Transcript

Handcart Company Camp

on Muddy 12 Miles from Bridger

Nov 24th 1856

Bro Horace [K. Whitney]

As some of our Company start for the City tomorrow morning I improve the opportunity by writing you a few scrawls. I am sitting not on the stile Mary [type of desk?] but on a sack of oats with the paper on my knee, by the side of a blazing camp fire, surrounded by some eight hundred persons. One old lady lay dead within twenty feet of me, babies crying, some singing, some praying, &c, &c, but among all this I feel to rejoice for the hand of the lord has been continually with us. Almost every day angry storms arise very threatening and judging from their appearance one would think that we should be unable to withstand the tempest, but the prayers of the holy men of God are heard. The clouds divide to the right and left, letting the saints pass through in safety. The suffering of the camp from frozen feet and various other causes I will not attempt to describe. Suffice to say bad, bad, bad. The boys, including your humble servant, are all enjoying the blessing of health, lonely in their feelings, and doing all in their power to make the saints comfortable. We have some seventy waggons, divided into six divisions one captain appointed over each, but all make one camp at night. We intend reaching the valley next Saturday [29 November], but this calculation is founded upon the faith of our heavenly Father being continually with us, staying the storms as in the past, for without the help of high heaven, we should have been snow bound in the mountains long ago. . . Bro Burton is writing to Bro Brigham and will probably present more fully the situation of the camp. At all events this is all you will get from me this time. Give my love to everybody.

May our heavenly Father bless Bros Brigham, Heber, Jedediah all the saints throughout the world & all honest hearted people.

Your devoted friend J M Simmons

[In margin:] John Whitney says he is all right except frosted toes.