Our Pioneer Heritage
by Senator Brent Hill
Mary Taylor and her husband sailed with her parents from Liverpool early in the year 1856. They were fleeing to America to escape the religious persecution they had experienced in England. Over six weeks later they arrived in Boston along with 530 other members of the LDS Church. From there they traveled in cattle cars for 1,300 miles to Iowa.
They joined the Martin Handcart Company and headed for the Rocky Mountains on July 28, 1856, but fall came early that year with frosty nights and early snows. The tired travelers with their broken-down handcarts were caught on the plains of Wyoming. Mary’s father was buried beside the trail in October somewhere around Fort Laramie. He was 44 years old. A month later, Mary’s mother and young husband died on the same day and were buried in the same grave close to Casper, Wyoming. Mary was alone.
With her feet frozen and unconscious, Mary was carried into the Salt Lake Valley on November 30 in a stranger’s wagon and taken to a stranger’s home. She didn’t have a single earthly possession, but she had her freedom.
Mary later married the stranger who had taken her in, but he also died young, leaving Mary with five small children to care for. At age 32, Mary married her third husband, my great, great grandfather, Joseph Lee Robinson. Twenty years later, the family moved to Willow Creek, Idaho—now known as Ucon. In 1888, when the Willow Creek Ward was organized, Mary’s son became the first bishop.
Up and down the Snake River Valley, communities sprang up as Mormon pioneers left Northern Utah to settle in Idaho. The first of the new settlers carved out homesteads to the north of Egin in Fremont County and at Pooles Island (near present day Menan). Thomas E. Ricks led a group from Logan to the present site of Rexburg in 1883. The first log cabin was constructed where the courthouse now stands. In the decade that followed, Mormons built roads, bridges, dams, and irrigation canals to cultivate the Upper Snake River Valley.
Southeastern Idaho is a product of strong and determined men and women searching for the freedom to own their own property, improve themselves with their own hands, and live by the principles or their own religious beliefs. Indeed this nation was founded by people with such aspirations. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 carrying a religious congregation fleeing an oppressive political environment in the East Midlands. The Puritans also migrated from England in the seventeenth century seeking religious freedom. William Penn led a group of English Quakers to Pennsylvania later that century. Even before declaring its independence from England, America was known as a refuge for those who yearned for liberty. Like Mary Taylor and her family, they were willing to risk everything—even their lives—for such freedom. They traded the relative comforts of homes and businesses, communities and schools for a harsh frontier that was free of tyranny and oppression. They worked hard and taught their children the same values. They sought no handouts, no government grants, no public assistance. They came not for riches, not for glory, but for opportunity without government interference. They sought autonomy from government rather than reliance on government. Freedom was more precious than security, as the Founders of this nation so powerfully expressed in the last sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
As we celebrate Pioneer Day this July 24, may we honor all American pioneers who have contributed to the freedoms we treasure. The heritage with which they have endowed us is one of faith, courage, self reliance, and love of freedom. It is those values they handed down to us that will solve the problems we face today.