Tiffany Taylor and Dr. Shauna C. Anderson, College of Biology and Agriculture
In 1846, after escaping mob persecution in Nauvoo, Illinois, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints established communities along the Missouri River in both Iowa and Nebraska. Approximately 90 settlements were created within seven years, with the most well-known being Winter Quarters. The Church headquarters was located in this area for a time, and, though important in LDS Church History, the Iowa/Nebraska era is often lost between Nauvoo and Salt Lake City. Though Winter Quarters served as a refuge for the Saints, sickness and the elements took their toll on the weary travelers. Death was an unwelcome, yet frequent visitor to the pioneer settlements. More than 300 faithful Saints are buried at Winter Quarters, while countless others rest in obscure cemeteries along the banks of the Missouri River. Many lie in unmarked graves. These valiant pioneers gave their lives in the pursuit of finding a place where they and their families could live and worship in peace. The graves of both old and young serve as a solemn reminder of the high price that has been paid for religious freedom. The tragedy and the triumph of Winter Quarters serves as an inspiration to generations of descendants, both literal and spiritual, of these courageous pioneer Saints. The purpose of The Winter Quarters Project, as this research endeavor came to be known, was to bring to light the forgotten settlements and residents of the Winter Quarters area and to make this information available to a world-wide audience.
During the fall semester of 2004, Dr. Susan Easton Black and Dr. Shauna Anderson, both professors at Brigham Young University, hired student assistants to aid in the process of organizing and analyzing previously gathered information about the Winter Quarters area. My role in the project began as that of a research assistant in charge of compiling lists of those who had lived at Winter Quarters. As the need for a way to make this information available became apparent, however, I took on the role of a website programmer and set up a website at http://winterquarters.byu.edu for the purpose of sharing our findings with other interested parties.
Traveling to Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa during the summer of 2005 provided the other research assistants and me with an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with our area of study and to meet the wonderful people who are interested in the history of the LDS Church in their area. We visited libraries, copied pages of microfilm, took pictures and video footage, and mapped the location of a number of obscure pioneer cemeteries. The highlight of my Winter Quarters experience was finding the location of one of my ancestor’s graves. I realized that it is not possible for many descendants of Winter Quarters pioneers to travel to the area, but they all deserve a chance to feel the same satisfaction I experienced as I stood in the area where my ancestor is buried. By recreating the Winter Quarters pioneer cemetery electronically and placing it on our website, I hoped to allow others to have the opportunity to search out their ancestors and see, through video and photographs, an interactive rendering of the burial location.
One of the main focuses of the Winter Quarters project has been to find out causes of death among the pioneers and to define those causes in terms easily understood using today’s medical terminology. Charts and graphs with statistical analysis of the percentages of deaths caused by various diseases will be added to the website in the future. In the process of compiling names, locating causes of death, putting together settlement histories, digitizing maps, editing video footage, and making all of this available online, it quickly became apparent that this project was outgrowing our capacity to complete it. At first this fact bothered me, but then I realized that this project really never needs to be declared “finished.” The process of gathering genealogical information is ongoing, and as long as the framework is in place for the Winter Quarters website, it can always be added to by students, faculty, and others interested in furthering the work.
The grant provided by the Office of Research and Creative Activities at Brigham Young University allowed me to purchase necessary computer software and equipment for creation of the Winter Quarters Project website, and to travel to the Mormon History Association annual conference in Casper, Wyoming to publicize our project to Latter-day Saint scholars from all over the world. The response to the website at the MHA conference was overwhelmingly positive and, though my scholastic progression requires that I leave the website in the hands of other capable students at BYU, I am confident that it will continue to expand until it becomes an invaluable research tool for those interested in studying the Winter Quarters era of Latter-day Saint Church history. There is still much to be done, but the ground work has been laid for those who will follow.