Captain Edward Bunker's Third Handcart Company — Brought Safely Through Before the Deadly Winter (1856)

Edward Bunker Sr. (1822–1901), a veteran of the Mormon Battalion, was called to captain the third handcart company of the 1856 emigration season — a company of about 320 Welsh Latter-day Saints that departed Iowa City, Iowa, on 30 July 1856 and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on 2 October 1856. Under Bunker's disciplined and faithful leadership, the company completed the roughly 1,350-mile trek in about 65 days with comparatively few deaths, reaching the valley just before the early winter storms that would soon trap and devastate the later-departing Willie and Martin handcart companies. Contemporary accounts praised Bunker as one who 'proved himself a father to his people,' testifying that 'the Holy Spirit has been with' his company. Latter-day Saints regarded the timely and safe arrival of Bunker's company — in striking contrast to the tragedy that overtook the two companies that left after him — as a manifest providential deliverance.