Reliving their travels

“Pull. Pull! We’re almost to the top of the hill!”  Summer vacation had to wait for some teenagers. 

Nearly three dozen youths from Danville and Rockingham and Caswell counties joined with 120 teens from the Greensboro area in a re-enactment that was anything but a relaxing vacation. Instead of changing into swimsuits for a beach trip, the young women wore bonnets and long skirts, and the young men wore pants and long-sleeved shirts while pulling and pushing handcarts over more than 13 miles of rough terrain.

“I was thinking I was glad I wasn’t a real pioneer,” said Madison’s Darcy Martin, 17. 

Martin was one of many participants who had an ancestor who walked across the plains in the mid-1800s when members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) were seeking religious freedom in the Western territories of what would become the United States.

The youths, representing LDS congregations from the Triad region of North Carolina and Danville, got a short taste of what those early pioneers experienced. 

Martin thought about her ancestors as she was preparing for the trek. “I kept thinking that I would be able to experience what they went through,” Martin said. While pushing and pulling the handcart over rocks and roots, Martin realized how hard it must have been for her ancestors and that she didn’t have any reason to complain with modern conveniences and freedoms.

According to Utah history, between 1856 and 1860, three thousand members of the LDS church walked 1,300 miles from Iowa City, Iowa to Salt Lake City, Utah. The pioneers had very little money and could take only a few things in small, hand-drawn, two-wheeled carts. Families joined in companies pushing and pulling the handcarts 15-to-20 miles a day.  Many of the pioneers suffered severe hardships. It was common for families to have children or parents die during the trek due to the harsh conditions. The trek across the plains and the Rocky Mountains took months, while the local youths had just three days to get an understanding of the pain and struggles.

“I know I’m doing what they did. But much shorter” said 13 year-old Matt John from Danville. John, like Martin, knows he has ancestors who were part of those early pioneer companies. While pulling his cart over a small hill, he was quick to point out the differences between the hills of Caswell County and the Rocky Mountains crossed by his ancestors.

Two of Matt’s brothers and his parents joined him on the trek. Rick and Cynthia John openly hoped their children would gain an appreciation for what it’s like to struggle. “Falling out, when you have a handcart, wasn’t an option. You only fell out when you were getting buried,” said Rick John.  Rick and Cynthia served as one of the “Ma and Pa” duos for makeshift families of eight to 10 children that included teens from around the area. “The kids love it. It’s hard work. But they enjoy it,” Rick said.

After each day’s hike, youth squared off in a tug-of-war, the stick pull, shooting muskets, and dancing. On the trail they saw simulations of serious events such as Indian conflicts and the deaths of infants and siblings. The real-life experience of one of the participants twisting her knee gave the families an unexpected view of pioneer reality.

Another family loaded the young woman into their cart and carried her a couple miles to a road for medical attention. The extra help in assisting her out of the woods left one family without a “pa.” What’s more, the “ma” is three months pregnant. Trail Boss Earl Hilton, who oversaw four families, used the experience to point out another uncomfortable pioneer fact. During the original trek, with so many deaths, it was common for a widow, who may have been pregnant, to be left moving her family. Hilton, speaking to the remaining brothers in the re-enactment family said, “Young men, you’ve got to man-up.”

Back on the cart, sometimes with no trail to follow, the participants pushed and pulled. “Root on the right!”, “Stump in the middle!”, “Be careful, the mud is very slippery!” “Work together! Work together!”  With sweat dripping off their noses, mud covering their legs, and blisters forming on their feet, these teens got a new appreciation for those who went before, and the luxuries they enjoy today.