Need For Handcart Companies
Soon after the first Mormon pioneers reached Utah in 1847, the Church began encouraging its converts in the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe to emigrate to Utah. From 1849 to 1855, about 16,000 European Latter-day Saints traveled to Utah by ship, rail and then ox and wagon. Although most of these emigrants paid their own expenses, the Church established the Perpetual Emigration Fund to provide financial assistance for poor emigrants to trek west, which they would repay as they were able. Contributions to expand the fund were encouraged.
When contributions and loan repayments dropped off in 1855 after a poor harvest in Utah, President Young decided to begin using handcarts because the Latter-day Saints who remained in Europe were mostly poor. Young also believed it would speed the journey.
Young proposed the plan in a letter to Franklin D. Richards, President of the European Mission, in September 1855. His letter was published in the Millennial Star, the Church's England-based periodical, on December 22, 1855, along with an editorial by Richards endorsing the project. The cost of the migration was expected to be reduced by one-third. The response was overwhelming — in 1856 the Perpetual Emigration Fund supported the travel of 2,012 European emigrants, compared with 1,161 the year before.
Read more about this topic: Mormon Handcart Pioneers
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