Hannah Settle Lapish Trades Her Jewelry for 700 Pounds of Flour

Hannah Settle Lapish crossed the plains with the Robinson Handcart Company of 1860, one of the last companies to make the journey pushing handcarts. Like the other companies, hers suffered severely from lack of food. Near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, Hannah left the rest of the company and went to a trading post, where she offered the proprietor her jewelry in exchange for a little flour, then priced at $10.00 per hundred pounds. The storekeeper was not going to make the exchange, but as she turned around she saw a very tall man, perhaps a trapper or a miner, dressed in a beaded buckskin suit, standing in the store. He eyed the jewelry in her hand and asked what she wanted for it. The answer came to her by inspiration: "Seven hundred pounds of flour, sir." He took the jewelry and sent the flour to the camp, where it was dealt out judiciously to the hungry travelers by the commissary — the last measure, half a pint per person, distributed on the day the company crossed the Green River. As the company was ferried across the stream, a shout of joy went up when word passed that a relief train sent by the Church authorities had just arrived with provisions. The company arrived safely in Salt Lake City on August 27, 1860. Fifty years later, on April 14, 1910, Hannah — then 75 years old — gathered a group of 50 women at her Salt Lake home and founded the organization known today as the Daughters of Utah Pioneers.