The Last Man Standing at Pony Creek: Edson Whipple, Delivered from Death to the Vanguard Company (1846–1847)

Edson Whipple was born February 5, 1805, at Dummerston, Vermont, the youngest of twelve children. Baptized in Philadelphia on June 16, 1840, by Elder Benjamin Winchester, he became first counselor to Winchester in the Philadelphia branch and then gathered to Nauvoo, where he helped build the Nauvoo Temple and the Nauvoo House and served on the city's new police guard. On one cold night watch, he was the sentinel three or four miles down the river when General Harden and some thirty men slipped past him to arrest Brigham Young — it was Edson who outran the party to Nauvoo by way of Golden Point and around the temple, arriving three-quarters of an hour ahead of them with the alarm.

The exodus of 1846 nearly finished him. Edson crossed the Mississippi on May 15, 1846, with Hugh McKinley's family and teams, stayed two weeks at Garden Grove, and then settled with twelve or fifteen families at Pony Creek, Iowa, twelve miles from Winter Quarters — a place he later called an unhealthy place. Fourteen of the little camp died there that autumn and winter, among them Edson's entire family: his mother Basmath on September 9, his wife Lavinia on September 13, and their infant daughter a few weeks later. Edson himself came down with the same sickness and lay helpless for a day and a night, unable to rise, with only two well members left in the whole camp. Franklin Stewart, hearing that his family was unwell, sent John Miles to find him — and it was this neighbor's errand of mercy that found Edson near death. They carried him to the Stewarts' camp, where he stayed until he was well again.

Yet out of that grave-hardened camp the Lord took him west. In the spring of 1847 Brigham Young called Edson with 142 others to form the pioneer company to lead the way into the wilderness. He traveled in the first ten of the second division under Captain Appleton Harmon, standing guard duty half the night every third night. When the advance party entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 22, 1847, Edson remained behind with the property, having been entrusted with Heber C. Kimball's family and effects. In December 1847 he recorded the colony's whole stock of bread in his journal — 1,078 pounds of wheat, 360 of corn, 651 of beans — and laid it before the family: three pounds of wheat and two and a half of beans per person per week, and by so doing it would last until the first of July next. It did.

Edson went on to help found Parowan in 1850 — the town was built according to his plan — and lived to 1894, dying in Colonia Juárez, Mexico, having raised 33 children and buried on the trail the first three who made him a father.