(Written Sunday the 25th)
Yesterday was Pioneer Day. It's kinda a big deal here in Utah, so much so that I heard a lot more fireworks going off than on the fourth of July. That might have been because the 24th landed on a Saturday, so that helps.
I grew up on California where the 24th of July is just a regular ol' day. The only time I'd know it came and went was in Sunday school, where the teacher would ask my classmates to share stories from their Mormon pioneer history. It would come to me and I'd have no stories to share. My six grandparents were converts, so no direct line to pioneer history.
It's only in the last few years that I've realized that I have distant family members, branches on the tree, that were Latter-Day Saint pioneers. 2nd cousin here, 3rd, 4th, 5th cousin there, but for some reason I always felt distant. Some of the lines have research I question, and I can't emotionally connect to an ancestor if I continue to question if they may actually be my ancestor. Made that mistake in the past, only to come upon documents that change the family line.
Today I had a special experience in church. Instead of listening to the sacrament talks (I know, I know), I was playing on my phone. This morning Family Search sent an email telling me how they found young pioneers in my family tree. So, out of curiosity, I opened the page, signed in, and started scrutinizing the family lines that led to the connections. Some I may actually be related to, others I have doubts, then a name popped up that I trust a little more: Rhoades.
My paternal great-grandfather was a Rhoades. I remember visiting him as a kid when he lived in Santa Paula. He managed the Wagon Wheel in Oxnard, which has now been torn down, but I remember seeing the sign off the 101.
Family Search connected me to 13 year old Caleb Baldwin Rhoades and 10 year old Caleb Baldwin Rhoades, who are my 2nd cousin's 7 times removed, and the children of Thomas Rhoades who led the Thomas Rhoades Company.
What's so amazing is that this was an Eastbound company. All the pioneer stories are that of those coming over from the UK, or simply the eastern United States, and then traveling west. The Thomas Rhoades Company left Sacramento CA July 14th 1849 and entered the Salt Lake Valley late September 1849.
"Thomas Rhoades led a company of almost 50 people from Sacramento, California, to Salt Lake Valley. Rhoades had taken his family to California in 1846, preceding the Donner Party. The company returned to Utah with substantial amounts of gold discovered and mined in California."
In 1884 William Glover recounted the trek:
"In the spring of 49 myself and a few others gathered up our effects and started for Salt Lake. While at Sacramento buying our outfits we met Amisa [Amasa] Lyman. He wanted me to go to San Barnadino [Bernardino] to settle and spend my money I told him no. I had started for Salt Lake and I was going. He told me then to go and I would get the nots nocked off me.
"When we started across the mountains the first night after we camped a company of men with pack animals 13 in number armed to the teeth with some picks and spades passed us professing to be prospectors hunting for gold. They would pass and repass every day. We was meeting companies of emigrants every day and sometimes camp with us to hear about the gold diggings. The emigrants begun to warn us to be on our guard and watch those men with pack animals and said they intended mischief. One company told us they said we had the cream of the mines and wanted them to join with them to destroy us. we took every precaution we could not to give them any advantage of us. They turned back when they got to Carson Valley for the emigrants was coming along so fast we would meet two or three companies a day. Although they had murder in their hearts the Lord put a hook in their jaws that they had no power to molest us. We went on our way rejoicing and praising God that he had spared our lives and the little means we had for a better purpose.
"When we got between the Humbolt and Goose Creek Levi Riter and Harvy Green got in a hurry to get home. They started out alone. The first night they camped the Indians stole their horses and fired at them. They ran and saved their lives. They got separated in the darkness.
"The next day Harvy Green come and met us told us what had happened. We turned back 10 miles to camp and laid over the next day. Levi Riter went the other way and met a company of 18 young men. He traveled back with them to meet us. When they got where they had camped they saw some of their animals and in trying to get them they had quite a fight with the Indians. Two men was killed and four others wounded one died afterwards from his wounds. The balance turned back with us to Salt Lake and wintered. The Indians burnt their light wagons and destroyed most of their provisions. We buried the two dead men when we come where they was and gathered up what provisions was left but saw no Indians.
"We arrived in Salt Lake City the last of September praising God that he had preserved us through all the varied and trying scenes of a long and tedious and perilous journey, where thank God I have never had cause to repent my choice of identifying my self with the Later day Saints. William Glover."
What an interesting story. It's cool to be distantly related to probably one of the few treks to go East to Salt Lake.
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