MARY ADELAIDE
WALTERS
Bom: 6 Feb 1850 Clifton,
Swansea Glamorgan, Wales
Age: 6
Hunt Wagon Company
Ady (as she was called by her
family and listed on the ship’s records) traveled to Zion as a young girl, six years of age, with
her parents, John and Esther Caulfield Walters. Ady’s
father was a tailor. Her mother was expecting a baby, which was born on
Saturday, September 6, 1856, at Shell
Creek, Nebraska. It
was also on this day (or the day before) that the company encountered a large
group of over 1,000 Pawnee Indians who were traveling eastward on the same
trail as the Hunt Company. The Walters family must have been frightened at
first, as they had just received news the day before about a group of Cheyenne
Indians who had attacked the Babbitt Wagon train just ahead of them. Mary was
no doubt awed by the sight of so many Indian families. These were friendly
Indians. Nevertheless, the company had to be more careful than before. l3-year-
old Mary Goble* of the Hunt Company
recorded in her narrative of this time, “The Indians were on the war path and
very hostile. Our captain, John Hunt, had us make a dark camp. That was to stop
and get our supper, then travel a few miles, and not light any fires but camp
and go to bed. The men had to travel all day and guard every other night.”
The next day, President Franklin D. Richards of the England
Mission and the other returning missionaries that were with him, met with the
Hunt Company. They had met with the Martin Handcart Company earlier in the day.
Ady’s family must have been much encouraged as the
party of missionaries stayed with the Hunt Company that night and gave them
much encouragement. They hurried on to Salt Lake
the next day to report the presence of the Willie, Martin, Hunt and Hodgetts companies still on the plains.
President Richards and his party could travel much faster,
as they had light Wagons or
carriages and were not hampered by
cattle to be driven and large numbers of people. They arrived in Salt Lake City on October
4, 1856, and reported to Brigham Young, who had been previously unaware of the
last four companies on the plains. He immediately suspended the other business
of the General Conference just convening and called for rescuers to go and help
these pioneers. On Tuesday, October 7, the first rescue party logged the
following in their journal: G.S.L. City,
going east, to meet the emigrating companies. Camped tonight at the foot of the
Big Mountain,”
On this same Tuesday, the Hunt Company Journal records:
“The company resumed the journey at 7 o’clock a.m. An ox
belonging to Brother Richard Griffiths gave out. The dead ox was unhitched from
its mate and the journey continued with one yoke of oxen. The loose pair of
oxen was left for Brother Samuel Evans to drive, and while driving them, one of
the bow keys broke, by which means the oxen became separated and the one that
had the yoke hanging to its neck ran off and so frightened some of the other
oxen that it caused them to leave the track and go at high speed, wagon after
wagon. Soon, however, they were going at a terrible speed in different
directions, causing a general consternation. The last half of the train was
exposed to great danger of being knocked down, or crushed between the wagons.
In a few minutes, however, the cattle were brought to a standstill, after some
ten or 12 wagons had left the road. `During the stampede, Sister Esther Walters
from Wales
was knocked down and so badly injured that she expired in a few minutes
afterwards, leaving a babe four weeks old, which at the time was in the wagon.
The remains of Sister Walters were interred in the evening at 5 o’clock. She
was 39 [or 32] years old. After Brother Goble’s wagon, which was broken in the
stampede, was repaired, the company traveled on about one mile farther and
camped at 6 pm. Day’s journey, 13 miles.”
Another little girl about Ady’s
age, Maria Bryner from Switzerland, also lost a family
member (great aunt Susannah Bryner) due to this
stampede. Perhaps if Ady and Maria had spoken the
same language, they could have verbally shared their grief, but they still no
doubt had much sympathy for each other. Maria now had a responsibility to her
father, who was blind, to help guide him across the plains. Ady
now had additional responsibility to care for her baby sister, Jane.
Twelve days after Ady’s mother
died, the first winter storms began. The Hunt Company and Martin Handcart
Company were at the last crossing of the Platte River.
The Hunt Company did all they could to assist the Martin Company at this diffìcult time. It is likely that John Walters was one
spoken of by 18-year-old Elizabeth White of the Hunt Company in her narrative:
“Some of our men Went through the river seventy-live times [carrying the women
and children of the Martin Company] . . . Our company assisted them all they
could, but there does not seem to be any account of our assistance in their
history.” Mary Goble, whose mother also died later in
the trek, Wrote of this day:
“We traveled on till we got to the Platte River.
That was the last Walk I ever had with my mother. We caught up with the
handcart companies that day. . . There were great lumps of ice floating down
the river. It was bitter cold. The next morning there were fourteen dead in
camp through the cold. We went back to camp and went to prayers. They sang,
‘Come, Come, Ye Saints, No Toil Nor Labor Fear.’ I
wondered what made my mother cry. That night my mother took sick, and the next
morning my little sister was born. . . We named her Edith, and she lived six
weeks and died for want of nourishment . . . We traveled in the snow from the
last crossing of the Platte
River. We had orders not
to pass the handcart companies. We had to keep close to them so as to help them
if we could. We began to get short of food; our cattle gave out. We could only
travel a few miles a day.”
Mary Adelaide would again share grief with this fellow
emigrant, as her baby sister, Jane,
would also soon join her mother in
death. But for now, Ady and her father did the best
they could. The Hunt Company did not cross the Platte
until three days later. They had been stranded by deep snow and missing cattle.
After the missing cattle were found and the river forded, other cattle died or
were slaughtered due to their weakened condition. On the 26th of October,
Captain Hunt went to Fort Bridger (near present day Casper) and traded for more cattle to replace
those lost. Twenty-seven head of cattle were brought to the company in the next
two days. The company journal records:
“Tuesday, October 28, 1856 The weather continued cold. Brothers
Joseph Young and two other brethren [Abel Garr and Dan Jones, advance rescue
team] arrived in camp in the evening from the Valley. This caused, rejoicing
generally throughout the camp, though the tidings of the snow extending
westward for forty or fifty miles was not encouraging . . . Wednesday, October
29th, 1856 – The three brethren, who had arrived in the camp from
the Valley the day before left the company on their return, expecting to be
back with help in ten days. The company resumed the journey at 2 o’clock p.m.
leaving one old wagon belonging to Brother Walters who had joined Brother Farmer
in bringing their teams together and making one wagon serve for both families.
After traveling 3 miles a new encampment was made at 3:30 pm., at a place where
the feed was scarce.”
The Farmer family had three daughters, ages 8, 10 and 12. It
was probably very comforting to Ady at this time, to
have these new “sisters” and the assistance of their family in caring for Ady’s baby sister. The girls’ grandmother Farmer had died
back in Chicago in June and their 9-month-old
brother, Willard, had died in July in Iowa.
About a week after the first advance or express rescue team
came, more of the rescuer’s
provision wagons met the Hunt
Company. Elizabeth White records: “About midnight that night all the camp had
retired, and we were awakened with a noise and thought it was the yelling of
Indians . . . but to our great surprise the noise was caused by the teamsters
of a relief` team, and some of the camp shouted for joy. They were loaded with
all kinds of provisions: flour, bread, butter, meat of all kinds, but all
frozen so hard . . . I remember we had to cut everything with the hatchet, but
oh how thankful we all were that the Lord had answered our prayers and saved us
all from starvation.”
More babies were born and died the first two weeks of
November. Hannah Newman was born and died on the same day; Elizabeth Edwards
Price lived about three days; and little Jane Walters died on November 5, at
the age of eight Weeks. The cold was severe on this day recorded in one journal
as 11 below zero. Jane died at 9:30 a.m., the company
started moving at 11:00 am., passed Independence Rock at 2 p.m. and arrived at
the log house at Devil’s Gate at 8 p.m. The Hodgetts
Wagon Company had already arrived and was camped there. The Martin Handcart
Company had also arrived and gone into Martin’s Cove, about three miles
distant, for shelter from the storms.
On this day of Jane’s death, the Hunt Company Journal
records, “A meeting was called which was addressed by Brothers Grant, Cyrus H.
Wheelock and Burton.
Brother Grant informed the emigrants that they would have to leave their goods
at this place until they could be sent for such as stoves, boxes of tools,
clothing, etc., and only take along sufficient
clothing to keep them warm, with their bedding. He wanted four or five wagons
and teams to assist the handcart companies and he expected them to take only
about half the number of wagons along. All present expressed their willingness to
do whatever was expected of them . . .”
Fellow traveler James Cantwell recorded in his journal, “To
give any just description of the 6th, 7th and 8th
of November, the times we stayed at [Devil’s Gate], would be impossible. It was
a combination of wind, hail, snow, and cold in terrible reality. Many of the
remaining cattle died, and our traveling power fell so short that it was deemed
advisable to leave one half the wagons behind and all the freight and take
nothing except our food and clothing . . .”
The bereaved Mary Adelaide and her father, along with the
other emigrants, left their things at Devil’s Gate to be guarded through the
winter by rescuer Dan Jones and a group of 19 other men. Dan Jones wrote: “That
a proper understanding may be had, I will say that these goods were the luggage
of a season’s emigration that these two wagon trains had contracted to freight,
and it was being taken through as well as the luggage of the people present.
Leaving these goods meant to abandon all that many poor families had upon
earth. So it was different from common merchandise . . . [The] unloading
occupied three days. The handcart people were notified to abandon most of their
carts. Teams were hitched up and the sick and feeble loaded in with such light
weight as was allowed. All became common property.” Dan Jones and his men
stayed behind with about 20 days rations, no salt or
bread, and five months of winter facing them.
On Monday, November 10, the Hunt Company moved on. More
rescue teams met the
emigrants as they straggled on
toward their promised land and the blessings of Zion. If all of the rescue teams that started
out to find the stranded companies had continued on their way and not turned
back, the guards at Devil’s Gate and the emigrants would not have been short of
provisions and wagons once again. The last of the Hunt Company was helped into Salt Lake
on December 15, 1856.
Mary Adelaide grew to young womanhood and married Levi Minnerly in the Endowment
House in Salt Lake
City on September 6, 1869. She was nineteen years old
and Levi was forty-two. Ady was Levi’s fourth wife
and the second one by the name of Mary. Five years later, Levi married a third
Mary (Mary D. Salmon). The 1880 U.S. Census shows Levi as a carpenter, living
in Wellsville, Cache County, Utah, with two wives listed as D. Mary and A. Mary
(Mary Adelaide); Charlotte (Mary Adelaide’s 6-year-old daughter), John McKall (brother of Levi’s second wife), and Fanny Gibbs, a
divorced 24-year-old school teacher from Wales.
Levi’s ancestors were of Dutch lineage who
purchased Long Island, New York. Indian Chief Wyandance,
who owned Long Island, took a liking to Jan
Von Thessel and gave his daughter, Princess Catarona to him as his Wife. Levi descended from this
marriage, thereby adding Indian and Dutch blood to Mary Adelaide’s daughter’s
heritage.
It is not known at the time of this writing, when or where
John Walters died. He was born
February 17, 1810, in Swansea,
Glamorgan, S. Wales
and baptized on July 25, 1849, just a few months after his marriage to Esther
Caulfield. John had been previously married (September 18, 1826) to Mary
Ann Fender in Wales
and had at least two daughters from her: Sarah Jane, born December 23, 1830, in
Swansea, and Elizabeth Ann, born July 8, 1839 or
1843, also in Swansea.
These two girls traveled with John and Esther to America
with a large group of Saints from Wales on board the ship Samuel
Curling. Most of these Welsh Saints, including 26-year-old Sarah Jane, left
from Iowa City
with the Bunker Handcart Company (also known as the Welsh Company) which was
just a few weeks
ahead of the Willie Handcart
Company. A few others, like John Walters, stayed at the outfitting point at Iowa City to work and
come last with the Hunt or Hodgetts Wagon Companies.
It is supposed that John did this in order to protect his wife who was
expecting a child. John’s daughter, Elizabeth Ann, is not listed with the Hunt
Company records. It is presumed that she also traveled with the Bunker Handcart
Company with her sister, Sarah Jane. Also traveling on the ship with the family
was Hannah
Walters, age 29, born in 1827 in Wales. She is listed as a Spinster
traveling with this family on the ship’s records. She could have also been
John’s daughter from his first marriage.
Elizabeth White of the Hunt Company (who has been quoted
here) had a brother by the name of Barnard. Perhaps the Walters and the Whites
became friends as they traveled, as Ady’s
half-sister, Elizabeth Ann, later married Barnard White. Her other half-sister,
Sarah Jane, married William Willes on November 4,
1856 (about 6 weeks before her father reached the Salt Lake Valley). She later divorced him and
married Enoch Perham Rollins.
John Walter’s three known daughters all raised their
families in Cache County, Utah. Ady lived to
be 87 years old. She died in Brigham
City on October 26, 1937, and is buried in Wellsville.
Levi died on April 10, 1888 in Bingham Co., Idaho, at the age of 61. Ady
had been a Widow for almost 50 years at the time of her death.
