18561776 Club
Two Mormon handcart companies leave Iowa City weeks late, pulling green-timber carts into the plains
More than 980 converts from Britain and Scandinavia set out on the Mormon Trail in late summer, far past any safe window for the crossing.
By the summer of 1856, the Mormon handcart experiment had already proven itself with three companies that reached Salt Lake City without major incident. Then the fourth and fifth companies — later known as the Willie and Martin companies — arrived in Iowa City weeks behind schedule, built their carts from green timber in frantic haste, and departed into the western plains in late July and August, far past any safe window for the crossing. More than 980 emigrants, most of them converts from England, Wales, Scotland, and Scandinavia, pulled their handcarts onto the Mormon Trail into a season that had almost run out. Of those 980, more than 210 would not survive…
