B. (b. 1836 in Madison, Madison, New York). In 1836, the Gould family moved to the Territory of Michigan, the home of Indians and still at that time comparatively unknown to white settlers. They settled fifteen miles south of Ann Arbor in Milan, Monroe County where three years later, on October 29, 1839, their youngest child, Jane Elizabeth (called Jennie), was born.
Three years later, in August 1842, Samuel was one of the four hundred and five people who converted that year to Mormonism. A relatively new religion, The Church of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) was founded in 1829 by Joseph Smith, Jr. in Palmyra, New York. On Monday, the 28th of January 1844, Joseph Smith formally decided to run for president of the United States on an independent third-party platform. Frustrated by the continual refusals of President Martin van Buren in 1840 and the five leading candidates running for president in 1843 to address the Mormons' grievances for the religious persecution they were suffering in the state of Missouri, Joseph Smith prepared a political platform for the 1844 election that offered solutions to many of the nation's most pressing problems. Without mentioning the Mormons, the main plank on their platform proposed that the chief executive have the power to quell violence and preserve civil order in the states when the states failed to do so.
The year 1844 was pivotal for Samuel and his large family. They found themselves directly involved in and pulled apart by events happening far away from them in Missouri and Washington, D. C. To ensure that Smith's campaign for the presidency was successful, on Tuesday, the 9th of April, LDS President, Brigham Young, announced that Mormon elders would be called on to be "electioneer missionaries." As elders, a priesthood office of the LDS, the men's duties were to "teach, expound, exhort, baptize, and watch over the church." A month later, on Thursday, the 9th of May, Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith (a cousin of Joseph Smith, Jr.) were among the elders who left Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois for a nine-week mission that included Michigan. Samuel was one of eighty-nine individuals who, on Saturday, the 8th of June, joined Elders Woodruff , Smith and Zebedee Coltrin at the Pleasant Valley conference held at Breed B. Searles' home in Brighton Township, Livingston County. On that Saturday, Samuel was ordained an elder along with Charles Alphonzo Terry and his brother Lysander Terry, Isaac Williamson, and Samuel Harrington.
In late June, Joseph Smith's candidacy for president was cut short after only five months of campaigning. As mayor of Nauvoo, he ordered the suppression of church dissidents who had formed their own competing church and were then excommunicated from the LDS. When the outcome was violence, he declared martial law and called out the Nauvoo militia to protect the residents in the city. The town of Carthage responded by mobilizing a small detachment of the Illinois Militia. At first Joseph Smith fled across the Mississippi River into Iowa, but when the Governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford, appeared, Joseph and his brother Hyrum turned themselves in. On Tuesday, the 25th of June, they were arrested on charges of treason for inciting a riot and put into the Carthage jail while they awaited a trial. Two days later, on Thursday the 27th of June, both Joseph and his brother Hyrum were assassinated by an armed mob. Although it would be nearly five years before Brigham Young emerged as the new leader of the Mormons, the Church continued to attract new converts.
By the fall of 1845, Brigham Young, President of the Quorum, along with its Twelve Apostles decided to make preparations to move to the Rocky Mountains. Orson Pratt, one of the Twelve Apostles, left Nauvoo on Wednesday, the 12th of November, 1845 for New York City to organize the LDS church members on the Atlantic Seaboard. He authorized Elder Samuel Brannan, a printer by trade, to charter a ship to sail around Cape Horn for Upper California. Abel W. Richardson, captain of the Brooklyn, a 370-ton vessel bound for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) was hired for $1200 a month to take the Mormons to California.
Brigham Young then wrote to Jessie C. Little, the presiding elder over the New England and Middle States Mission in New Hampshire. In his letter dated Monday, the 26th of January 1846, President Young directed Elder Little to travel to Washington, D.C. to meet with President James K. Polk and his administration with the instruction to seek aid in the form of compensation for the Mormons who offered to build trails and forts to defend the west.
During the general council called by Brigham Young on the 21st of April 1846 to discuss western migration, Thomas Foster Rhodes requested the opportunity of leading an exploration party to Upper California. Granted permission, Rhodes left Nauvoo in the spring of 1846 with twelve wagons and 38 members, and entered the Sacramento Valley on the 5th of October.
Sometime before 1846, Samuel left his wife and family in Michigan, and taking his oldest son with him, joined the nearly 15,000 Mormons living in Nauvoo. They were among the Mormons who began the westward exodus on Wednesday, the 4th of February. A temporary camp, known as Winter Quarters, was located on the western banks of the Missouri River in the unorganized territory of the United States across from Kanesville (called Council Bluffs after 1852) in the Iowa Territory. The same day, Sam Brannan set sail from New York with 238 men, women and children, and a cargo that included machinery and tools sufficient to serve 800 men. They took with them plows, plow irons, a grist mill, Sam Brannan's printing press along with a two-year supply of paper and ink, seeds for planting, dry goods and merchandise for resale in stores, a 179-volume Harper's Library, textbooks, two milk cows, 40 pigs, and several crates of fowl.
In the four months after Brigham Young sent his letter to Elder Little, President Polk ordered General Zachery Taylor to the disputed Nueces Strip, on the Texas border between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Negotiations with Mexico failed, and on Saturday, the 25th of April, Mexican forces attacked the U.S. Patrol. In response, President Polk wrote a message to Congress and on Wednesday the 13th of May, Congress approved Polk's declaration of war on Mexico. Elder Little arrived in Washington on Thursday, the 21st of May, 1846. After three weeks of negotiations with President Polk and his administration, on Monday, the 8th of June, President Polk agreed to authorize the Mormons to raise a battalion of a few hundred men to serve in General Stephen W. Kearny's Army of the West. Polk's orders were for the battalion to march to Upper California, then still part of Mexico. Elder Little then returned to Winter Quarters with instructions from President Polk. When Captain James Allen presented the assignment to Brigham Young on Wednesday, the 1st of July, they were ready to recruit troops.
Over 500 men, along with fifteen to sixteen families and forty-five to fifty children volunteered. On Thursday, the 16th of July, five companies of men were mustered into service at Kanesville. Samuel, almost sixty-eight years old and the oldest member of the Battalion, and his son, John, now twenty-six years old, were assigned to Company C under Captain James Brown. The following Monday, the Mormon Battalion left on a 200-mile, ten-day march for Fort Leavenworth (Kansas) where the new recruits were equipped with one blanket, a knapsack, a canteen that held three pints of water, smoothbore flint-lock muskets, a few cap-lock rifles for sharpshooting and hunting purposes and thirty six rounds of ammunition in a cartridge box for each soldier, one hundred tents, and all the necessary equipment for a long journey. Because the soldiers were allowed to wear civilian clothing, most donated their $42 yearly clothing allowance to the Church general fund. The money raised was used to purchase wagons, teams of oxen, and supplies for the Mormons' move west. The Battalion finally set out on Wednesday, the 12th of August, two months after President Polk declared war on Mexico for a 1900-mile trek that would be the longest and most difficult infantry march in history.
The Mormon Battalion marched south to the Missouri River to what is now Kansas, and then followed the Santa Fe Trail. When they reached the Arkansas River on Wednesday, the 16th of September, the first detachment of families were sent under guard of ten men to Fort Pueblo (Colorado) to spend the winter with a small community of Mormons (the Mississippi Saints). The Battalion continued on into the high desert of New Mexico where they arrived in Santa Fe by Monday, the 12th of October. Kearny easily took control of the city as the Mexican forces in New Mexico had retreated to Mexico without a fight. While in Santa Fe, Kearny learned that on Thursday, the 23rd of June, the Mexicans in Monterey, California had already surrendered without resistance to Commodore Robert F. Stockton. Kearny then ordered Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke to assume command of the Mormon Battalion for the rest of the march. Aware of the rugged trail between Santa Fe and California, Lt. Colonel Cooke decided that a second sick detachment of eighty-six men, including Samuel and John, and five more women should be sent to Fort Pueblo under Captain James Brown. The Brown Sick Detachment arrived in Pueblo by Wednesday, the 17th of November before winter set in. The remaining 340 soldiers left Santa Fe for California the following Wednesday, the 19th of October, 1846, anticipating that they would arrive in San Diego, a distance of about seven hundred miles in about sixty days.
The following spring, on Thursday, the 3rd of June, 1847, Brigham Young dispatched Amasa Lyman and a small party from Winter Quarters to intercept the soldiers at Fort Pueblo. The soldiers were directed to join Brigham Young and the first Pioneer Company that had already left Winter Quarters for the move west. Amasa Lyman found Samuel with a small group pursuing trader Tim Goodale and few other traders who had stolen horses from the Mormons. The Battalion Advance Party caught up with Brigham Young and the Pioneer Company of 142 men, three women and two children at the Green River (Wyoming) on Saturday, the Fourth of July.
Five days earlier, on Wednesday, the 30th of June, Sam Brannan and his two traveling companions, Charles Smith and Isaac Goodwin, had ridden into the Pioneers' camp in Green River. Sam Brannan enthusiastically shared all that the passengers of the Brooklyn had experienced on their trip around Cape Horn. They sailed into San Francisco Bay on Wednesday, the 29th of July the previous year. Knowing that the United States was at war with Mexico, the Brooklyn waited two days before going ashore until they finally sighted the flag of the United States flying in the cove of the tiny village of Yerba Buena. When they landed they discovered that just three weeks earlier, on Thursday the 9th of July, Captain John B. Montgomery and the soldiers and marines from the U.S.S. Portsmouth had landed and marched to the plaza, raised the stars and stripes, and taken possession of Yerba Buena in the name of the United States. Samuel Brannan set up his printing office in an adobe building and on the 9th of January 1847, published the first edition of his weekly newspaper, the California Star. Sam Brannan carried copies of the paper with him bound for readers in the east. He reported that the Mormon Battalion had arrived in San Diego on Friday, the 29th of January 1847, and that some of the soldiers were now in the Pueblo de Los Angeles. They had a hard journey, but were in good health. He described the sad ordeal of the Jacob Donner party who had become stranded in the Sierra Nevada snow that winter. Those who survived were rescued by the few Americans who were in California. He also reported that on Saturday, the 30th of January, by order of the Alcalde, the village of Yerba Buena officially changed its name to San Francisco. On the 3rd of April, Sam Brannan told the Mormons in San Francisco he would travel east to meet Brigham Young to let him know that the Brooklyn Saints had reached the Promised Land.
The Pioneer Company continued to travel west. After three weeks, on Saturday, the 24th of July 1847, they entered the Great Salt Lake Valley. Although Sam Brannan tried his best to convince Brigham Young that the Mormons should continue on to California, it was here that Brigham Young declared, "This is the right place." Samuel and John arrived the following day, with the rest of the Sick Detachments of the Mormon Battalion following four days later. Within a week of their arrival in the valley, the pioneers plowed and planted eighty-four acres with potatoes, peas, beans, corn, oats, buckwheat, and other garden seeds. Having learned the irrigation practices used by the Navajos, almost immediately about three acres of corn, beans and potatoes began to sprout. Work then turned to building a stockade to protect the settlers. Sam Brannan described how, by using adobe brick, he was able to quickly build his printing office. Samuel Gould and James Dunn were appointed "lime burners." Their job was to crush and burn the lime in a kiln to make plaster that would cover the adobe brick walls. A ten-acre lot was laid out for a fort where about 160 families would spend the winter. The first two-room, 16-foot by 24-foot house foundation was laid on Tuesday the 10th of August. Almost fifteen hundred Mormons continued to pour into the Great Salt Lake Valley from the east through Saturday, the 2nd of October in 1847. Another two hundred members of the Mormon Battalion returned from Los Angeles by way of Sutter's Fort and the Sierra Mountains by Saturday, the 16th of October.
The Mormon Battalion's year of duty was over on Friday, the16th of July. Brigham Young put Captain James S. Brown in charge of a small company of six soldiers and one civilian to travel back with Sam Brannan and one of his companions to California to make sure that members of the Sick Detachment were properly discharged and paid. The six soldiers who were chosen were Captain Brown's son, Jesse Sowell Brown, Abner Blackburn, William Gribble, Gilbert Hunt, Williams Squires, and Lysander Woodworth. The soldiers and John S. Fowler left the Great Salt Lake on Saturday, the 9th of August for San Francisco.
Two weeks later, on Thursday, 26th of August, after just one month in the Salt Lake Valley, 107 men including Samuel and John, were sent back to Winter Quarters with the "horse and mule train." After two long and difficult months of travel and with winter already setting in, the "Returning Pioneers" marched into Winter Quarters on Tuesday, the 31st of October. The streets of town were lined with people welcoming them.
Rumors began to surface in the spring of 1848 about the discovery of gold on the American River at Coloma, California on the 24th of January, 1848. Interest in the rumors increased after brief articles about James Marshall's discovery appeared in the March 15th edition of the Californian and another the March 27th edition of the California Star, but most people in San Francisco laughed at them. In May however, with a bottle of gold dust in his hands, Sam Brannan ran through the streets of the City shouting, "Gold! Gold from the American River!" He published a special "booster edition" of the California Star dated April 1, 1848, with a long article titled "Prospects of California." Written primarily to attract people to California, mention of the discovery of a gold mine on the American River appeared, almost as an afterthought, at the end of the article on the fourth page. Nathan Hawk, a Mormon Battalion veteran who made the entire march to San Diego, was hired to carry 2,000 copies of the newspaper back east for readers in Winter Quarters, Missouri and Mississippi River regions. Sam Brannan's article was picked up as a letter from a California correspondent and published in the August 19, 1848 edition of the New York Herald. Two days earlier California Governor Richard Barnes Mason left California with his report of the discovery of gold for President Polk.
When the winter was finally over and frost off the ground, Samuel and John accompanied the three companies of Mormons that left Winter Quarters for Salt Lake beginning on Monday, the 5th of June 1848. The first company with 1220 emigrants to cross the plains was led by Brigham Young. Heber C. Kimball's company left two days later with 662 individuals. By Monday the 3rd of July, Winter Quarters was nearly empty when 526 more individuals left with Willard Richardson. Young's company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on Wednesday, the 20th of September, while Kimball's reached Salt Lake four days later on the 24th of September. By the time the last of Richardson's company arrived between Tuesday, the 10th and Thursday, the 19th of October, more than 2,400 individuals had migrated to the Salt Lake Valley.
When Samuel and John returned to the Great Salt Lake from Winter Quarters, Captain Brown had already returned from California in November 1847 with only his son, Jesse Sowell Brown, Abner Blackburn, and Lysander Woodworth. On the trip to California, Captain Brown and Samuel Brannan had quarreled and eventually went their separate ways. The soldiers who did not make the return trip to Salt Lake remained in California. After spending several days in San Francisco, Captain Brown prepared to leave for Salt Lake with four men for the return trip. At Sutter's Fort, the company was convinced to take an alternate route through Hastings Cutoff (Nevada), the same route followed by the ill-fated Donner Party. Along with the soldiers' pay and provisions for 23 days travel, they carried wheat, corn and other grains for their families in Salt Lake. Rather than being a shortcut, taking the Hastings Cutoff made the trip more than twice as long. The four men nearly starved to death in the desert because they refused to eat the grains intended for their families, instead subsisting the last few days on soup made by boiling buckskin and leather from their saddles.
The soldiers of the Mormon Battalion Sick Detachments collected their back-pay in the form of Spanish doubloons, probably in the denomination of 8-escudo. Samuel turned 70 that summer, and with his pay in hand and instructions from Brigham Young, instead of heading for California, he and John left for Michigan with the mission of convincing his wife, Sally, and his other children to convert to Mormonism and move to Utah with him. Samuel and John arrived back in Michigan in the fall of 1848, after a nearly five-year absence. Sally was now 50 years old. Jennie, just 9, barely remembered her father. James was 12, Sylvester 16, and Reuben 19. Harriet, now 23, and married to Henry (called Harry) Allen in 1841, was the mother of Nelson A. (b. 1842), Richard (b. 1844), and John (b. 1846). The eldest child, Maria, now 29 years old, married to Samuel Youngs Denton in 1841, was the mother of two children: Mary (b. 1842), and Harriet (b. 1846). Her third daughter, Ellen, was born on Saturday, the 19th of November 1848, just as Samuel arrived back in Michigan. Samuel and John stayed with the Denton family at their home in the outskirts of Ypsilanti, about ten miles from Ann Arbor, near present day Rawsonville. Samuel and John shared their stories of adventure and hardships with the Mormons. They talked enthusiastically about Utah and their new home in the Great Salt Lake, and hoped to convince Sally and their family to return with him. Word quickly spread that Samuel and John had returned from the west after a long absence.
By this time, the discovery of gold had been carried in all three Ann Arbor newspapers, and President Polk finally made official the discovery in his farewell address of the 5th of December 1848. Because few people had first hand experience in the west or how to get there, they were curious. They asked Samuel many questions: How far is it? What equipment do we really need to get across the desert and the mountains? Do we know the trail to take when we get to Missouri? What time of year is best to go? Were there Indians?
Samuel placed an advertisement in the Wednesday, January 24, 1849 edition of the Ann Arbor Whig. "HO FOR CALIFORNIA!" the headline read. All who were interested in knowing how to get to California from someone who knew from actual observations of the country were invited to meet Samuel three days hence at Hawkin's Tavern in Ypsilanti.
At 3 o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, the 27th of January, Samuel with John at his side told the crowd at Hawkin's Tavern that he would plan and direct the expedition all the way through to California. By taking his favorite route, San Francisco would be about 2,700 miles from Ann Arbor. Averaging twenty-five miles a day, California could be reached in 108 days with no difficulty. The route west would take them through White Pigeon (Michigan), South Bend (Indiana), Joliet, Ottawa, and Monmouth (Illinois), across the Mississippi at Burlington to Keosanque and Soap Creek (Iowa) then across the Missouri at Kanesville to Pawnee Station, Grand Island, River Platt, Fort Laramie (Wyoming), over the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, and across the Green River and on to Fort Hall (Idaho). From here, the Gold Placer mines would be two or three hundred miles and it would be another four hundred to San Francisco. On this route, Samuel described the ground as so good for traveling that any gentleman could go through in a light buggy on a trot with no obstructions except a few spots in the South Pass. Samuel offered to escort 15 to 100 men to California for a reasonable compensation to be paid in advance. Each man must provide himself with two blankets, a horse, a rifle carrying balls as large as 40 per pound, a holster pistol, and $100 in his pocket for the end of the journey. If required and before they started, he would provide ample security, and he promised faithful and skillful performance of his duty.
Everyone at Hawkin's Tavern listened to Samuel intently as he described his two trips west with his son. Samuel told them he planned to leave Ann Arbor on Thursday, the 15th of February, 1849, but several men had already caught gold fever and were anxious to start out for the West immediately. George Corselius, a printer, politician and bookseller, wanted to leave sooner and get there faster so he planned to leave immediately by going to New Orleans and taking a steamship to the Isthmus of Panama to reach the Pacific Ocean. Robert Davidson, a mason and contractor, needed more time because he wanted to sell a house to raise funds. His two nephews, DeWitt and James Downer, wanted to join their uncle. David T. McCollum, a bookkeeper and conveyancer who transferred property titles, needed to sell some land before he would be prepared to go. Dr. John S. Ormsby and Dr. Thomas Blackwood, both physicians, said they wanted to go to San Francisco, as did Edward Brown, Dr. Ormsby's stepson, and Cyrus Hamilton, a University of Michigan student. Ann Arbor founder, John Allen said he might be ready to go to California the following year. But when everyone learned that after leaving Kanesville (Iowa), Samuel expected the implicit obedience of each one to all his rules and requirements, all became suspicious. They believed that Samuel was really looking for converts to join the Mormon Church. Despite their initial enthusiasm, no one was willing to join Samuel on his expedition back to California.
The winter of 1848-49 was so cold that the temperatures in January and February sometimes dipped below zero. The frost was finally off the ground on Monday, the 12th of March. By the end of March, David T. McCollum was ready to leave Michigan. He had sold some land, put his business affairs in order, and joined the Pioneer Line that left Independence, Missouri on Wednesday, the 9th of May. Robert Davidson sold a house. He and his two nephews followed Samuel's route, leaving Kanesville (Iowa) in early May. For whatever their reasons, neither Sally nor any of their children would take the long journey back to Utah. Samuel and John left Michigan without his family or a gold exploring party bound for California.
It took Samuel and John three months travel for them to return to Utah by the route he described to his audience at Hawkin's Tavern. They joined the Mormons at Kanesville again to guide the new converts many of whom where emigrating from England. These immigrants had arrived at the port of New Orleans, traveled up the Mississippi River, and then headed for the Great Salt Lake by wagon train. In 1849, one quarter of the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people, mostly men, who were headed for the California gold fields, passed through Salt Lake City.
Brigham Young wanted to build up his "kingdom" in the Great Salt Lake, and he believed that gold mining was an occupation not fit for his church members. Nevertheless, in September of 1849, he decided to pick two groups of men who would be sent on two independently organized companies to the gold fields using the southern route. The very men he picked to go to the gold mines were the ones who did not want to go. The first company of about twenty men captained by James M. Flake left Salt Lake City on Thursday, the 11th of October. The second group of about thirty men with Samuel's son, John, in the company and captained by Simpson D. Huffaker left Salt Lake a month later on Monday, the 12th of November, 1849.
At the same time as the two Gold Missions left for California, with a view to settlement and acquiring a seaport, Brigham Young made plans for another company to explore the valleys three hundred miles south of Salt Lake and as far away as the Gulf of California. By November, Brigham Young secured the provisions for a mid-winter expedition and raised $238.50, the amount needed to finance Parley Pratt's Southern Exploring Expedition as far as Las Vegas. On Friday, the 23rd of November, Samuel, now 71 years old, was one of the fifty men who assembled at John Brown's adobe house on his farm situated between Big and Little Cottonwood Creeks that flow east from the Wasatch Mountains and merge into Salt Lake Valley.
The next day, outfitted, provisioned, organized—and in high spirits—Parley Pratt and men set out on a 526-mile journey to explore the Virgin River area and look for desirable locations for settlement. From Fort Utah on the Provo River, they turned up Chalk Creek and crossed the mountains, reaching the only house in Sanpitch in the Sanpete valley on Monday, the 3rd of December. Continuing along the Sevier River, they camped with Ute Indian Chief Walker who gave them useful information about the country and the route. The weather was bitterly cold that winter, yet they continued on their journey along the Spanish Trail where they faced the daunting task of crossing the snow-choked high country between the Tushar Mountains and the Markagunt Plateau. After a month on the trail, they reached the Little Salt Lake Valley. Realizing the oxen were too worn down to continue, the company split. Parley Pratt took twenty men over the rim of the Great Basin on horseback to explore the Virgin River country while the others remained with the wagons and oxen. Edward Everett, Isaac Haight, Joseph Horn, and Samuel, explored the Parowan and Cedar Canyons. On Sunday, the 30th of December, Samuel and Edward Everett explored Center Creek, which heads on the heavily forested Markagunt Plateau, while Isaac Haight and Joseph Horne explored Parowan Creek. The Indians in the area advised Parley Pratt and his men that the country to the south of them, north of the Grand Canyon, was worthless, so they returned going through the Santa Clara River to Mountain Meadows. They rejoined the party at Parowan where they shared a memorable feast and celebration.
The men started back for home on Thursday, the 10th of January, 1850 as the storms were increasing and snow was getting deeper. They were in trouble, though, as the oxen could no longer drag the wagons and their provisions were dangerously low. On Monday, the 21st of January, the decision was made to split the party into two groups. Parley Pratt and half the men, most of whom had families, rushed ahead on the strongest horses to send back a rescue party from Fort Utah. The wagon party left behind with Hail K. Gay, Sylvester Hewlett, Seth Tanner and Samuel, was snowbound for seven weeks. On Sunday, the 10th of March and for the next three days, the men were confined by a violent storm. Temperatures reached 30 degrees below zero, yet their days were spent shoveling snow, doubling teams and shuttling wagons off the mountain to what they called Port Necessity, a relatively snow-free campsite in the southwest corner of Round Valley. The old men, William Henrie (age 50), Christopher Williams (age 60), and Samuel (71), stayed in camp melting snow for the cattle. Two weeks later by Sunday, the 24th of March with the weather feeling warm and sultry, the party reached Pateatneat Creek. Once again on a familiar road, the men were energized with the nearness of home. Mornings were pleasant and green grass was two and three inches high. The men pushed on sighting American Fork, their first settlement after three and a half months, where they camped. On Thursday, the 28th of March, the last of the men finally rolled into the Cottonwood settlement. The trip was more arduous and rugged than they could have imagined, but despite all the obstacles and hardships, they completed their mission.
Cottonwood was the home where John Tanner, Samuel's old friend and colleague from Connecticut had settled with his large family. Two of John Tanner's sons, Myron and Albert, had served with Samuel in the Mormon Battalion. Myron was part of the Sick Detachment while Albert continued on with Lt. Colonel Cooke to San Diego and returned to Utah by way of Sutter's Fort and the Sierra Nevada. While Nathan and Seth Tanner were with Parley Pratt's Expedition, their brother Myron stayed behind to help care for his father who was suffering from an attack of rheumatism. When he returned from Southern Utah at the end of March, Seth found his father alert but very ill and confined to his bed Two weeks later, at the age of seventy-one, John Tanner died on Saturday, the 13th of April. Because there was no cemetery in Cottonwood yet, he was taken ten miles north to Salt Lake City for burial.
A week later, around Saturday, the 20th of April, Myron and Seth Tanner joined Ephraim Hanks who was in charge of his own company going to the California gold fields. Ephraim was another member of the Mormon Battalion who had recently returned from California. Also in this company was his brother Ebenezer Hanks, another member of the Sick Detachment, as well as Benjamin F. Stoddard, Ashel Thorne, Thomas Blackburn, and Henry Green. Although there is little documentation about the Ephraim Hanks Company, it is more than likely that Samuel was a member of this company bound for California.
Two weeks later, a much larger company captained by William D. Huntington escorted Louisa Barnes Pratt, wife of Addison Pratt, and her sister Caroline Barnes Crosby, wife of Jonathan Crosby, over the Sierra Nevada to San Francisco. The wives, who traveled by carriage, were accompanied by their families and traveling companions on their way to a mission in the Sandwich Islands and Polynesia. Huntington's company included Ephraim's brother Sidney Alvarus Hanks, Hail K. Gay and Sylvester Hewlett. They left Fort Utah on Tuesday, the 7th of May, 1850.
To be continued.
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This biography is a work-in-progress. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Melinda Gould, the author, at her email or through FindAGrave.
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