C. Allen Huntington: One of the Three Men of the Sweetwater Rescue — Brigham Young's Public Promise of Celestial Glory

Clark Allen Huntington (December 6, 1831 – November 16, 1896) was born in Watertown, New York, the oldest child of Dimick Baker Huntington and Fannie Maria Allen Huntington. He was commonly known as C.A. or 'Al.' His father Dimick was a prominent pioneer and interpreter.

In November 1856, when the Martin Handcart Company reached the Sweetwater River in Wyoming, Huntington was 24 years old and part of the rescue party. The river was icy, swift, and terrifying to the exhausted, starving pioneers. Many collapsed at the riverbank, weeping, unable to continue.

Huntington, along with 17-year-old George W. Grant and 17-year-old David P. Kimball, waded into the freezing Sweetwater River and began carrying the pioneers across — one by one, trip after trip, for hours. Their clothing froze. Ice floated around them. Yet they persisted until every pioneer who needed help had crossed.

When Brigham Young heard of what these three young men had done, he wept. He later said publicly: 'That act alone will ensure C. Allen Huntington, George W. Grant, and David P. Kimball an everlasting salvation in the Celestial Kingdom of God, worlds without end.'

Huntington went on to live a full life in Utah, dying in 1896 at nearly 65 years old — approximately 40 years after the rescue. His story was not widely known in his lifetime. In later years, when people asked him why he had done it, he is reported to have said simply that it was what needed to be done.

His is a story of quiet, selfless heroism — the kind that does not seek recognition but that heaven itself takes note of.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in Solomon F. Kimball, “Belated Emigrants of 1856,” Improvement Era 17, no. 4 (February 1914): 288):

After [the company] had given up in despair, after all hopes had vanished, after every apparent avenue of escape seemed closed, three eighteen-year-old boys belonging to the relief party came to the rescue, and to the astonishment of all who saw, carried nearly every member of the illfated handcart company across the snowbound stream. The strain was so terrible, and the exposure so great, that in later years all the boys died from the effect of it. When President Brigham Young heard of this heroic act, he wept like a child, and later declared publicly, “that act alone will ensure C. Allen Huntington, George W. Grant [the captains son] and David P. Kimball an everlasting salvation in the Celestial Kingdom of God, worlds without end.”