Joseph Harker and Susannah Sneath

Harker/Johanson-Haigh/Cornwall

 Last week we read the amazing story of Joseph and Susannah Harker's conversion story in England.  Here is the story of their immigration to Zion.

The spirit of gathering, the inexplicable thrill of the New Zion on the American frontier, seized the hearts of the Harkers, and on the 19th of February 1846, they took passage in a sailing vessel, the Windsor Castle. The voyage to the New World was ill- omened from the beginning. On February 17, 1846, the Windsor Castle cast anchor in the Mersey River for three days, awaiting favorable winds. (Exactly 13 days earlier, the first Saints had begun to leave Nauvoo for the West.) When the wind came it was unfavorable, and the ship had to tack in order to move. Progress, for that reason, was slow, and it was 14 days before the ship could clear the Irish Sea. It was nine weeks before it arrived at New Orleans. As soon as possible, the Harkers took passage for Nauvoo on a Mississippi River boat. On this boat, their first real tragedy occurred. Their boy, John, while playing with other children on the boat, caught at a string that was falling overboard. In his excitement he lost his balance and fell. The horrified parents saw the little body, brightly dressed in a kilt, sucked under the tremendous churning paddle of the riverboat. We have only a confused remembrance of the reaction of the parents. Susannah Harker often related that several sailors seized and held Joseph to prevent his plunging in after his beloved John. Joseph, however, apparently denied this and said, rather, that he was forced to restrain Susannah from the certain death of attempting to rescue her son. In any case, the loss was a bitter one.

And the news from Nauvoo was disheartening. Mobs, riotings, pitched battles and threats of increasing violence were driving the Saints away by thousands. Nauvoo, the beautiful, had been the destination and the refuge of the Harkers, but it no longer was. Realizing sadly that the Saints were without a home and that they would have to travel to their new one, wherever it might be. Joseph bought a light wagon in St. Louis and transported it on the steamboat to Montrose landing on the 26th of April 1846. Montrose is on the West Bank of the Mississippi; Nauvoo is on the east. Naturally, Joseph and his wife visited Nauvoo, saw the well-planned streets and the magnificent temple, heard the deep-toned bell in the temple tower and as John R. Young had done, “silently gazed on the dear old homes.” Joseph and Susannah visited the Nauvoo Temple and remained in Nauvoo and Montrose about two weeks, fitting out their wagon and preparing to travel west. Joseph bought a pair of oxen for forty dollars, and soon he and his wife were on the road traveling toward Council Bluffs. We know little of the journey from Montrose to Council Bluffs. Unquestionably the new converts would have traveled in a company. Joseph says that the roads were soggy with mud and the travel was painfully slow.

Sometime in July 1846, as the little company with which the Harkers traveled arrived in Council Bluffs, three men road in to the camp. Joseph’s heart leaped as he recognized Brigham Young. The two men with President Young were Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards. The three leaders were “on the way back to raise the Battalion to go to fight against Mexico.” President Young talked to Joseph and his wife, and asked where they were from. The Harkers told him and then perhaps related the tragic loss of their boy. President Young seated Joseph in front of him, placed his hands on Joseph’s head and gave him a blessing. When he had finished, both Joseph and Susannah knew that regardless of what lay hidden in the slowly unwinding days, their strength would be equal to it, and their hearts were reconciled. They rejoiced to be at last with the main body of the Saints.

Joseph arrived at Council Bluffs, then, just as Captain Allen; the representative of Colonel Kearny was enlisting the Mormon Battalion. Joseph had two small children, but when he heard President Young explaining the need for the Battalion and the good the Battalion could do the Saints, he talked with his wife about enlisting. It was not an easy decision to make, but finally they agreed that it was Joseph’s duty to go. But when Joseph went down to the Battalion headquarters, he was told that the enlistment quota was full. Joseph then began to prepare for the winter ahead. The only thing that one may say that mitigates the severity of the Harker’s suffering in that terrible winter is that perhaps Joseph and Susannah suffered less than most who were there. The Saints built dugouts, log cabins, made dwellings of canvas and sod, contrived every conceivable sort of shelter. Susannah became terrible ill with chills and fever that summer and, to add to her burden, her baby, Joseph, became weaker and finally died, September 25, 1846, age 1 year 10 days. But the Harkers had lived with tribulation for some time now, and there was no shock of strangeness at the latest disaster, only the aching emptiness of irretrievable loss.

Joseph was fortunate in many ways that winter. He secured work (at $10.00 a month) with half-breed Indian, Bill Bond, who lived in Council Bluffs. Bond had a house and Joseph and Susannah lived there until about the 1st of December. Then they moved into their own house, which Joseph had built. In November, a cow that Joseph had purchased in the summer had a calf, and Susannah was able to make 12 lbs. of butter a week from the milk. She sold the butter for 25 cents a lb. and often took corn and pork for pay. So, the Harkers ate quite well and survived the winter that took over 300 lives in the little colony. Many of those who died were children, as a reading of the inscriptions in Winter Quarters’ cemetery will indicate. It may have been some little comfort to the Harkers that their two boys were spared the suffering and exposure to coldness and disease that they would have had to face in the swampy river bottom in the winter of 1846-47.

Spring brought a bustle of activity as the Saints prepared to go west. . . . "We organized into five companies with captains of hundreds, fifties, and tens, with Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor of the twelve apostles. We started from the Elkhorn River June 15, 1847. I traveled in Bishop Hunter’s company of one hundred, Joseph Horn’s fifty and Bishop Hogland’s ten." The Harkers, with their wagon and fine pair of oxen, traveled well.... Their enemies were farther behind them every day, and ahead loomed the giant Rockies, beyond which, in the mysterious wilderness, was to be the new city of God. Joseph testifies of his light heart: "We had many trials on the way, but I never had a happier summer in my life. My wife would drive the team, and I would take my gun and go hunt game until I was tired. When we got in the Black Hills, we were getting short of meat. Apostle John Taylor took James Horn and me in his carriage to go kill buffalo. After we got a few miles ahead of the company we went up in the hills and killed five buffalo in about half an hour, all within a quarter of a mile of each other. I returned to Brother Taylor’s carriage and we killed four other animals quite near the company. We cut the meat in chunks, and it was very good to eat."

Shortly after the company crossed from Wyoming over into Utah, the Harker wagon stopped, and the oxen grazed while Susannah gave birth to a son, William, on September 26, 1847. The next morning the mother, made as comfortable as possible, summoned up all the will power at her command to endure the backbreaking jolting of the wagon as with locked wheels it skidded, bumped and crashed its way down the precipitous descent of Echo Canyon. Five days later, October 1, 1847, the company entered Salt Lake Valley. They had traveled three and one-half months since leaving the Elkhorn River. Three days after the arrival in the Valley, Joseph, because of his knowledge of livestock, was chosen with Cane Brower to herd the company’s cattle. The ninth day after Susannah’s confinement, she got out of the wagon, washed her clothes, and she and her family went with Joseph to take the cattle to Bountiful.

Three cheers for Joseph and SUSANNAH!!!!
What makes this story even more interesting is that Joseph took a second wife in 1852 - a widow, Eliza Ann Smith Spencer.  Eliza is the mother of William James Spencer (by her first husband), Grandmother of Serena Spencer Player, Great Grandmother of Inez Player Smith, Great Great Grandmother of Beverly Smith Hodgkinson and Great Great Great Grandmother of Sue Hodgkinson Cornwall. More to come on this front also.