PIONEERS - WHOM I LOVE

I shall be forever grateful for ancestors who left Italy in the dead, crossing the alps on mule drawn sleighs, traveled on to England where they a ship and arrived in America. They were in the first group of handcart pioneers.

A writer says of this company, “Along the way they had occasionally struck up a chorus of the well-known “Handcart Song”; they had also quietly tolerated random harassment from amused onlookers and had endured a fair share of

privation and fatigue. Sometimes they even had occasion to resolve petty quarrels among themselves. But these were relatively minor interludes. For the most part, they had never lost sight of their ultimate goal. “We waded

streams, crossed high mountains and pulled through heavy sand,” wrote participant Mary Ann Jones, “leaving father, mother, brother and sister to be where we would hear a prophet’s voice and live with the Saints of Zion."

(The Ensign, August 1997, p. 34.)