The Mormon Battalion set out for the west about the middle of July.
The project of the Pioneers, of going to the mountains that season, was now of course abandoned, and the Camp of Israel prepared to go into "Winter Quarters." This was the name given to their settlement on the Missouri, the principal part of which was on the west side of the river, five miles above Omaha of to-day. It is now known as Florence. Seven hundred houses of log, turf and other primitive materials, neatly arranged and laid out with streets and byways; well supplied with workshops, mills and factories, and with a tabernacle of worship in the midst; the whole arising from a pretty plateau overlooking the river, and well fortified with breast-work, stockade and block-houses, after the fashion of the frontier;—such was Winter Quarters, the principal one of these so-called "traveling stakes of Zion." Here, in these humble, prairie settlements, surrounded by Indians, whose savage hearts God had wondrously softened into sympathy and friendship for His exiled people, the Camp of Israel, the residue of twenty thousand souls, which the Saints had numbered in Illinois, passed the winter of 1846.
Meanwhile, in September of that year, the remnant left in Nauvoo, between six and seven hundred souls, after a gallant defense of their city against the mob, which, in violation of every treaty, came upon them in overwhelming numbers, were driven from their homes at the point of the bayonet, and thrown, men, women and children, sick, dying and shelterless, upon the western shores of the Mississippi. And this—shades of the patriots!—while their brethren, the heroes of the Mormon Battalion, were marching to fight their country's battles on the plains of Mexico!
CHAPTER LIII.
THE WORD AND WILL OF THE LORD CONCERNING THE CAMP OF ISRAEL—THE PIONEERS START FOR THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS—NAMES OF THE HEROES—INCIDENTS OF THE JOURNEY WEST.
The "Word and Will of the Lord concerning the Camp of Israel in their journeyings to the West," was given through President Brigham Young at Winter Quarters on the 14th of January, 1847. It was the first written revelation sent out to the Church since the death of the Prophet Joseph. Agreeable to its instructions, the Saints began to prepare for their journey to the mountains.
Early in April the pioneers started from Winter Quarters. This famous band numbered one hundred and forty-eight souls, including three women and two children. The personnel of the company as it left the Missouri River, was as follows:
1 Brigham Young. 2 Heber C. Kimball. 3 Orson Pratt. 4 Wilford Woodruff. 5 George A. Smith. 6 Willard Richards. 7 Amasa Lyman. 8 Ezra T. Benson. 9 John S. Fowler. 10 Jacob D. Burnham. 11 Joseph Egbert. 12 John M. Freeman. 13 Marcus B. Thorpe. 14 George Wardel. 15 Thomas Grover. 16 Barnabas L. Adams. 17 Roswell Stevens. 18 Starling Driggs. 19 Albert Carrington. 20 Thomas Bullock. 21 George Brown. 22 Jesse C. Little. 23 Phineas H. Young. 24 John Y. Greene. 25 Thomas Tanner. 26 Addison Everett. 27 Truman O. Angell. 28 Lorenzo D. Young. 29 Briant Stringham. 30 Albert P. Rockwood. 31 Joseph S. Schofield. 32 Luke Johnson. 33 John G. Holman. 34 Edmund Ellsworth. 35 Sidney Alvarus Hanks. 36 George R. Grant. 37 Millen Atwood. 38 Samuel Fox. 39 Tunis Reppelyee. 40 Eli Harvey Pierce. 41 William Dykes. 42 Jacob Weiler. 43 Stephen H. Goddard. 44 Tarlton Lewis. 45 Henry G. Sherwood. 46 Zebedee Coltrin. 47 Sylvester H. Earl. 48 John Dixon. 49 Samuel H. Marble. 50 George Scholes. 51 William Henrie. 52 William A. Empey. 53 Charles Shumway. 54 Andrew P. Shumway. 55 Thomas Woolsey. 56 Chancy Loveland. 57 Erastus Snow. 58 James Craig. 59 William Wordsworth. 60 William P. Vance. 61 Simeon Heyd. 62 Seely Owen. 63 James Case. 64 Artemas Johnson. 65 William C. A. Smoot. 66 Benjamin Franklin Dewey. 67 William Carter. 68 John G. Losee. 69 Burr Frost. 70 Datus Ensign. 71 Benjamin Franklin Stewart. 72 Horace Monroe Frink. 73 Eric Glines. 74 Ozro Eastman. 75 Seth Taft. 76 Horace M. Thornton. 77 Stephen Kelsey. 78 John S. Eldredge. 79 Charles D. Barnham. 80 Almon L. Williams. 81 Rufus Allen. 82 Robert T. Thomas. 83 James W. Stewart. 84 Elijah Newman. 85 Levi N. Kendall. 86 Francis Boggs. 87 David Grant. 88 Howard Egan. 89 William A. King. 90 Thomas P. Cloward. 91 Hosea Cushing. 92 Robert Byard. 93 George P. Billings. 94 Edson Whipple. 95 Philo Johnson. 96 Carlos Murray. 97 Appleton M. Harmon. 98 Willam Clayton. 99 Horace K. Whitney. 100 Orson K. Whitney. 101 Orrin Porter Rockwell. 102 Nathaniel Thomas Brown. 103 Jackson Reddin. 104 John Pack. 105 Francis M. Pomeroy. 106 Aaron Farr. 107 Nathaniel Fairbanks. 108 John S. Higbee. 109 John Wheeler. 110 Solomon Chamberlin. 111 Conrad Klineman. 112 Joseph Rooker. 113 Perry Fitzgerald. 114 John H. Tippitts. 115 James Davenport. 116 Henson Walker. 117 Benjamin W. Rolfe. 118 Norton Jacobs. 119 Charles A. Harper. 120 George Woodard. 121 Stephen Markham. 122 Lewis Barney. 123 George Mills. 124 Andrew S. Gibbons. 125 Joseph Hancock. 126 John W. Norton. 127 Shadrach Roundy. 128 Hans C. Hanson. 129 Levi Jackman. 130 Lyman Curtis. 131 John Brown. 132 Matthew Ivory. 133 David Powell. 134 Hark Lark (colored). 135 Oscar Crosby (colored). 136 Joseph Matthews. 137 Gilburd Summe. 138 John Gleason. 139 Charles Burke. 140 Alexander P. Chessley. 141 Rodney Badger. 142 Norman Taylor. 143 Green Flake (colored).
The above names, with the exception of the first eight (the Apostles) are given in their order, as divided into companies of tens.
The three women who accompanied the pioneers were Ellen Sanders, one of the wives of Heber C. Kimball; Clara Decker, a wife of Brigham Young; and Harriet P. Young, her mother, wife of Lorenzo D. Young. The children were Sobieski Young, son of Lorenzo, and Perry Decker, own brother to Clara Decker Young.