Here in Utah and other places where people celebrate the “Days of ‘47” (1847 – those were the days!) we remember the pioneers, some of whom are my Cannon and Rich ancestors. I think it’s not just about the vanguard group of Mormons (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) who arrived in the Salt Lake Valley around July 24th (God bless them for their courage), but also the numerous pioneers of all faiths who followed in the fall of 1847, and in later years.
Pioneer stories are intrinsic (“belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing” -- The Merriam-Webster Dictionary) to the history of Utah, as well as other areas all over the world. Today I celebrate the pioneering spirit of people everywhere, in every era.
Some interesting stories are found in George Q. Cannon – A Biography (©1999, Deseret Book Company) by Davis Bitton. “… Brigham Young and the pioneers arrived at the Salt Lake Valley in late July 1847, planted potatoes, and began laying out a city. Back in Winter Quarters [Missouri River, Nebraska], where George Q. Cannon remained, a different kind of company was being organized. Apostles John Taylor and Parley P. Pratt organized a wagon train made up of men, women, and children, the old as well as the young, along with cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens. Not a lean, fast-moving unit like the pioneer company, it was a larger, unwieldy ‘community,’ a veritable moving city of 560 wagons, fifteen hundred people, and five thousand head of stock …” George [age 20] and his sister Ann were in Captain Joseph Horne’s fifty (“referring to the approximate number of wagons”). “George drove a wagon. In the same company was Mary Jane Dilworth, who noticed something unusual in young Cannon: ‘I never saw him waste a minute. As soon as his oxen were unyoked and the necessary work done, he could always be found sitting on the tongue of his wagon reading a book.’ When he offered to teach his sister Ann from her schoolbooks, she claimed she was too busy – and later regretted the lost opportunity. … Because he had a gun, George must have participated in the hunting, especially for buffalo, that kept the company supplied with meat and tallow.” (GQC, pages 52-53)
“George was one of those exhausted travelers” in the Horne section, who arrived in the valley "on 29 September 1847. … One of George’s first assignments … was to dig a grave for a member of his company who had died. ‘The soil was absolutely without moisture and resembling brick dust,’ he later said. … We constructed a ditch to what was known as the old fort,’ George continued, ‘and though the distance was but short it took two days before the water reached there.’ … Something close to two thousand Latter-day Saints in thirteen companies had arrived at the Salt Lake Valley before the end of 1847.” (GQC, page 55)
