John Chislett: The Skeptic Who Pulled His Cart to the End and Left the Most Detailed Account of the Willie Company

John Chislett was a 24-year-old British convert who was a member and eventual sub-captain of the Willie Handcart Company in 1856. He later left the Church, but his detailed narrative of the journey — published in T.B.H. Stenhouse's *Rocky Mountain Saints* (1873) — became one of the primary historical documents of the handcart era.

Chislett's account is remarkable for its candor. He described the technical failures of the wooden-axled carts: 'The axles and boxes being of wood, and being ground out by the dust... had the effect of breaking the axles at the shoulder.' He described the desperate improvisations — leather from boot-legs, tin from cooking kettles — used to repair them.

He recorded the deaths with matter-of-fact grief: 'Many a father pulled his cart, with his little children on it, until the day preceding his death.'

He also recorded moments of remarkable collective courage: when the company crossed ice-packed rivers, when rations ran out and yet they continued, when the rescue wagons finally appeared and the exhausted pioneers 'set up a shout that rent the air.'

Chislett eventually lost his faith but never minimized the spiritual reality of what he witnessed. His account — preserved and quoted by scholars and the Church alike — stands as one of the most important firsthand records of faith under extremity in the pioneer era. Even a skeptic's pen could not erase the wonder of what happened on the trail to Zion.

Fuller account of this event (in the witness’s own words):

The axles and boxes being of wood, and being ground out by the dust, which was as fine as flour, and which we could not keep out, had the effect of breaking the axles at the shoulder. We had to repair them as best we could. We used leather from our boot-legs, tin from our cooking-kettles, and hoop-iron from our water-barrels, to strengthen them. Many a father pulled his cart, with his little children on it, until the day preceding his death. I have seen some pull their carts in the morning, and before night were dead and buried. We had to cross the Platte River, which was then about a mile wide, and from one to three feet deep. The water was freezing cold, and the bed of the river was covered with sharp, jagged pieces of ice. The poor people, many of them with sore feet, and some of them barefooted, had to wade through this freezing stream. It was a heart-rending scene. When we reached the opposite bank, we were so exhausted that we could go no further. We camped there, and the next morning many were unable to rise. We had no wood, and had to burn sage-brush to cook our food. We were now on short rations, and the weather was getting colder every day. We were in a state of starvation. When the rescue wagons finally appeared, the people set up a shout that rent the air. It was a scene of joy and sorrow combined. Many of the people were so weak that they could not stand, and they wept like children.