Pioneer Heritage

When we first moved to Casper, Wyoming, September of 1976, I felt drawn to the pioneers who came through the area by Independence Rock and Martin's Cove.  In our travels to and from Utah to see grandparents in Logan, I would look for the ruts in the road carved by the wagons so many years ago.  I would think about the pioneers, their struggles, what made them keep going, and how they endured.  I discovered that through my mother's side of the family, I had an ancestor who came through on the trail with the John Hunt and Hodgins Wagon company.  Her name was Ann Malin.  Ann was the third of ten children and was born on April 10, 1832 in Barford, Warwickshire, England.  Ann's father was a hired hand to an English feudal Lord and they lived in a cottage rented of the farm. At the age of 6, Ann became a bird-tender, one to keep the birds from consuming the seed and the young sprouts that gave promise of the early crop. Later she became a nursemaid and as she grew she entered the home of the feudal lord and served in his kitchen.  During this time, she met the Mormon missionaries.  In secrecy she listened to their message, read their books, and believed.  She was baptized in November of 1850.  She dared not tell her family nor her mistress.  She worked until she had saved enough money to pay her passage to America, to Zion and the people whom she knew would understand her new found faith.  She left her family to never return and sailed from Liverpool on the Good Ship Horizon.  She was 24 years of age.  The trip was to take 7 weeks.  She journeyed to Iowa where the Martin Hancock handcart company left in September.  Winter set in early and was especially severe.  Many people suffered and severely and many died.  Ann remembered one story of a little girl whose parents were buried by the wayside.  The child had been assigned to a seat on a box in the back of a wagon owned by an elderly couple who neglected her.  Her dresses covered her knees but her little feet and most of the lower part of her legs were scantily clad and were exposed to the wintry winds.  They froze... and froze stiff and numb. The bumps in the trail were many and a jolt of the wagon jarred the child's stiff feet with such force that the frozen portion cracked, and broke, and fell tumbling to the wagon bed.  There were witnesses to attest to this story, as well as the orphan herself who told the story and when arriving in Utah, had amputations of the decayed portions.   In another history of Ann's it was told that she was a cook for the wagon company that accompanied the handcarts.  She had said that when food was scarce and rationed she prayed that she wouldn't be hungry so she could share her rations with those who needed it more.  I have such admiration for the faith of the young Ann Malin, that she would leave comfortable surroundings and family and travel to America to be able to practice her religion no matter what the cost.  Knowing what she sacrificed I draw strength from that fact that she led the way for her descendants to be born in America and have the freedoms that we enjoy today.  It has proven to me and I want my grandchildren to know that we CAN do hard things when we have faith in God and believe in ourselves.