Nathan drew in his breath, wanting to say so much more. “I think she will be very pleased, Joshua. Very pleased.”
Chapter Notes
While it would not appear in the Springfield papers until March of 1846, the advertisement read here by Peter attempting to recruit drivers for the George and Jacob Donner party is quoted word for word from the original (see
Sangamo Journal,
26 March 1846; also Walter M. Stookey,
Fatal Decision: The Tragic Story of the Donner Party
[Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1950], pp. 59–60).
Chapter 30
I love you for trying, Nathan,” Lydia said, “even if I’m not very hopeful.”
Nathan paused at the door. “I’m not very hopeful either, but . . .” He shrugged. “We do have to try.”
“What did Jane say when you asked her?”
“She was very pleased to try and help. She still has very fond feelings for Carl and Melissa and the children.”
“She’s a good woman, and they think a lot of her.”
“I know. That’s why I thought of it.” He put on his hat. “Well, let’s hope they don’t throw me out.”
Lydia’s smile was filled with love. “If they do, you’re always welcome here.”
As he stepped out on the porch, Jane Manning James was waiting by the gate. He waved and ran lightly down the walk. “Good evening, Jane.”
“Good evening, Nathan.”
As they started up the street toward Carl and Melissa’s house, Nathan said, “I really appreciate your coming. Was it all right with your husband?” Jane had married since leaving Carl and Melissa to work for President Young.
She nodded quickly. “Yes. And Brother Brigham said to tell you he’ll be praying for us.”
“Good. I think we’re going to need all the prayers we can get.”
“Have you heard the latest news?”
Carl and Melissa both shook their heads.
“Well, you’ve seen for yourselves how the state militia, thanks to Governor Ford, keep prowling around the city, looking for Brigham or any of the other Church leaders so they can arrest them and drag them off to Carthage.”
“Yes,” Carl said. “Some came poking through my drying sheds yesterday looking for who knows what.”
“Well, Brother Brigham and the Twelve can hardly move about, but that’s not the worst of it. There’s been another letter from Samuel Brannan in New York. He says that the order has been given for the federal troops to march against us.”
“Has any of that been confirmed?” Carl asked quietly. “We keep hearing the rumors, but so far we’ve not seen evidence of one federal militiaman.”
“Who knows?” Nathan replied in discouragement. “There are so many stories flying around. But can we take the chance that it’s not true?”
There was silence. Then, “So what is Brigham planning to do?” Carl asked Jane.
“They’ve called a meeting of all the Twelve tomorrow to decide. I’m not sure, but I think they’ll call on the Saints to leave in the next day or two.”
Melissa looked stricken. “A day or two?”
“Yes,” Nathan answered slowly.
Carl shook his head. “Can you be ready to leave that soon?”
“Well, we don’t have everything we need, but we’re better off than many.”
Melissa had started to weep. “That soon?” she whispered.
Carl looked at Jane. “And you’ll be going with President Young?”
“Perhaps. Thankfully, President Young has invited me and my husband to go with his company. But we may not be quite ready.”
“Including all his wives?” Melissa said, a touch of anger mingling with her tears.
Jane wasn’t fazed at all by that. “I’m not sure we’ll be ready so soon, but Brother Brigham will be taking all of his household,” she said. “Would you want him to leave them behind?”
“No,” Carl spoke up, surprising both of them. “I don’t agree with the practice, but I’ll hand it to Brigham. He’s doing what’s right by them.”
Now Nathan redirected the conversation. “Carl?”
Carl looked away, running his fingers through his hair. “I know what you’re going to say, Nathan. And I know why you feel you need to say it, but we’ve made our decision.”
“I know you have. I just want to say a thing or two, and then I’ll honor whatever you decide. Tell me about Israel Barlow, Carl.”
He blinked, caught completely by surprise by that question. “Israel Barlow?”
“Yes. Remember the buggy whip?”
He still seemed a little nonplussed, but he finally nodded. “I remember it well.”
“The buggy whip?” Jane asked.
Carl told her the story quickly. He had been helping carry rock from the quarry up to the temple. He had joked with Israel Barlow about never using a buggy whip with his teams, and Barlow retorted that he controlled his high-spirited team by word alone. Only a fool needed a whip. Then one day, as they were preparing to leave the quarry, Joseph Smith casually recommended that Israel stop in town and buy a buggy whip. To Carl’s utter amazement, Israel had done so, then bristled defensively when Carl tried to tease him about it. He would do what the Prophet asked, he said shortly, and refused to discuss it further.
Carl’s voice dwindled off. He was clearly lost in the memory of that day.
“So what happened?” Jane asked.
Melissa answered for him. “On their very next trip, Israel’s team got spooked. They were above the quarry and they started backing up right toward the edge of the cliff.” Now she stopped too, watching Nathan carefully.
“If he hadn’t had the new buggy whip,” Nathan concluded, “Israel Barlow and his team would have been killed.”
The silence in the room was total for several seconds. Then Carl straightened. “So what’s your point?”
“I’ll make it in a minute.” Nathan glanced at Jane. “I asked Jane to come tonight for two reasons. First, of course, she wanted to say good-bye to the family.”
Jane broke in. “It was so good to see the children again. They’re so grown up. Young Carl? I can’t believe it. He’s already a man, and not yet fourteen.”
“They were so glad when I told them you were coming,” Melissa said warmly. “We really loved having you with our family, Jane.”
“I know. And you were very good to me.”
“The second reason,” Nathan went on, “is that Jane has a story of her own to tell. When I asked her, she said that she had never shared it with you. At least not in detail. I wanted you to hear it.”
Now Melissa was curious. “What is it, Jane?”
Jane looked a little embarrassed, so Nathan smiled his encouragement. “Go on, Jane. I know you’re reluctant to talk about yourself, but I think they need to hear this.”
“All right.” She turned so she was facing Carl and Melissa more squarely, took a breath, and began. “As you know, my family and I came here from New England in the fall of eighteen forty-three.” She stopped, letting her mind go back.
Melissa watched her closely. Jane Elizabeth Manning James had eyes so dark they looked as if they were large pools of liquid lampblack. Though her skin was quite brown, her eyes made the rest of her face seem pale in comparison. Melissa was fascinated as tiny points of light danced across the blackness of the pupils. No wonder Joseph and Emma had taken this woman into their house to help Emma. No wonder Melissa’s own children had come to love her so. Her very presence cheered the soul.
“I was born at Wilton, Fairfield County, Connecticut,” Jane began. “My family were free blacks. Not
freed
blacks,” she emphasized proudly, “freeborn. My grandfather and grandmother had been given their freedom and came north before my mother was born. None of my family are slaves, freed or otherwise. We are freeborn.”
“I knew that,” Carl answered.
“We lived in the home of a prosperous white family. We worked there as household servants—not slaves, but servants. It was a good life for us and we were very happy. Then one day, two men from the West came to our town. They were the Mormon missionaries. We had joined the Presbyterian faith about a year and a half before, but I was not really satisfied with it. When I heard them speak at a meeting in town, I was convinced that they were presenting the true gospel, and not long after, I joined the Church. The rest of my family also joined.”
Carl seemed a little impatient. “Yes, I knew that too.”
Jane just smiled. “In the fall of ’43, a group of members came west to Nauvoo to live with the Saints. We decided we would come with them.”
Melissa’s brow furrowed. “I remember when the group arrived, but I don’t remember a colored family being with the group.”
“That’s because we weren’t, not when they arrived in Nauvoo.” She was no longer looking at Melissa, but was staring straight ahead. Her head was high and the muscles in her neck were like cords, revealing the tension in her. “We traveled together up the Hudson River to Albany and then across New York on the Erie Canal. It was a glorious trip. Never having been out of Fairfield County, we were all very excited.” There was a soft, bitter sigh. “But when we reached Buffalo and the rest of the group took tickets on a steamer to Chicago, we were denied passage.”
“Because you were Negroes?” Carl said in surprise.
There was a quick, curt nod and the pain was back on her face.
“So what did you do?” Melissa asked.
“Well, the rest of the group went on, of course. We talked about going back to Connecticut, but decided that we wanted to be with the Saints.”
Carl’s mouth opened in astonishment. “You didn’t walk!”
“We did,” came the answer. “We didn’t have sufficient money to bring that many of us that far by stagecoach or other means of conveyance.”
“But that is . . .” He stopped, aghast.
“About eight hundred miles,” Jane finished for him softly.
“They walked every step of it,” Nathan affirmed.
“How many of you were there?” Melissa said, as shocked as Carl now.
“There were nine of us, counting me. That included two children, one a babe in arms.” Now Jane’s voice took on a ring of caustic irony. “You have to remember, Melissa. We weren’t slaves. We hadn’t spent our lives barefoot out in the fields weeding cotton or cutting tobacco. We lived in the home of a wealthy family who treated us kindly and with respect. Our feet were not the feet of slaves or farmworkers.”
Jane was far away now, back on those roads again. “We had blisters and sore feet, but at least we had shoes. Then after a time our shoes wore out. We needed every dime we had for food, so we couldn’t buy new ones, and we started going barefoot. Our feet soon cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet in the blood on the ground.”
“How did you ever do it?” Melissa whispered. She was surprised to see that Jane’s eyes were glistening now, and Melissa felt a wave of shame. Here she was asking questions, making her dredge up the painful memories all over again. But she had misread the tears.
Jane turned to her fully now, and to Melissa’s surprise her face was infused with joy. “We stopped one day, right there by the roadside, out in the middle of nowhere. And we united ourselves in prayer to the Lord.” She stopped, her voice low and husky.
“Go on, Jane,” Nathan urged. “Tell them what happened.”
Her head came back around and she smiled radiantly at both Carl and Melissa. “We asked God, our Eternal Father, to heal our feet, and our prayers were answered.” There was a long pause. “Our feet were healed forthwith.”
The word caught Carl totally by surprise. He jerked forward. “You mean right there? Right then?”
There was a slow nod. “Not in one instant. But forthwith.” As Carl sat back, incredulous, Jane spoke to him. “Have you ever known me to lie, Mr. Rogers?”
“No. I—” He shook his head. “No, you’ve always had the highest integrity, Jane.”
“Well, I’m telling you. That day, somewhere in the middle of Ohio, or Indiana—we didn’t know exactly where we were—we had a miracle. We got an answer to our prayers that told us in a wonderful way that we were not making this journey in vain.”
“And you had no more trouble with your feet?” Melissa asked in wonder.
“None.” Jane threw back her shoulders, lifting her face to look directly at Carl and Melissa. “We went on our way rejoicing, singing hymns, and thanking God for his infinite goodness and mercy.”
“What a wonderful story,” Melissa exclaimed, reaching out to take Jane’s free hand. “Why didn’t you ever tell us that before?”
“That’s not the end of it,” Nathan said softly. He looked at Jane. “Tell them the rest.”
Jane nodded immediately, eager now to comply. “When we finally reached Nauvoo, we inquired as to where we might go to meet the Prophet Joseph Smith. We were directed to the Mansion House. Emma answered the door and invited us inside, then sent someone upstairs for the Prophet.” There was a slow shake of her head, and the look of wonder in her eyes was arresting. Melissa could not take her gaze from her.
“We were standing there, in the parlor, when two men came downstairs and into the room. One was Doctor Bernhisel, the other was the Prophet Joseph. But I did not need an introduction. I knew it was Joseph Smith immediately.”
“You did?” Carl asked in surprise.
“I did,” Jane said quietly. “You see, back in Connecticut, about three weeks after I was baptized . . .” There was a long moment before she spoke again. “I was shown the Prophet Joseph Smith in a dream. When he walked into the room that night, I didn’t need any introduction.” There came that soft, radiant smile again. “I already knew him.”
She sat back, calm and serene, pleased that both Carl’s and Melissa’s faces showed that her account had impacted them deeply.
After several moments of silence, Nathan spoke. “Carl, I know that if you were convinced that what we are doing now was God’s will, you would come. Well, think about it. There’s the simple thing of a buggy whip. There’s the miracle of feet healed in a moment. Don’t you think that says something about God’s power being in this work? Joseph was a prophet, Carl. How else do you explain the Israel Barlow story? A lucky guess? I don’t think so. And do you think God would show Jane the Prophet Joseph in a dream if there were nothing to the work?”
Carl stirred, but said nothing. He was watching Nathan, his face without expression. Melissa’s head was down, however, and she was scrutinizing her hands with meticulous care.