History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

THE B. Y. EXPRESS. 503
into a good money-making enterprise, and would place
Utah in frequent intercourse with the world long before
an overland railroad could be completed. Moreover,
it was proposed that Mormon settlements should
be formed along the line of route, and parties were at
once organized and equipped for this purpose. 42
On the 2d of June, 1857, Abraham O. Smoot, then
mayor of Salt Lake City,* 3 set out in charge of the
eastward-bound mail and of the B. Y. Express. Between
Fort Laramie and Fort Kearny he encountered
the advanced guard of the army of Utah, and,
as he relates, was informed by the commanding officer
that the troops " were reconnoitring the country in
search of hostile Indians." When about a hundred
miles west of Independence freight teams were met,
destined, as the drivers said, for some western £ost,
but for what particular post they did not know. On
reaching Kansas City, Smoot repaired with one Nicholas
Groesbeck, who took charge of the mails at that
point, to the office of William H. Russell, and there
42 Stenhouse's Rocky Mountain Saints, 345-6; Hist. B. Young, MS. ; Little's
Mail Service, MS.
13 As successor to Grant, who died Dec. 1, 1856. Smith's Rise, Progress,
and Travels, 27; Deseret News, Dec. 3, 1856. Jedediah Morgan Grant was a
native of Windsor, Broome co., N. Y., his parents, Joshua and Athalia Grant,
n6e Howard, removing to Naples, Ontario co., in 1S17, about a year after his
birth. Here the lad remained until he was 14 years of age, and receiving little
education, was trained to his father's calling, that of a farmer. The family
then removed to Erie co., Penn., and two years later Jedediah heard for the
first time the doctrines of Mormonism. Being convinced of their truth, he
was baptized in 1832, by Elder John F. Boyington, who afterward became an
apootle, and, when 18 years of age, accompanied Zion's camp in its migration
to Missouri. In the winter of 1835 he was ordained, at Kirtland, a member
of the first quorum of seventy, and the following spring started forth on his
first mission, his labors as a missionary extending over eleven years, principally
in the southern and middle states. At the expulsion from Nauvoo, he
was was one of those who crossed the Mississippi in Feb. 1846, and though
not a pioneer, was among the earliest settlers in the valley of Great Salt Lake,
being one of the captains of hundreds appointed during the migration of 1847.
After holding office under the provisional government of the state of Deseret,
he was elected speaker of the house of representatives; he was also appointed
brigadier-general and afterward major-general in the Nauvoo legion, and in
April 1854, after the decease of Willard Richards, was made second councillor
to Brigham. In the funeral sermon of this much esteemed citizen, .delivered
at the tabernacle Dec. 4, 1856, Brigham remarked: ' He has been,ih;the'
church upwards of twenty-four years, and was a man that woidd live,, come
paratively speaking, a hundred years in that time.' Id., Dec. 10, 1856;. Lint
forties Route from Liverpool, 115-16; S. L. City Contributor, iv. 241-5;. 2S1-3*