Pioneer: 2010 Vol.57 No.2

11 Leonard Reed, The Songstress of Dernford Dale, The Life of
Poetess, Diarist and Latter’day Saint Pioneer Hannah Tapfield
King (Unpublished manuscript, 2009), 94.
12 Joseph J. Di Certo, The Saga of the Pony Express (Missoula,
Montana: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2002), 125.
13 Moeller, 78.
14 Burton spent a good deal of time in the Far and Middle East
studying different religions. He traveled to the United States to
observe the Mormons in Utah and described his adventures, as he
followed the Pony Express route, in his book, City of the Saints.
15 Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints, Among the
Mormons and Across the Rocky Mountains to California (Santa
Barbara, CA: The Narrative Press), 136.
16 Fred Reinfeld, Pony Express (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1973), 40.
17 Di Certo, 127.
18 Moeller, 4.
19 Reinfeld, 39.
20 Moeller, 84.
21 Gorwill, Pioneer Lives of Children, 35.
22 H. Y. Faust from Thomas Owens King, Jr., 1.
23, 24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., 1–2.
26, 27, 28 Ibid., 2.
29 The mail was carried in a mochila, a piece of leather with 4
padlocked leather boxes sewn onto it. It was shaped to fit over
the Spanish saddle used by vaqueros, and chosen for the Pony
Express, because it was lighter.
30 Moeller, 84.
31 Ibid., 84.
32 H. Y. Faust from Thomas Owens King, Jr., 2.
33 Moeller, 84.
34 H. Y. Faust from Thomas Owens King, Jr., 2.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., 2–3.
37 Ibid., 3.
38 Private letter, Bertha Eames Loosi.
39 H. Y. Faust from Thomas Owens King, Jr., 3.
40 Ibid., 3.
41 Ibid., 1.
“That journey I shall never forget:”
Mormon Emigrants & the Lynchburg, Virginia Railroad Accident of 1889
Professor Fred E. Woods, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
The tide of Mormon European immigration to
America began in 1840 with the departure of
forty-one Mormon proselytes from the docks
of Liverpool aboard the Britannia. 1 The stream of immigrants
did not begin to subside until the end of
the nineteenth century. “Nearly 90,000 Latter-day Saint
immigrants crossed the oceans to gather to America between
1840–1890. They had a most unusual success rate
of almost 550 voyages, losing no vessels crossing the
Atlantic and only one vessel crossing the Pacific.” 2 These
Mormon converts and the missionaries who beckoned
them were responding to a call to gather with the righteous
in Zion.
The Atlantic voyage was followed in most instances
by rail travel in the late nineteenth century. Railroad accounts
of Latter-day Saint emigrants provide evidence of
a railway safety record comparable to the one they had on
the Atlantic. Commencing with the completion of the
transcontinental railroad in 1869, most Mormon
emigrants took this main national artery connecting the
east coast with the west and traveled safely into the Salt
Lake Valley.
However, during the years 1887–1890, the route to
Salt Lake City was temporarily altered due to excessive rail
costs on the east coast. Therefore, over forty Mormon companies,
comprising more than five thousand Mormon immigrants
were re-routed by Mormon emigration agent
James H. Hart. After disembarking at New York, the
Latter-day Saint travelers voyaged down on the Old
Dominion Steam line and then boarded cars at Norfolk,
Virginia on the Norfolk and Western Railroad before
heading west towards Utah. 3 One rail journey that was an
exception to the safety record and quite memorable was
reported by one of Norfolk’s local newspapers. The
Public Ledger carried the following article on September
16, 1889, under the title “IMMIGRANTS IN A RAIL-
WAY DISASTER”: “Saturday, [September 15], afternoon
the Old Dominion steamship Roanoke landed at
2010 ◆ Vol. 57, No.2 ◆ PIONEER 31