Covered Wagon Women, Volume 7 by Kenneth L. Holmes

Author:Kenneth L. Holmes [Holmes, Kenneth L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780803276901
Publisher: Bison Books
Published: 2014-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

Delaware to Utah, 1857

Sarah Maria Mousley

INTRODUCTION

Sarah Maria Mousley was the third child of eight born to Titus and Ann McMenemy Mousley in Newcastle County, Delaware. In her middle name the “i” is pronounced as the word “eye” and accented. The surname is pronounced with the “Mous” sounded like the “Mos” in Moses. They were descendants of the founders of the Delaware colony, the Swedes and Finns, who settled there in 1638 and over the years following. She was a mature young woman of 29 years when the family made the 1857 crossing to Utah. They traveled by train to Iowa City and by wagon train from there to Salt Lake City. Sarah had broken off an engagement to a young man in the east because he would not convert to Mormonism. One brother, Lewis, had already migrated to Utah in 1856, and, according to the diary as they neared the end of their journey, they learned that he was living “on Weber river forty miles from the valley.”

The year 1857 was a time of troubles for Latter-Day Saints both in the eastern states and in Utah. It was a time when much anti-Mormon sentiment was being whipped up in the newspapers. American nativism reacted to the coming of great numbers of Mormons from Europe. During the presidential election year, 1856, the “Mormon Question” was on the front burner. The Republicans declared in their platform that they were opposed to the “twin relics of barbarism,” slavery and polygamy.

President James Buchanan decided that a show of force was necessary, and a military expedition was ordered from Fort Leavenworth to Utah. They got away in mid-July. There followed what has been called the “Utah War,” characterized more by bluster than by actual fighting.

The remarkable thing is that Sarah Maria Mousley showed little knowledge or concern about these events. Her concerns were for the most part with her family and with her traveling companions. Their journey paralleled the route taken by the military units, but they seem not to have made contact.

Sarah did tell of meeting handcart travelers whom they accompanied at times during the long journey. This was the second year of that remarkable exodus of westering Mormons.

During the long trip they often stopped at the newly-established way stations set up by the Church to give aid to the overlanders. This was a new feature of western travel.

Sarah Maria and her younger sister, Ann Amanda Mousley (age 21 years), were united in plural marriages on the same day, July 18, 1858, to a dynamic Mormon leader Angus Munn Cannon, an Englishman from Liverpool. There is a family tradition that Cannon was planning only to marry Amanda, but that Brigham Young would only give permission for the wedding if Angus would marry Sarah Maria, who would thus become the first and legal wife. Sarah bore six and Amanda ten children over the years that followed. Later there were added two more plural wives. Altogether Angus was the father of 27 sons and daughters.

It was

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