Sweetwater Rescue-Press Release

150 Years Later, Handcart Pioneers Remembered

SALT LAKE CITY—Almost two years in the making, a sesquicentennial tribute to the heroism, vision, and sacrifice of the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies and their rescuers is nearly complete. In 2004, documentary filmmaker Lee Groberg and author Heidi Swinton joined together to begin work on their commemoration project Sweetwater Rescue: The Willie and Martin Handcart Story. Their envisioned project would include a PBS documentary, a book with numerous works of original art, and an art exhibit to display the newly crafted masterpieces.

Now, nearly two years later, Groberg, Swinton, and hundreds of others that joined in this project are about to see the fruits of their labor. The book, Sweetwater Rescue: The Willie and Martin Handcart Story, by Swinton and Groberg, is scheduled to be in bookstores September 19. This book includes 80 original works of art, by 43 artists, commissioned specifically for this project. The book also contains a complete list of names from the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies, the Hunt and Hodgett Wagon Trains, and the rescue companies. Along with original journal entries illustrating the story of the trek are 40 rarely seen photographs of key participants from the companies and rescue teams.

For the book and art exhibit, Martin Company descendent, and artist, Stephen Mark Bartholomew painted a portrait of his great-great-grandmother and her sister. “In researching for this project I was impressed and moved to learn that these teenagers faithfully pulled one of their family’s two handcarts from Missouri until their rescue near Devil’s Gate,” Bartholomew said. “Many times the handcart not only contained their supplies, it often held one of their three-year-old twin sisters Emma or Clara.”

Those that returned to the plains to save the pioneers are also an important part of this story. Swinton said of the rescuers, “They didn’t have any idea what was ahead and went back on the trail anyway. They went after people that, for the most part, they didn’t even know—risking their own lives in the process. What more could be said of charity one for another? In what is often billed as a gun-slinging, fiercely independent culture—the American West—the story of the handcart pioneers, and those who went to find them, captures the untold story of sacrifice for others and a unified vision of community.”

Well-known historian Wallace Stegner said of the handcart pioneers, “Perhaps their suffering seems less dramatic because the handcart pioneers bore it meekly, praising God, instead of fighting for life with the ferocity of animals and eating their dead to keep their own life beating, as both the Fremont and Donner parties did. But if courage and endurance make a story, if human kindness and helpfulness and brotherly love in the midst of raw horror are worth recording, this half-forgotten episode of the Mormon migration is one of the great tales of the West and of America.” (Wallace Stegner, "Ordeal by Handcart," in Collier's, July 6, 1956, 78-85.)

The Sweetwater Rescue documentary will debut on KBYU Sunday, October 1 at 7:00 PM, followed by a national PBS release December 18. Many of the artists with work featured in the book and exhibit went to the filming of the documentary to gain context for their art. Draper artist Layne Brady commented, “I was dressed for the cold in modern clothing, and within an hour I got chilled to the core. It was kind of a wake-up call to know how horribly tough it was for them physically.” The documentary on DVD will be available in stores September 27.

The original art pieces featured in Sweetwater Rescue: The Willie and Martin Handcart Story will be displayed at the LDS Museum of Church History and Art and the Museum of Utah Art & History in a unique simultaneous exhibit from September 29 to October 31. The LDS Museum of Church History and Art will continue exhibiting this series until January 2, 2007.

Contact: Melissa Dalton
Covenant Communications
801-756-1041 Ext: 167
Cell: 801-369-8857
melissad@covenant-lds.com

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