Bodil Mortensen, from Denmark was age 10. She came across alone, before her family attempted to join the saints in Salt Lake City. Her older sister traveled a year before her and was in Salt Lake. Bodil joined the Willie Handcart Company with a family from her country Denmark. Winter storms began early that year and slowed the travel of the company. Rocky Ridge was a long hard journey for the children. The distance was about 15 miles, including a two-mile stretch in which the trail rose more than 700 feet in elevation. It took some of the children 27 hours to reach the camp. The snow was already more than a foot deep, a blizzard was raging, and the temperatures were freezing. A howling October snowstorm blinded ten-year-old Bodil Mortensen as she climbed with several other younger children, shivering and hungry, up the snow-covered slope of Rocky Ridge. Bodil was exhausted and weak, the young girl struggled on her way, hoping to reach Salt Lake City to be with her sister. Bodil was apparently assigned to care for some small children as they crossed Rocky Ridge. When they arrived at camp, in the wee hours of October 24, she must have been sent to gather firewood. All she could find was twigs of sagebrush. The next morning she was found leaning up against the wheel of a handcart, twigs clutched in her hands, frozen to death.
No comments:
Post a Comment