Patience Loader Rozsa Archer: Martin Handcart Survivor Who Pulled Her Father's Share Through the Snow (1856)

Patience Loader (1827–1911) was a member of the Martin Handcart Company of 1856. Twenty-nine years old, she struggled through the early Wyoming snows pulling her deceased father's share of the family's handcart load—perhaps, as one account says, 'benumbed' by cold and grief. Her father, James Loader, died on the plains, as did her mother Amy. Patience survived the rescue at Martin's Cove, reached the Salt Lake Valley, married John Rozsa and, later, William Archer, and wrote one of the most detailed firsthand memoirs of the handcart tragedy. Published as 'Recollections of Past Days: The Autobiography of Patience Loader Rozsa Archer,' her account records the faith that sustained the handcart Saints through cold, hunger, and death—the conviction that they were gathered Israel and that the God who had brought them thus far would not forsake them.

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

We had to travel in our wett cloths untill we got to camp and our clothing was frozen on us and when we got to camp it was to late to go for wood and water the wood was to far away that night the ground was frozen to hard we was unable to drive any tent pins in so we had to lay on the frozen ground with nothing but our frozen cloths on us and the snow blowing over us all night. We had no fire to warm us or to thaw our frozen cloths. We was all so cold and hungry and tired that we did not care whether we lived or died. We was all so weak that we could hardly stand up. My poor dear father was so weak he could not pull the handcart any more so he had to ride on the cart and I had to pull his share and my own. I was so cold and benumbed that I could hardly walk but I had to keep moving to keep from freezing to death. I felt that I could not go any further but I prayed to the Lord to give me strength to go on and he did help me.