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Dr. Bryce Fifield is a graduate of Utah State University, where he received both his bachelor's degree in psychology and his master's degree in counseling and school psychology. He also received a doctorate degree in special education and rehabilitation from the University of Oregon. He has worked as a school psychologist in Shelley, Idaho, as a researcher in Arizona and Oregon, and an associate director of the Idaho Center on Developmental Disabilities at the University of Idaho, and as the executive director of the North Dakota Center for Persons with Disabilities at Minot State University. He has spent his entire career working with people with disabilities and their families in both large and small communities. He currently works as the director of the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University. After going on a pioneer trek with the youth in his stake some years ago, he became interested in finding stories of Mormon pioneers with disabilities. I think we'll benefit from all of his research this evening. He and his wife, Laurie, are the parents of four children and eight grandchildren. We are very pleased this evening to have Bryce speak to us. Bryce. [APPLAUSE]

Thank you, April. Good evening, brothers and sisters. It's a great privilege for me, and a terrific honor that I never expected that in my career that I would have the chance to share these stories here at Church headquarters. And I feel a sense of responsibility and the weight of their history weighing upon my shoulders.

My interest in this topic started on June 27 in 2006. At the time, I was serving as a bishop in the Minot 1st Ward in Minot, North Dakota, a small ward, one of two small wards in a prairie town right dead center of the state of North Dakota. Our stake presidency had invited the youth of our stake to go on a pioneer trek. This is quite an undertaking for our stake because that stake covered half of the state of North Dakota. My ward was the size of Box Elder County. We started at 4 o'clock in the morning, with one bus leaving from one community going across the north part of the state, stopping in small towns along the way, gathering up the youth of the stake, and another bus starting from the south end of the stake and doing the same thing, and then converging and making a long trip down through South Dakota, Wyoming, and finally to Martin's Cove. At the time, I'd been diagnosed with plantar fasciitis. [CHUCKLING] I hear some chuckles and some similar agony that goes on there. My podiatrist, who was also a counselor, or was also our Young Men's president said, you'll never make it. And we did all sorts of nasty things to my foot to make sure that I would at least be able to make it. We had 90-something youth with us, and in that group, there were probably a half dozen that had some kind of disability. A couple of them had some physical ailments. One young man was recovering from treatment of leukemia. Another sister had a mild form of cerebral palsy that made it difficult for her to walk. I remember stopping at a trail marker much like this one at the end of the second day. We had a four-day forced march. And it was about 9,000 degrees. [LAUGHTER] And we had already walked a thousand miles further than any pioneer had done. And my foot was hurting, my back was hurting. And we were at the end of the trail-- no, we were at the end of the crowd. Everybody had passed us. I knew I was in trouble the next day because everybody was saying, "Bishop, how are you doing? You doing all right, Bishop? Things going all right, Bishop? Are you doing OK?" And I didn't realize how bad off I was. I was not quite delirious, but I was experiencing the first stages of dehydration in spite of drinking lots of water. I remember standing at a marker much like this. And on one side of the marker, it says "Mormon Pioneer," on the other side of the marker, it says "Pony Express." The other side of the marker, it says "Oregon Trail." And I was reflecting that some 70,000 pioneers, Mormon pioneers, had passed the very spot where I was standing. And I thought to myself, well, heck, if they could make it, at least I can do them justice and try and get on the rest of the way. But the rest of the trek, I kept coming back to, out of these 70-some thousand people, how many had disabilities? How many had plantar fasciitis? How many had rheumatism or arthritis? And how did they deal with it? What were their experiences like on the trek, and what do we know about them? From this, I started an interest in, and started picking up on, bits and pieces of stories that I thought might be interesting. And as I pursued this, I found that there really wasn't a place where these stories had been brought together. There really wasn't a place other than in family histories that talked about their experiences and what their commonalities and what their challenges were. One of the places that we had to-- as we started to formalize this research and I started working with a number of undergraduates at Utah State University that were interested in the same topic-- was we had to figure out what the terminology was that was used by pioneers during this time frame to describe people that had disabilities. The disability community of today is very sensitive, and rightly so, to the use of terms that describe their challenges. No matter what term was invented, eventually it becomes a negative term, and it takes on lots of different layers and colors of meaning. But in order to understand and ferret out these stories and where they resided, we had to get in tune with the language that was used to describe these people. The common lexicon of the pioneers at the time were the scriptures, the stories in the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. One of the things that I did, first of all, when I started working on this project was go through the New Testament and ferret out all the times that the Savior healed or dealt with a person with a disability. I wanted to see what the language was, the terms that were used in the scriptures to describe these people. You see those in one column here on this chart.

Incidentally, reading that story opened up all sorts of interesting aspects about why the Savior healed some people and why He didn't heal others, and when He exercised the priesthood to lift the burden of a person with a disability, and what the principles were that He was teaching as He did that. But that's another story. What we started doing is looking for those terms that were used in the scriptures and trying to find them in the journals of contemporary pioneers. And it's not unsurprising that many of the same terms that were used in the scriptures found their way into the terms that were used in journals. They would describe fellow travelers, fellow pioneers with these same kinds of terms. As we got going further, we also found that in the 1850, '60, 1870, and 1880 censuses, there were descriptors that the census taker made of individuals that had disabilities. These became systematic towards the end of the 1880s. And in the 1880 census, there was a column that said "Indicate whether this person was blind, deaf, and/or dumb, idiotic, insane, maimed, crippled, bedridden, or otherwise incapacitated." These are columns on the 1880 census. So these became the terms, whether they are politically correct or not, that we were looking for in trying to identify people that had conditions that made their experience on the pioneer trail unique and difficult. The second thing that we had to look at was trying to define when we wanted-- what time frame we wanted to look in. The Church has gone through many pioneer exoduses. It began in New York, Kirtland, Far West, Quincy, Nauvoo, onto Winter Quarters. Even when we got to the Salt Lake Valley, there were various other emigrations that happened. Saints settled in Arizona, Nevada, and into California, and Mexico, and eventually up into Canada. Partly out of my own interest in trying to find out more about my own pioneer heritage, we picked the time of the pioneer exodus from Winter Quarters to the Salt Lake Valley, and we've arbitrarily tried to limit our research to that area, although we're seeing all sorts of other interesting stories, and we'll try and share some of those. So basically, it starts with April 15 in 1847, when Brigham Young says head them up and move out, and the vanguard company finally leaves Winter Quarters, to the time when the railroad sort of ended the pioneer wagon train experience. And that happened on June 25 when the first group of pioneers got off the train in Ogden, Utah. But this is hunting for a needle in a haystack. We have spent a lot of time going through the Overland Trails Database, using the search criteria, we've spent a lot of time going through the publications of the Daughters and the Sons of the Utah Pioneers. Now, I know there are some historians in the audience that are going to say, well, that's not like real history, but it is to those people and to those families. I've been fortunate to be in contact with some really smart people that have helped me know where to look and to start narrowing our search, and we're at the point now where we're spending a lot of time just going through family histories. And if there are those of you in this group here that have family members that you know, or ancestors that you know had disabilities, we'd love to get a lead on their experience so we can build out our database. We've also looked-- I personally have looked through every page and every line of the 1850, which wasn't very long, the 1860, '70, and 1880 censuses as we've tried to identify from those the particular people that we know had disabilities. This table summarizes the findings from the censuses, which is kind of interesting. We went back through and narrowed the definition. In 1880, the census takers kept track of all sorts of maladies. At the time, there was a measles epidemic going through the Wasatch Front, and there were hundreds of people that were listed as-- their disability was that they had measles. There were also a lot of people that had rheumatism or other kinds of maladies, and these were listed. So we've gone through and tried to narrow the criteria to more traditional or contemporary definitions of disabilities and apply those to the census. The other thing that we did is we filtered out those in the census, especially in the '70 and '80 census, that had disabilities but were not pioneers. In other words, they'd been born in Utah. As years went on, the number of people that were born with disabilities in the state certainly went up. This is reflected in subtotals of the census. This chart is our best guess at pioneers, people that crossed the plains, that were born in other places besides Utah and had the different kinds of disabilities.

It's interesting that this accounts for only a tenth of a percent of the population in the first 30 years of the settlement of the territory, and it only goes up to 4/10 of a percent the 1880s. In contrast, in the 2010 census, 22% of people aged over 18 and up-- that's a broad category-- but 22% of the population of the United States identified themselves in the 2010 census as having a disability of some sort.

To date, we've been able to identify and start developing profiles on about 380 people. This has been a lot of fun. We're finding interesting, really interesting stories. Very often, there's just a tiny snippet of information about them, but we're starting to connect some dots that are just really interesting and tell us a lot about life on the trail for a person that has some limitations. The first person I'd like to share with you about is a young man by the name of David Hunter. Throughout my presentation now, I'm going to be reading from either personal histories, family histories, or the journals of people that were traveling mates with these pioneers. I may stumble a little bit, because we've tried to be true to the voice that they used in their journal and sometimes they were not completely literate, and so sometimes these sentences may be incomplete or grammatically incorrect. I'm going to try and stumble through these as best as I can. David Hunter was born on November 4 in 1833 in Clackmannanshire, Scotland. His parents were William Hunter and Mary Sneddon. I think that's how we pronounce, it isn't it, Anne? I bet. OK. David was born with a developmental disability. In the 1860 census of Cedar City, Utah, he was listed as insane. The description of his behavior that we're going to read in just a few minutes suggests that the disability was more likely a moderate to severe developmental disability resulting in intellectual impairments. David's parents joined the Church in 1847, and it is not likely that he himself was baptized. The family emigrated in 1849 from Liverpool, England, with 400 other Saints and sailed to New Orleans. We next pick up the story of the Hunters in Winter Quarters, and we learn about Brother and Sister Hunter and their son David from a fellow Scotsman named Gibson Condie, who emigrated at about the same time. Brother Condie's journal of his experiences in Winter Quarters contains the following description of the Hunters: "an old acquaintance of ours from Clackmannan. They came in the same ship Zetland with us arrived here. His name William Hunter, his wife, and his son John, and another son David, an idiot. The idiot, he was a young man. He had to wear petticoats. If they put him a hat or a pair of shoes on him, he would take them off and burn them in the fire. His whiskers were very long. Old father Hunter's son David the idiot, if there were any strangers came to see us, they would be terrified, afraid to come to the house. David would make all kinds of gestures, make his head go to one side and then to the other and have his tongue out and dance. He was bareheaded all the time. He would not wear shoes. He would have a large, black beard and wear petticoats. He was very harmless. He could not talk sometimes if the mother out and leave him in the house alone, he would pick up shoes, or stockings, or anything, he would pitch it in the fire. He seemed to be tickled or pleased." [LAUGHTER] Sounds like a lot of deacons on father-son outings. [LAUGHTER] But that's another story. "The mother then would come out and call him by name. She would scold him for doing so. He knew when he was doing wrong. Father Hunter used to say when he gets to the Valleys, he would have his son David to be administered by the Twelve Apostles and be a sound man. His father had great faith. He believed he would have pitched the devils out, would be cast out, and David would be as smart as any in the family." This story is wonderful. There is so much there, but it's incomplete. Pioneers with disabilities, particularly those with severe developmental disabilities, such was described with David, rarely married, rarely had children. They didn't write journals, they didn't build houses or businesses. They rarely had leadership callings. They rarely had anything about their life recorded, except perhaps by their neighbors, their friends, or their family members. David passed away in 1863. There's a lot to be learned here. There's a lot missing.

The next person I'd like to share with you is Brother Charles Walker Hyde. Brother Hyde's disability is different than David's. Brother Hyde was born with a congenital birth defect. It is described in various ways as club feet or perhaps there was a hip deformation. Brother Hyde was born in 1814 in New York state. His father was Heman Hyde and his mother Polly Tilton. Charles was born with club feet and a birth defect that made it difficult for him to walk or get around. We learned from his journal, in his patriarchal blessing, that he was crippled at the hips and in his ankles. He walked with crutches. Charles's parents didn't expect that he would be able to do much or get married. We'll read just a little bit more about him in just a second about his disposition. Charles's older brother, Heman Tilton Hyde, was the first of the family to join the Church, and he eventually served with the Prophet Joseph Smith on Zion's Camp. In 1834, Charles joined the Church. Two years later, he and his parents moved to Kirtland, Ohio. And in 1838, they left Kirtland to join the group of Saints settling Far West, Missouri, but they were turned back by a mob. They returned to Quincy, Illinois. And in 1843, they moved to Nauvoo. Charles's parents didn't expect that he would ever be able to marry, but they said they enjoyed his company. He apparently had a sweet disposition. And we're going to see a photograph or two here in a minute that I think captures that. The family left Nauvoo in 1846 with the exodus, and in 1848 they joined with Brigham Young's first division to leave Winter Quarters for the Salt Lake Valley. Charles was 34 years old at the time. And his father Heman was made captain of 50 under the leadership of Lorenzo Snow. It is likely that Charles rode in one of the wagons much of the way across the plains. In 1852 Charles married, and a year later, at the age of 39, he was ordained a patriarch by the First Presidency, President Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards, who incidentally had palsy, but that's another story. During his later years, he got around Salt Lake City in a cart that was referred to as some kind of a four-wheeled contraption. That's all the description we have of it. I don't know what it looked like. I don't know if it was some kind of a bicycle thing or what. I don't get the impression that it was a horse-drawn carriage, or anything like that, but I'd love to see a description or actually see a photograph of this contraption. During his service as patriarch in the Salt Lake stake, he gave over 7,000 patriarchal blessings. He died on December 15 at the age of 77 years of age. Eliza R. Snow wrote a poem about Brother Hyde. It's a great poem, but it's too long to read here. That's another story. But you get a picture of Brother Charles Walker Hyde here. And I would have loved to have looked into his eyes. I would have liked to have gazed on his face. He seems like a happy fellow. I just love this one photograph here of his smile. There's a serenity, a peace there, but I think there's also, perhaps, a little wit there that would have been a lot of fun to get to know.

Someday we're going to be able to see him and get to know him. I think he had a lot of wisdom, and certainly his experiences as a patriarch gave him some insights that many others lack.

The next person I'd like to share with you is Brother James Hendricks. Brother Hendricks's experience as a person with a disability is a little different. He was not born with a disability, he acquired one, and we'll read about how he acquired his disability in just a second. But the kind of experience that a person with a disability had on the trail was largely affected by when they had acquired a disability and what the nature of the disability was. If it interfered with their ability to communicate with other people and establish social connections, they had a very different kind of experience. If it was a disability that affected their ability to carry their weight and do their duties and responsibilities on the trail, that was a very different kind of experience. And if it was a disability that affected their sight or hearing but they still were able to do some of the chores, carry the burdens of the trail, and to carry themselves to move along on the trail, they had a very different experience. Brother Hendricks was born on June 23, 1808, in Kentucky. His parents were Abraham Hendricks and Charlotte Hinton. Many of Brother Hendricks's uncles served in the Revolutionary War. In 1827 he married an 18-year-old girl named Drusilla Dorris, who's detailed his life history and chronicled their experiences. James and Drusilla joined the LDS Church in 1835 and were eyewitnesses to the early persecutions of the Saints. Drusilla's life sketch describes their experiences in Missouri and the Battle of Crooked River, where her husband was shot in the neck. He was badly wounded and nearly died. The gunshot wound resulted in paralysis from the neck down. Sister Hendricks describes how she rubbed his arms and his hands with strong vinegar, salt, and liniment, and how she worked with him to help restore circulation and some amount of feeling and movement. Under her constant therapy and frequent priest administrations by leading members of the Church, James eventually began to be able to work his shoulders and bear some weight on his legs. He eventually was able to move around with crutches. But Drusilla's life sketch says that she continued to dress him every day and help him the rest of his life. In 1839 they moved to Quincy, Illinois, and eventually to Nauvoo. They had a boarding house there right across from the Temple block. About this time, Drusilla states that James could turn on his elbows, turn his feet out of bed, and begin to take things in one hand. It's a little difficult to see in this picture, but you can imagine-- this photograph-- and this is just a choice, choice photograph, and I'm indebted to Church archives for helping to locate this photograph. You can see Brother Hendricks holding onto his cane, but you can see that he's also propped up. I think he was very stiff and had to be helped to move around.

Again, the family was eyewitness to the rising persecutions of the Saints, and they moved to Winter Quarters and joined the Jedidiah Grant and Joseph Noble company, emigrating to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. It is likely that James rode in a wagon. He could barely walk with his crutches. Someone would have to lift or pull him into the wagon every day and when they stopped it at noon camp at the end of the day. He is listed in the company as part of a company of 10, and we believe that he had some kind of leadership responsibilities. Eliza R. Snow's journal includes a curious note. On Monday, August 30-- this would have been in 1847-- "this morning, Captain P. had a vote called on the case of Brother Hendricks. He is thrown out of his place by vote." I don't know what that means, whether he was sent to the back of the line with a wagon train, or if they decided that because of his incapacity, he couldn't take the responsibility he had of organizing Saints. There's just that little snippet, and unfortunately, Eliza R. Snow didn't write a poem about him like she did others. [LAUGHTER] In the redivision of the old five Salt Lake fork wards that occurred in February of 1849, James was called and set apart as bishop of the 19th ward.

Incidentally, this was the ward that eventually would host the first Deaf Sunday school in 1892. My good friend and colleague Anne Leahy talked about that in her presentation a couple of months ago.

Well, that's another story. James recalls helping to fight the crickets by crawling between the rows of corn with his elbows-- he must have kind of inched his way along between the rows of corn-- and pounding them with his fist. If you can imagine that. The family managed the Warm Springs Bath House, and that's here just north of Salt Lake. That was built by the Church as a public works project. That was an interesting aspect of our research that we want to pursue at some time. What were some of the different things that were done by the Church to provide employment, livelihood, and opportunity for service for members that had disabilities during these pioneer times? The Hendricks's were invited to manage that bathhouse. Drusilla is not as complimentary about it in her journal. She says they could barely eke out a living with that. They had to cook, clean, and manage the bathing facilities, and everybody wanted a free bath but wouldn't pay up. They did that for 10 years, and in 1860 they moved to Cache County, where one of his sons, William, had moved. James died in 1870, but he left an enormous and a lasting legacy. And this evening, we have with us a fourth-generation great-grandson of James's, and a fifth, sixth, and seventh-generation great-granddaughters of James's.

Oh, and we've got a fifth-generation grandson. I married into a great family. And I'd ask that the Hendricks progeny raise their hand and just let us know where you're at. [LAUGHTER] The most recent one is my granddaughter Lucy.

The trail was a very-- life on the trail was a very dangerous proposition. The health challenges, and the problems of nutrition and water, and just the general health conditions on the trail were just frightful. We didn't understand about germs. We didn't understand about basic hygiene. We didn't understand about keeping things clean. There are some researchers that argue that it was Mormon tea that saved the lives of many people, because they boiled the water for the first time. We read about the stopping for water and people drinking water from the same stream, the same pools where livestock were being watered and were wading through. There are a couple of descriptions, particularly on the Oregon Trail, of men and women taking water and scraping out the wrigglers-- that's what they were called, the wrigglers-- and being glad that they could strain that through their teeth-- if they had teeth. [LAUGHTER] Later in the season, there would be moss and algae in water. They'd have to scrape the algae off of the water. So it's little wonder that dysentery and other health problems followed the Saints every step of the way. Elna Nelson, who later became known as Ellen, was born in August of 1850 in Lingby, Sweden. Her family joined the Church in 1857 and emigrated to the Salt Lake Valley in 1859 with the James S. Brown company. Elna was about eight years old at the time. Family stories say that she broke her hip during the trek across the plains. We have looked through all of the journals we can find of those in the James Brown company, and we can't find a specific description of this event with Ellen, but we know that there are a large number of women and children who had crushed feet, broken legs, broken hips, or some other kind of terrible accident, as they had to get down from wagons or from carts and get around the draft animals when they would stop. Women wore long skirts then, and if they had worn pants, we wouldn't have had many of the kinds of accidents that happened. As they would climb down at noon camp, climb down off of the wagon, they'd be getting down and an animal would shift or startle and move and the wagon would lurch, and they would fall off the wagon tongue and fall under the wheels of these heavily-laden wagons. Apparently, that's what happened to little Elna.

Little children in particular were probably at terrible risk for injuries. They would dart in and out of the wagon train. They would scamper along beside the animals. The handlers of the oxen, particularly, the only way they could drive them were saying yee and haw, and nobody could remember which one went left and which one went right. And so the little kids would easily get in trouble with these big beasts and these heavily-laden wagons. Apparently, little Elna got caught under a wagon wheel and crushed her hip. It probably caused major damage to her pelvis as well. Medical treatment on the trail was rudimentary at best. So if you can imagine trying to set the bone, especially a complex fracture like this, knowing that we've got to move out in the next hour or so. They did the best they could. They didn't have the means to immobilize her. They probably strapped boards or branches to herself and wrapped her with rags or some clothing or maybe some rope. Did the best they could, and they would put her on the wagon to ride for the next several days as she started to recover. I can't imagine the pain that she had, the awkwardness that that was, and still being on the wagon. I'm sure it was 9,000 degrees that day too that they were going along. The set apparently was inadequate, and little Ellen became crippled. Ellen settled with her family in Cache Valley in Smithfield, and she sang in the ward choir. We found out about Ellen by reading a little snippet from the life history of a young Hyrum Hayball, who saw her in the ward choir and said, I'm going to marry her. He said that to a friend, and the friend said, she's crippled. And he said, I'm going to marry her anyway. But that romance is another story. [LAUGHTER] I say that when we don't have any details. I can't tell you the story, but I'm sure it's another story. She's listed in the 1880 census of Smithfield, Utah, as a cripple, and she passed away on November 7 in 1910. The challenge of many people with disabilities in the 1800s is not unlike the challenge that people with disabilities face now, in terms of being able to have jobs, to have a means of making a livelihood and have a source of income.

Back then, as now, opportunities for employment, to engage in labor, to work a farm, to develop a craft, were pretty limited for folks that had some kind of disability, hence many were left behind. They didn't have the means to join the Saints in Zion. They didn't have the means to set up, get an outfit, and finance their immigration. In 1855 and 1856, the handcart plan was presented and advocated by Church leadership as a means to decrease the cost to members so that they could join the Saints in the Utah valleys. I think that the handcart plan was especially appealing to those that had disabilities. Without thinking of the hardships that the journey would entail, they saw it as a means to be able to achieve their goal and join with friends and family that had already emigrated. There were a number of people in the first year of the handcart program, the first companies, including the Martin Harris company, that had disabilities. One of those people is Joseph Crossley. Joseph was born in 1836 in Lancashire, England. As a young child, he contracted a hip disease that left him a cripple. His mother married James Crossley, and Joseph's family grew. His two younger sisters, Sarah and Hannah, were especially fond of him. Joseph's stepfather James left the family early and emigrated early and was in plan of setting up a farm and a residence for his family and earning money so that he could bring them over at a later date. Joseph was not baptized until three years after the rest of his family was baptized, and in the 1851 census of the United Kingdom, Joseph was listed as a schoolteacher at the age of 14. He was apparently very bright, and the research of my colleague Anne Leahy shows that he was teaching shorthand. Excerpts from the life histories of Joseph's mother, Mary Jarvis Crossley, and his sister Sarah give some insights into his experiences on the trail. I hope you'll forgive me for reading these, because these are so rich and if I just ramble through it, I'd miss some of the interesting nuances that are so important. From Sarah's life history we read, "The handcart plan was introduced in England, and it seemed so cheap and easy-- only 9 pounds, or $45 in American money, for each of us. We were so anxious to join our father and many friends who had gone before that we decided to go. Mother was a small, frail woman, and there was Joseph, our crippled brother, who could never walk the 1,300 miles across the plains. But Hannah and I were strong, healthy girls, and Ephraim was quite a lad and very willing to go." Sarah continues her narrative. "It was hard work. We always had to pull Joseph along, but what was that to a girl of 14, robust and strong? All went well until our supplies ran low, then we were put on rations and began to weaken, making travel slower every day. September came, and the first frost fell upon us. Out in the open with few clothes and little shelter, we began our real suffering. But we tried to be brave and not complain more than necessary to each other. We children felt that we should cheer dear little mother and help her all we could. But poor Joseph, it was so hard on him jolting over the uneven road. He suffered greatly and became so thin and pale. I would do my best, anything to keep his spirits up, not let him grow sad, as he really was a bright, happy, cheerful fellow. We had always cared so tenderly for him, and he missed the good, nourishing food and the comforts he had, but he seldom complained, only dwindled away in body and spirit."

The effects of the dwindling rations, the weather, the fatigue, and the diseases, such as dysentery, that plagued the Martin Harris company have been described in several of the journals of the company. Those in the company with disabilities were even more susceptible to these challenges than others. Sarah continues her story. "Many were dying each day. Men and women who had started out well and strong were dropping out. Each morning, we would dig a grave and bury our dead before we could break camp. Was it any wonder that our dear brother Joseph was stricken with this terrible disease? We each gave him our clothing to keep him warm, but when morning came, we found him dead, his suffering over. He was gone, frozen stiff in his bed. We were so calloused and numbed with our suffering at the sight of death that I think we were almost glad that he was gone, as we all looked forward to the end and felt he had only gone on a little ahead of us and we would soon be with him. I did pray, though, that the commissioner of provisions would not know of it until I had received Joseph's spoonful of flour. I cannot tell the pain that smote my heart as he counted out the spoonfuls and he came to Joseph name. He said, 'Oh, Joseph died last night, didn't he? Well, that will be one spoonful less.' I had lost my dear little brother's portion, and it hurt me worse than that first look upon his still, white face had done. We left him by the roadside.

There were five deaths that night, and the ground was so frozen that we could not dig a grave, so we wrapped him in a large blanket and left him by the side of the trail. But before the train was out of sight, the wolves had reached it. This was an awful thing for mother to bear, but she did not complain of the Lord and did not lose faith. She felt that it had been a merciful hand that had bereft her of her son rather than a hard one." Joseph died on November 5, 1856, just a few days before the Martin company holed up in Martin's Cove. Hannah Sessions Burningham, a granddaughter of Joseph's mother, Mary Jarvis-- so that would have been one of his nieces-- wrote a poem describing the touching experience of a mother losing her crippled son and having to bury him in a shallow winter grave. The poem's too long to recite here. I don't think I could get through it myself. And that's another story.

Another person I'd like to share with you is someone you probably have all become acquainted with. That is Brother Robert Pierce.

Robert Pierce was also in the Martin handcart company. He was born in 1825 in England, and we believe that his parents were John and Mary Pierce. We know very little about his experiences. He apparently had a severe crippling condition of his legs and lower body and had to use crutches to walk. He emigrated to the United States aboard the ship Horizon in 1856 and became part of the Martin handcart company. He was part of the invalids group, which would strike out ahead of the main camp each day. John Southwell's account captures the faith, determination, and the precarious circumstances of a person with a disability on the trek, particularly one without a family. From his journal, I quote, "In the morning, father Waugh called his invalids together early and started on the road. In his company was one of the worst cripples I ever saw to be a traveler. His lower limbs were paralyzed and his body badly deformed, but he was strong in the faith. He was able to propel himself with surprising speed with the use of crutches. On the road, the old father missed him. The road followed down an old, dry bed of a creek, but finally crossed on to the other side, where we expected to get back of him. There were on the road he was traveling faint tracks that had been used by stock, perhaps buffalo, and the poor fellow used those tracks instead of crossing to the other side." Probably to the other side of the river. "We camped for noon near the loop part of the Platte River. Myself and two other men, taking a handcart, went back to where we left the buffalo tracks and followed down about a mile when to our horror we saw around an old tree two large, gray wolves prowling around, and a half dozen eagles hovering over the tree, waiting for him to quit his screams and gestulations with his crutches so they could pounce upon him and devour him in his cramped position under the roots of the tree, screaming out his death knell. We arrived in time to save him from his pending fate, took him out, and placed him on the cart we had brought, placed him in a position to ride back to camp. How the poor fellow begged us to let him walk, as he said he promised Brother Tyler when we started on our trip that he would walk every foot of the way to Salt Lake City. However, we only saved him to travel a few days longer, which at the close of the sixth days March, his trouble in this world came to an end and he was buried on the banks of the Elkhorn River." Brother Pierce died September 8, 1856, less than a week into the march of the Martin handcart company. And he was the inspiration for the character Albert in the movie 17 Miracles. These are amazing stories. They capture faith, and excitement, and the struggles of many, many people. Thomas Evans was born on February 14, 1833, in South Wales. Thomas's father died when he was three years old, leaving his wife and eight children with enormous challenges. At the age of seven, Thomas started working in the ironworks, progressing through training and apprenticeships to become an iron roller. At the age of nine, while playing hooky from Sunday school, he got caught under the wheels of a train, and the resulting injury required the amputation of his leg just below the knee. A wooden leg was subsequently fashioned so that Thomas could get around.

At the age of 16, he first heard the preaching of the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he was baptized in 1848. His mother and stepfather also joined the Church. Thomas was ordained a priest and later an elder. He became an active missionary and traveled the region preaching. In his journal, he talks about his missionary experiences and how his artificial leg would get stuck in the mud as he was walking along, going from community to community, village to village. Among his assignments was to preach in Pembrokeshire, where he met a young woman convert named Priscilla Merriman. Her autobiography and her life history sketch is where we learn a lot about their experiences on the pioneer trail. She and Thomas were married in 1856, and two weeks later, on April 17, they sailed for America. After arriving in Boston, they traveled 300 miles by rail to Iowa City, where they were outfitted with handcarts, and walked an additional 300 miles from Iowa City to Winter Quarters. There, they joined the Edward Bunker company, the third handcart company. Priscilla notes in her diary that there were several in the company who had disabilities, including a man with one leg, her husband; two men who were blind; and one that had only one arm. One of the men that was blind was Thomas Giles, and the other man that was blind, I believe, was Hans Ulrich Bryner. Hans Ulrich lost his eyesight as a young man. He was probably about 16 or so.

20? Oh, OK. He was an old young man. He was carving up a pig, and a hoof came loose of the gimbal and poked him in the eye and it became infected and he lost his sight. The family story is that crossing the plains, Hans had to hold on to a rope as it was pulled behind a wagon or a cart, and that's how he made it across the plains. Thomas Giles, who lost his eyesight in a accident in the coal mines of Wales, had a similar experience, where he was partnered with a sighted person and pulled a handcart, with a sighted person kind of pointing out, here's this place where you've got to walk carefully.

But that's another story. Priscilla records that the orders of the day were that if any were sick or unable to walk, they would have to be pulled in the handcarts. No one rode in the wagons. Thomas and Priscilla shared their handcart with Elizabeth Lane Hyde. In her autobiography, Elizabeth noted that Thomas pulled the handcart until he gave out in the deep sands of Nebraska. Incidentally, those deep sands of the Platte River started real early in the handcart trek. From there on, both she and Priscilla pulled the handcart until the company reached Laramie. Thomas plodded along beside the cart, probably pushing when he could. Priscilla notes, "In walking from 20 to 25 miles per day, where the knee rested on the pad, the friction caused it to gather and break and it was most painful, but he had to endure it or remain behind, as he never asked to ride in a wagon." Thomas and his wife, Priscilla, reached Salt Lake City on October 2, 1856. Three days later, President Brigham Young would call for an immediate rescue effort aimed at bringing those in the Martin and Willie companies into the valley. The Evans family moved to Spanish Fork, where they raised 12 children. Brother Evans died in 1906, and his wooden leg is on display at the Church History Museum. Anybody here seen that? I'm confident that that was probably one of several that he went through. I don't know if that's the one that got stuck in the mud in Wales. There are so many of these stories that just capture interesting aspects of life on the plains. Jorgen Hansen probably had a mental disability, some cognitive impairment he may have had, some mental health issues. He may have been bipolar. His father had already emigrated to the valley. And Jorgen and his brother Jens-- I'm sorry, my Danish is not so good-- emigrated with the Hans Peter Olsen company in 1854. There's a lot of lore, a lot of family lore with this story, and we're still trying to find out what the truth is. I don't know if we'll ever really get to the truth. But apparently, along the way, Jorgen said he'd had enough and he wasn't going to go any further. He said he was going to sit down in the trail and let the wolves come and devour his bones, and he wanted his clothes out of the wagon. And everybody kept trying to talk him into keep going on the trail, but he wouldn't be persuaded. He insisted that he was just going to sit down and stay. He was through, he wasn't going to go. Many-- several of the brethren tried to persuade him and even promised him that he could drive all the way if he'd stay with them. It didn't work. He sat down, and the company came together and had a council and decided they would just leave him. And so they moved on. Later, when they made camp, Jens and several other brethren went back and they took along with them a rope. They were convinced that if they couldn't convince him to come, that they were going to tie a rope around him and drag him. We think that the story of them actually dragging him with a rope is apocryphal. We can't find evidence of it, but he did join, subsequently had come back to the company and continued with them. We just decided yesterday-- didn't we, Anne?-- that we would try and figure out some more stories about Jorgen and his brother Jens. But these are interesting, interesting stories. I'd like to tell you about some heroes and, perhaps, some not heroes as I conclude. Francis Brooks, or Frank, was born in 1850 in Wales. His parents were Samuel Brooks and Emma Blinstone. In 1856, at the age of six, he emigrated with his family to the United States and joined the Edward Bunker company. Again, this is one of those handcart companies that brought a lot of Welsh and, apparently, a lot of folks with disabilities with them. During the trek, Francis was not well. He is listed as an invalid. We're not sure whether his condition counted as a disability or not. In the subsequent 1867 and 1880 censuses in Utah, we see him, but it doesn't show him as a cripple. He lived with his brother George and his family in St. George, but he never married. And he passed away on December 27 in 1913 at the age of 62. The hero of this story is a fellow by the name of John Parry. He recorded the following. "I labored very hard to help some widows, and fatherless, and the weak to pull their cards up hilly places besides pulling my own, along with my wife, and my sister's young daughter. Indians met us sometimes and helped us pull our carts, which was great fun for them. We had no trouble of any kind in crossing the plains, only fatigue. I worked myself down. I did pull Samuel Brooks's boy Frank for some hundreds of miles, as he was an invalid." John Parry went on to become the founding director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. But that's another story.

Last person I'd like to share with you is Ingra Borg. In the Overland trails database, she's listed as Ingeborg, as in one word. But her name was Ingra, or "Inger," Borg. She was born in 1812 in Sweden, and her parents-- she and parts of her family-- I'm sorry, not her parents-- emigrated to the United States in 1860, first sailing to Boston and then joining the William Budge company. By the 1860s-- this is towards the end of the pioneer period-- the immigrant trains had become a very well-rehearsed, and organized, and very scripted enterprise. They were usually led by an experienced camp captain who had made the trek before. They knew how many miles they had to make each day and they knew where they were going to camp, where the grass was in good shape for the animals to graze upon. They also knew where the jumping off points and supply points were along the way. Alvus Patterson, a fellow member of the William Budge company, recorded the following about Sister Borg. "Mrs. Ingar Borg and her only son Frederick walked the great distance and drove their only possession, a cow. Mrs. Ingra Borg was lame and slow, and she and her son, as a result, were always behind." I can relate with that, having the rest of the camp pass you, even when you started out at the head. Because" of being lame, she would gradually fall behind and the rest of the camp would pass her and her son and their cow. One evening, just before reaching a place to camp, the Indians surrounded them and were trying to take them captive. When their screams were heard, Father immediately gave orders to circle the wagons and the men were ordered to arm themselves." Mrs. Ingra Borg and her son were rescued, but the Indians killed the cow and dragged her away with them. "We then continued our journey unmolested."

She made it safely to the Salt Lake Valley and died in 1878 and is buried in Mount Pleasant, Utah. We're not sure whether Sister Borg had a disability, such as cerebral palsy, club feet, or a congenital birth defect, or whether she was just footsore. Or maybe she had plantar fasciitis, I don't know. But her experience is telling, in any event, and her place in the camp and among her fellow pioneers is clear-- she was lame and slow and she and her son, as a result, were always behind.

Brothers and sisters, this has been a wonderful learning experience for me and my colleagues as we've been exploring these wonderful stories. They are complicated. They span the history of our nation and the history of the Restoration of the gospel. As the Church grew and as it matured, especially in its early stages, we had to figure out a lot of things. We are still figuring out those things. The details are often very scant. We're just getting a word or two about these folks in a journal or in someone's life history. Some of the stories inspire, and some of them shame us. But the stories are as relevant to us today as they were in the 1880s. These were people just trying to get to Zion like everybody else. They were trying to be Saints first and people with disabilities second. Our challenge today, much like the camp to which Sister Ingar Borg belonged, is to make sure we don't leave anybody behind, that we don't pass them up, but that we make sure that we all make it to Zion safely. I want to bear you my testimony. The gospel is true. The pattern set by the Savior is the pattern which we must all aspire towards. Leave no one behind, and make sure all are accounted for at the end of the day when we make camp. And I share that with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge many people who have helped me gather these stories. I am here telling you the stories, but many people have done the hard work in libraries, on computers, chasing down many, many details. These are the really smart folks that I've been able to work with, and I am especially indebted to my colleague Anne Leahy, who has helped me do the heavy lifting in trying to identify and build out the stories, the facts, and the historical accuracies of these wonderful stories. I'm also indebted to many folks, like the Bryner family, that have shared with me part of the family lore that is part of their family's heritage. These stories, I've come to find out, are not untold. They're told over and over inside the families to which these people belonged. But they are not told often enough. And for me, it's been a great honor to say their names and tell these stories here at Church headquarters. Thank you for being here. And I believe we've got five minutes left on the tape, something like that. Are there any questions?

Please, can we get a microphone for this brother right here? What is the central message behind all of this to you about members, people with disabilities? What overarching theme, message, learning experience to you is all of this or these experiences? That's a great question. And it may sound trite for those of us in the disabilities community, we refer to a term as people-first. For me, the takeaway of these stories is these were Saints first. These were people trying to get Zion, just like everybody else. They didn't view themselves as people with disabilities.

Willard Richards had palsy. It's hard to find details about his experience having palsy. We think it was a form of cerebral palsy. It may have been a Parkinson's or Hodgkin's disease. He records how he experienced that first attack of palsy when he was studying the Book of Mormon, before he was baptized. He later, towards the end of his life, served in the territorial legislature. Then he passed away shortly, during that period of time. And in his obituary and eulogy, it says that he suffered mightily with palsy. Whether that ended up being his demise or not, I don't know. But apparently, it was something he struggled with. But we don't see that in these descriptions about him. Please. From this gentleman's question, is the overarching meaning is are you just out to tell stories, or how can you get this material out to where more people are aware of the relevance to it today? And how can we move the cause of disabled people forward and the needs that they have? My husband has been a quadriplegic for 35 years, and I'll tell you, my feeling is that our culture, and even the Church, is about where single parenting was 30 or 40 years ago. We really need someone like you to publish this or to get this word out that these people are in real need of becoming more-- others more aware. I appreciate that. I wished I had a quick answer for that. Information like this would be extremely helpful. Frankly, one of the reasons I got involved with this was trying to figure out why we're in such a mess that we are now and wondering how far back it went. Apparently, it went back a long ways. These are the challenges, though, that these pioneers experienced are very much the challenges that people with disabilities face today in our wards, in our stakes, in our branches, and in our communities. Other comments?

Well, I really don't have a question. But I talked to TC Christensen, and you mentioned the film 17 Miracles. And I said, what will be your next project? He's done such wonderful movies, and movies do serve in educating people and showing the real stories. And he told me that he wants to do a movie about people with disabilities. So make sure you talk to him. Oh boy. Because you know who they are. I'll give a call. Yes. Thank you. [INAUDIBLE]

One more comment, then I think we're out of time. This is a term that I use-- disabled and exceptional. And you find there are many people who are disabled and exceptional and are very much sidelined in life. I'm getting some body language in front of me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's the crisis, that we don't recognize that people with-- we don't accept the premise that people with disabilities can also be exceptional. And what does it take for them to succeed? I have some insights in my own life. But that's my remark tying in, I hope. One thing we know is that wherever we draw a line and say that that is the bottom line, people with disabilities exceed it every time. And again, this story is less about-- for me, these stories are less about the individuals with disabilities and it's more about the people that were with them and what was going on at the time. But that's going to be another story. It's going to be hard to ferret out.

Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]

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