Gardner, Archibald
1814 - 1902 (87 years)The Life of Archibald Gardner
The Life of Archibald Gardner
(Excerpts about the Winter Quarters era from the book written by Delila Gardner Hughes)
Quote from Archibald Gardner, page 32, “We went back to Nauvoo. On the way we encountered a small company of Strangites. They extended their sympathy. We did not argue with them but when they became impertinent, told them that if they did not leave we would have to cast out devils. Arriving in Nauvoo in good health and spirits, we found that the Twelve had started for the Rocky Mountains. There were plenty of homes open to us. We could have brick, frame, log, or stone houses without cost. The Saints had nearly all left who were able to go, and their homes were standing empty and unsold. They had been driven out and what could not readily be disposed of was left behind. Some had furniture in-chairs, bedsteads, etc. Here for three weeks we fitted up outfits and secured supplies which included flour, parched corn, corn meal and seeds for planting, then started west in companies of ten wagons to the company. We crossed the Mississippi, passed Montrose and camped on the Bluffs a few miles north. Here those who had horse teams sold or traded them for oxen and we proceeded westward. Twelve miles through bad roads, and we camped. The downpour that night brought water around the wagons up to our boot-tops and during the storm a son William was born to Jane, Brother Robert’s wife, May 22, 1846. This was in Lee County, Iowa. Next morning the mother and baby were made as comfortable as possible and the Canadian Company moved on. We were endeavoring to catch up with the companies from Nauvoo who were ahead. At Bonaparte we bought more flour. We passed Pisgah and Garden Grove where farms had been planted and left for those who were not prepared to go on. At Liberty Pole on Miskete Creek, where President Young and the main body of the Saints were camped a few miles from Sarpes Point, we rested. While there the call was made by the United States Government for a company of five hundred men which was raised in a day or two but which left women and children on the prairie, some of whom were in poverty without shelter and sick. Due to this call, our pilgrimage was delayed until the following year. We crossed the river and camped at Cutler’s Park for about two months. Here we cut the grass and put up hay preparatory to wintering our cattle. Those we had no immediate use for, we drove in herds up the Missouri Bottoms into the rushes. We then selected a place two miles from Cutler’s Park on the Missouri Bottoms and moved to it, naming it Winter Quarters, now Florence.”
From Jane Gardner Bradford’s diary: (a niece of Archibald Gardner) page 33
“We left our home in Canada to gather with the Saints, on the last day of March, 1846. The second day of our journey our horses ran away. They smashed things up, nearly frightened us to death, but fortunately no one was injured. It took a month to get to Nauvoo. We crossed the Mississippi the first day of May and camped on the bluffs on the west bank. There Brother John had the measles. Remained here two or three weeks then traveled till we came to a town called Farmington on the Des Moines River. Crossing, we camped near a town called Bonaparte. Here I had the measles. During the week we tarried, we finished buying our outfits. The journey across the state of Iowa was slow and trying and made under great difficulties. Remaining at Council Bluffs until after the Mormon Battalion were on their way to Mexico, we with many others crossed the Missouri River. When father maneuvered his team and wagon onto the ferryboat, one yoke of wild steers jumped into the river with the yoke still holding them together and started back. One steer swam faster than the other and they circled round and round, all the time getting nearer the middle of the stream. Then father, without taking off his boots or clothing, plunged into the river after the animals, and grasp the tail of the fastest swimmer, held him back. This headed them towards shore and so they were saved.
“We camped on quite a high hill for several weeks. At this time I learned to knit from some of the girls in camp. It was here dear sister Janet, aged fourteen months, died and was buried along with so many others.
“Shortly after this we moved down on a kind of flat and spent the winter. So the place got the name Winter Quarters. That season was long and bleak and bitter. We suffered from cold and hunger and most of us from sickness. Some were very [ill], father worst of all. He came nearly dying. Mother found a doctor whose ministrations helped him and he recovered.”
Chapter 11, page 35 At Winter Quarters
“My brother Robert, James Craig and I took a contract to get out mill timber which we did with the approbation of the Church Presidency. Robert did the hewing of same with a beveled axe.”
(From Daily Journal of the Church)
“Tuesday, September 29, 1846; President Young, Elder Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards were busy locating a bridge across Turkey Creek, at the head of Main street and at 2:00 p.m. let contracts for building a mill.
“Archibald Gardner contracted to furnish the heavy timber at $4.75 per hundred, hewn. William Felshaw bid off the froming at $1.70 ½ per square of ten feet and agreed to counter hew.”
“The Church Presidency voted to remember us and if there were any good jobs to let after we reached the valleys, we were to be given preference. President Young paid us in goods at St. Louis prices, and the balance in cash to the last cent. He let us change a hundred dollar bill and take our pay out of it, leaving it in our hands three weeks. When I went with it, Rockwood said we might keep it until called for.”
“Winter had come when we commenced to build our houses. We had hawled wood for the wives of those who had gone with the Mormon Battalion and helped them in various ways and so did not get into our own homes until about New Year’s. It was a winter of much sickness. I was the only one in our family who was not confined to bed. I never enjoyed better health at any time in any country. On October 10, 1846, Janet, my baby girl, aged eighteen months, died. It was two years to the day since her brother Archibald has passed away of the same complaint—bowel trouble—and at the same age, excepting that she was one day older. About the same time Janet, daughter of my brother William, died and was buried there. (Note: There is no record of Archibald’s daughter’s burial at Cutler’s Park or Winter Quarters. There is a record of William’s daughter only the spelling is Genet. Her burial place is listed under Cutler’s Park and her birth date is in error.) My wife was sick for about three weeks as was our son Robert. Father and Roger Luckham were very ill with scurvy which was the general complaint thought to be due to the lack of vegetables in the diet and the fact that we lived on dry foods. Brother William, his son John, and daughter Jane were sick in my house most of the winter.
“There was so much sickness when little Janet died, that the care of the living left no time for mourning the dead and so our baby was laid away hurriedly and unceremoniously. But when general health returned we grieved for the loss of our little one and have never ceased to mourn for her.”
“During our stay at Winter Quarters, my second son Neil, a boy of five and a half years, was run over by one of Bishop Hunter’s wagons loaded with eight large green cottonwood logs. They were to be split with the maul, or mallet and wedge, into house logs. The wagon was drawn by four [yoke] of stout cattle. They had halted to rest and my two little boys were swinging on the chain under the wagon. When the driver gave signal to start, Robert crawled out but Neil was caught between the wheels. The hind one ran over his breast leaving him senseless on the ground. We called upon Phineas Richards and he administered to him. Then for three days and nights we kept him perspiring and his blood circulating by pouring water on hot bricks wrapped in cloths which were tucked around him so that he did not turn black. Through our efforts and by the prayer of faith he was miraculously healed.”
“In the spring of 1847 I sold the good log house which we had lived in three months and had cost me about one hundred dollars, for a gun valued at ten dollars.”
From the history of Margaret Livingston, first wife of Archibald Gardner.. page 150
“When the Gospel was brought to Canada by John Borrowman, the Gardner brothers, together with their wives, mother, and sister accepted it. Margaret and Janet were the only ones of the Livingston family ever to join the Church.
They left Canada, twenty-four of them, in 1846. They spent the winter in Winter Quarters where much sickness over took them. Margaret was ill about three weeks, her son Robert about the same length of time, and then the baby Janet was stricken. She died at the same age, and of the same complaint as her little brother Archie had succumbed to two years previously. She lies buried at Winter Quarters.”
From the history of Abigail Sprague Bradford, second wife of Archibald Gardner.. page 155
“Persecution ran riot in Nauvoo. When the remains of the murdered prophet and his brother lay in state, she and her daughter Mary Ann were among the thousands to view them.
Abigail was very ill when her baby Tryphena was born September 30, 1845. Her husband went for his brother’s wife to help at the sick bed. He took his brother’s baby with him on the horse and was so long in returning that the family became concerned and went in search of him. He was found feeling his way to the house. He had taken suddenly and violently ill. He died during the night. A little eight year old son, Grandville, died about the same time. Two vacant chairs met her gaze when Abigail was about to sit up.
Persecutions continued. The Saints were being driven from their homes. Abigail sold her two farms, two thousand bushels of corn, livestock and personal property for two outfits, including a plow, some other implement seeds for planting, and provisions.
Her husband’s brothers, hearing of her intentions to go west, offered to care for her and her children and educate them, if they would abandon the idea of the perilous journey. Bur her mind was settled; her heart was with the Saints.
Abigail and children, father, and mother spent the winter of ’46 at Winter Quarters. Here her mother died and was buried. Her brother Ithamer, his wife, and five children stopped at Mt. Pisgah with a company of Saints for the winter. Sickness and death overtook them, and the wife and all the children lie buried there.
In June, 1847, Abigail, with her father, her brother Ithamer, and her children, Mary Ann, Rawsel, Sylvester, Pleasant, and Tryphena, started for the west. They traveled in Bishop Hunter’s company of one hundred wagons, Captain Horne’s fifty, and Captain Archibald Gardner’s company of ten. During the journey one ox died, so they hooked up “Old Lil,” the milk cow, to take his place. Each morning the milk was poured into the churn and each night a pat of butter was taken out. The jolting of the wagon did the trick. The “Old Sow”, a cannon used in the War of 1812, was brought across the plains with them to be used against the Indians if necessary. Sylvester, Al Babcock, and Wiley Thomas took turns riding it. The cannon is now in the museum on Temple Square. Towards the end of the long trek one of her wagons became so good-for-nothing that she prayed night and morning that it would hold together until they reached their destination. It broke down completely in Emigration Canyon, almost within sight of their goal.”
Copied and left on record at Winter Quarters by Carol Francis Lovele… [unreadable] great granddaughter of Archibald Gardner and a missionary from July [unreadable] to July 1986. Two great great grandsons, Bill and Lee Francis worked on the Creighton University when the cabin was built the spring of 1986.
(Transcribed from PH-1, Pioneer History Room, Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters. Note: Text is transcribed as written with spelling corrected in brackets.)
(Excerpts about the Winter Quarters era from the book written by Delila Gardner Hughes)
Quote from Archibald Gardner, page 32, “We went back to Nauvoo. On the way we encountered a small company of Strangites. They extended their sympathy. We did not argue with them but when they became impertinent, told them that if they did not leave we would have to cast out devils. Arriving in Nauvoo in good health and spirits, we found that the Twelve had started for the Rocky Mountains. There were plenty of homes open to us. We could have brick, frame, log, or stone houses without cost. The Saints had nearly all left who were able to go, and their homes were standing empty and unsold. They had been driven out and what could not readily be disposed of was left behind. Some had furniture in-chairs, bedsteads, etc. Here for three weeks we fitted up outfits and secured supplies which included flour, parched corn, corn meal and seeds for planting, then started west in companies of ten wagons to the company. We crossed the Mississippi, passed Montrose and camped on the Bluffs a few miles north. Here those who had horse teams sold or traded them for oxen and we proceeded westward. Twelve miles through bad roads, and we camped. The downpour that night brought water around the wagons up to our boot-tops and during the storm a son William was born to Jane, Brother Robert’s wife, May 22, 1846. This was in Lee County, Iowa. Next morning the mother and baby were made as comfortable as possible and the Canadian Company moved on. We were endeavoring to catch up with the companies from Nauvoo who were ahead. At Bonaparte we bought more flour. We passed Pisgah and Garden Grove where farms had been planted and left for those who were not prepared to go on. At Liberty Pole on Miskete Creek, where President Young and the main body of the Saints were camped a few miles from Sarpes Point, we rested. While there the call was made by the United States Government for a company of five hundred men which was raised in a day or two but which left women and children on the prairie, some of whom were in poverty without shelter and sick. Due to this call, our pilgrimage was delayed until the following year. We crossed the river and camped at Cutler’s Park for about two months. Here we cut the grass and put up hay preparatory to wintering our cattle. Those we had no immediate use for, we drove in herds up the Missouri Bottoms into the rushes. We then selected a place two miles from Cutler’s Park on the Missouri Bottoms and moved to it, naming it Winter Quarters, now Florence.”
From Jane Gardner Bradford’s diary: (a niece of Archibald Gardner) page 33
“We left our home in Canada to gather with the Saints, on the last day of March, 1846. The second day of our journey our horses ran away. They smashed things up, nearly frightened us to death, but fortunately no one was injured. It took a month to get to Nauvoo. We crossed the Mississippi the first day of May and camped on the bluffs on the west bank. There Brother John had the measles. Remained here two or three weeks then traveled till we came to a town called Farmington on the Des Moines River. Crossing, we camped near a town called Bonaparte. Here I had the measles. During the week we tarried, we finished buying our outfits. The journey across the state of Iowa was slow and trying and made under great difficulties. Remaining at Council Bluffs until after the Mormon Battalion were on their way to Mexico, we with many others crossed the Missouri River. When father maneuvered his team and wagon onto the ferryboat, one yoke of wild steers jumped into the river with the yoke still holding them together and started back. One steer swam faster than the other and they circled round and round, all the time getting nearer the middle of the stream. Then father, without taking off his boots or clothing, plunged into the river after the animals, and grasp the tail of the fastest swimmer, held him back. This headed them towards shore and so they were saved.
“We camped on quite a high hill for several weeks. At this time I learned to knit from some of the girls in camp. It was here dear sister Janet, aged fourteen months, died and was buried along with so many others.
“Shortly after this we moved down on a kind of flat and spent the winter. So the place got the name Winter Quarters. That season was long and bleak and bitter. We suffered from cold and hunger and most of us from sickness. Some were very [ill], father worst of all. He came nearly dying. Mother found a doctor whose ministrations helped him and he recovered.”
Chapter 11, page 35 At Winter Quarters
“My brother Robert, James Craig and I took a contract to get out mill timber which we did with the approbation of the Church Presidency. Robert did the hewing of same with a beveled axe.”
(From Daily Journal of the Church)
“Tuesday, September 29, 1846; President Young, Elder Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards were busy locating a bridge across Turkey Creek, at the head of Main street and at 2:00 p.m. let contracts for building a mill.
“Archibald Gardner contracted to furnish the heavy timber at $4.75 per hundred, hewn. William Felshaw bid off the froming at $1.70 ½ per square of ten feet and agreed to counter hew.”
“The Church Presidency voted to remember us and if there were any good jobs to let after we reached the valleys, we were to be given preference. President Young paid us in goods at St. Louis prices, and the balance in cash to the last cent. He let us change a hundred dollar bill and take our pay out of it, leaving it in our hands three weeks. When I went with it, Rockwood said we might keep it until called for.”
“Winter had come when we commenced to build our houses. We had hawled wood for the wives of those who had gone with the Mormon Battalion and helped them in various ways and so did not get into our own homes until about New Year’s. It was a winter of much sickness. I was the only one in our family who was not confined to bed. I never enjoyed better health at any time in any country. On October 10, 1846, Janet, my baby girl, aged eighteen months, died. It was two years to the day since her brother Archibald has passed away of the same complaint—bowel trouble—and at the same age, excepting that she was one day older. About the same time Janet, daughter of my brother William, died and was buried there. (Note: There is no record of Archibald’s daughter’s burial at Cutler’s Park or Winter Quarters. There is a record of William’s daughter only the spelling is Genet. Her burial place is listed under Cutler’s Park and her birth date is in error.) My wife was sick for about three weeks as was our son Robert. Father and Roger Luckham were very ill with scurvy which was the general complaint thought to be due to the lack of vegetables in the diet and the fact that we lived on dry foods. Brother William, his son John, and daughter Jane were sick in my house most of the winter.
“There was so much sickness when little Janet died, that the care of the living left no time for mourning the dead and so our baby was laid away hurriedly and unceremoniously. But when general health returned we grieved for the loss of our little one and have never ceased to mourn for her.”
“During our stay at Winter Quarters, my second son Neil, a boy of five and a half years, was run over by one of Bishop Hunter’s wagons loaded with eight large green cottonwood logs. They were to be split with the maul, or mallet and wedge, into house logs. The wagon was drawn by four [yoke] of stout cattle. They had halted to rest and my two little boys were swinging on the chain under the wagon. When the driver gave signal to start, Robert crawled out but Neil was caught between the wheels. The hind one ran over his breast leaving him senseless on the ground. We called upon Phineas Richards and he administered to him. Then for three days and nights we kept him perspiring and his blood circulating by pouring water on hot bricks wrapped in cloths which were tucked around him so that he did not turn black. Through our efforts and by the prayer of faith he was miraculously healed.”
“In the spring of 1847 I sold the good log house which we had lived in three months and had cost me about one hundred dollars, for a gun valued at ten dollars.”
From the history of Margaret Livingston, first wife of Archibald Gardner.. page 150
“When the Gospel was brought to Canada by John Borrowman, the Gardner brothers, together with their wives, mother, and sister accepted it. Margaret and Janet were the only ones of the Livingston family ever to join the Church.
They left Canada, twenty-four of them, in 1846. They spent the winter in Winter Quarters where much sickness over took them. Margaret was ill about three weeks, her son Robert about the same length of time, and then the baby Janet was stricken. She died at the same age, and of the same complaint as her little brother Archie had succumbed to two years previously. She lies buried at Winter Quarters.”
From the history of Abigail Sprague Bradford, second wife of Archibald Gardner.. page 155
“Persecution ran riot in Nauvoo. When the remains of the murdered prophet and his brother lay in state, she and her daughter Mary Ann were among the thousands to view them.
Abigail was very ill when her baby Tryphena was born September 30, 1845. Her husband went for his brother’s wife to help at the sick bed. He took his brother’s baby with him on the horse and was so long in returning that the family became concerned and went in search of him. He was found feeling his way to the house. He had taken suddenly and violently ill. He died during the night. A little eight year old son, Grandville, died about the same time. Two vacant chairs met her gaze when Abigail was about to sit up.
Persecutions continued. The Saints were being driven from their homes. Abigail sold her two farms, two thousand bushels of corn, livestock and personal property for two outfits, including a plow, some other implement seeds for planting, and provisions.
Her husband’s brothers, hearing of her intentions to go west, offered to care for her and her children and educate them, if they would abandon the idea of the perilous journey. Bur her mind was settled; her heart was with the Saints.
Abigail and children, father, and mother spent the winter of ’46 at Winter Quarters. Here her mother died and was buried. Her brother Ithamer, his wife, and five children stopped at Mt. Pisgah with a company of Saints for the winter. Sickness and death overtook them, and the wife and all the children lie buried there.
In June, 1847, Abigail, with her father, her brother Ithamer, and her children, Mary Ann, Rawsel, Sylvester, Pleasant, and Tryphena, started for the west. They traveled in Bishop Hunter’s company of one hundred wagons, Captain Horne’s fifty, and Captain Archibald Gardner’s company of ten. During the journey one ox died, so they hooked up “Old Lil,” the milk cow, to take his place. Each morning the milk was poured into the churn and each night a pat of butter was taken out. The jolting of the wagon did the trick. The “Old Sow”, a cannon used in the War of 1812, was brought across the plains with them to be used against the Indians if necessary. Sylvester, Al Babcock, and Wiley Thomas took turns riding it. The cannon is now in the museum on Temple Square. Towards the end of the long trek one of her wagons became so good-for-nothing that she prayed night and morning that it would hold together until they reached their destination. It broke down completely in Emigration Canyon, almost within sight of their goal.”
Copied and left on record at Winter Quarters by Carol Francis Lovele… [unreadable] great granddaughter of Archibald Gardner and a missionary from July [unreadable] to July 1986. Two great great grandsons, Bill and Lee Francis worked on the Creighton University when the cabin was built the spring of 1986.
(Transcribed from PH-1, Pioneer History Room, Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters. Note: Text is transcribed as written with spelling corrected in brackets.)
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