Abigail Smith Abbott: The Mormon Battalion 'Widow' and Her Deliverance Across the Plains (c. 1839–1848)

Abigail Smith Abbott was left a widow with eight young children when her husband Stephen Abbott died in 1839, just as the family had embraced the restored gospel. Determined to follow the Saints, she undertook the grueling overland journey west. Two 'merciful circumstances' kept the family from starvation: her daughter Emily had married Edward Bunker, who assumed responsibility to help, and Captain James Brown honored a reciprocal pledge he had made with Stephen—that if either man should die, the survivor would marry the widow and care for the family. Through the valiant help of these good men, Abigail brought her children step by step across the great plains, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in the fall of 1848.