Cyrus Wheelock: Just Off a Mission to England, He Turned Around and Rode Back Into Wyoming to Find the Saints He'd Sent West

Cyrus Hubbard Wheelock (February 28, 1813 – October 11, 1894) was born in New York and became one of the early missionaries of the Church. By 1856 he had served three missions to England, the last as a counselor to Mission President Franklin D. Richards. It was Richards who had published Brigham Young's handcart emigration plan — and it was many of the British converts Wheelock had baptized and encouraged who now formed the Willie and Martin Companies.

In October 1856, Wheelock was returning home from his third mission when he passed the struggling handcart companies near the outskirts of Utah. He continued to Salt Lake City but then, upon Brigham Young's rescue call, immediately turned around and rode back east.

On October 14, Robert Burton recorded Wheelock as one of the four express riders sent ahead to find the companies: Cyrus Wheelock, Joseph Young, Stephen Taylor, and Abel Garr. They rode through worsening weather and found the Willie Company on October 19.

For Wheelock, the experience carried a profound personal dimension: he had baptized and encouraged many of these very pioneers in England. He had told them of Zion. Now he rode back through a Wyoming blizzard to help bring them there.

Wheelcock is also remembered for writing the words to the early LDS hymn *Ye Elders of Israel*, a rallying call to missionary service that generations of Latter-day Saints have sung. He died in 1894 having lived a life of missionary service across three decades.