“Contents,” Ensign, Jan. 1975, 1
Ensign
January 1975
Volume 5 Number 1
On the cover: A New Year of Service
Inside back cover: The Migration over South Pass. From the Cody Wyoming Ward chapel mural. Painted by Edward T. Grigware. Used by permission of Glenn E. Nielsen.
Hunger, sickness, and death were no strangers to any of the companies who crossed the plains to the Salt Lake Valley, but two of them—the Willie and Martin handcart companies—suffered the gravest hardships of any emigrants to the Salt Lake Valley. Leaving Florence, Nebraska (“Old Winter Headquarters”) too late in the summer to avoid what was to be an especially early and severe winter, their frail carts of unseasoned lumber continuously broke down and delayed their travel. By the time they reached South Pass, Wyoming, the scene portrayed in this painting, it was October. Before reaching the Salt Lake Valley on November 6, 1856, 77 of the 404 emigrants in the Willie Company had perished and perhaps twice that number had died in the Martin Company, which arrived nearly a month later.
The cold blue-grey of winter twilight portrays the suffering and serves as mirror to the devotion of the pioneers in this scene from the Cody Wyoming Ward chapel mural, painted by the late Edward T. Grigware. Mr. Grigware, who was not a member of the Church, said of his work: “I have done my best … to show … the respect, love and affection that I hold in my heart for [the Mormons]. They are a great people.” Mr. Grigware later painted the Garden Room mural in the Los Angeles Temple and assisted in the mural and mosaic work on the buildings of the Brigham Young University Hawaii Campus.