Site summarizes day-by-day experiences of ill-fated Mormon pioneers
Brigham Young University’s BYU Studies has created a day-by-day Web chronology of the Willie Handcart Company's’ trek to the Great Salt Lake Valley in honor of the sesquicentennial of their voyage.
Based on research by Paul D. Lyman, the chronology of these early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was developed using Willie Company journal entries and information obtained from the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, state historical societies, personal histories and diaries, railway maps and territorial surveys.
The site containing the chronology, handcart.byu.edu, will be launched June 14, honoring the day the companies traveling from Liverpool reached New York City.
The chronology allows those interested to learn about the journey through summaries about each day on the trail and information from original documents.
Members of the Willie Company sailed from Liverpool, England, in May 1856 and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley the following November, after enduring some of the greatest hardships of all the pioneers who followed Brigham Young’s call from the Lord to gather in the West.
For more information, contact Kaylene Vest at (801) 422-5194 or e-mail byu_studies@byu.edu.
Writer: Kaylene Vest
