Patience Loader Rozsa Archer: Martin Handcart Survivor Who Pulled Her Father's Share Through the Snow (1856)

Patience Loader (1827–1911) was a member of the Martin Handcart Company of 1856. Twenty-nine years old, she struggled through the early Wyoming snows pulling her deceased father's share of the family's handcart load—perhaps, as one account says, 'benumbed' by cold and grief. Her father, James Loader, died on the plains, as did her mother Amy. Patience survived the rescue at Martin's Cove, reached the Salt Lake Valley, married John Rozsa and, later, William Archer, and wrote one of the most detailed firsthand memoirs of the handcart tragedy. Published as 'Recollections of Past Days: The Autobiography of Patience Loader Rozsa Archer,' her account records the faith that sustained the handcart Saints through cold, hunger, and death—the conviction that they were gathered Israel and that the God who had brought them thus far would not forsake them.