North of Kansas City and across the Mississippi River sits the town of Atchison, Kansas. About three miles west of there is a marker designating the spot where, for two years (1855-1856), Mormon pioneers left to head west to Utah. This is where the Daniel and Ann Rutter Harrocks family assembled a wagon, ox team and supplies for the trip west in the first two weeks of June, 1855. The day they arrived here (29 May 1855), their infant son Peter died and the day they left (13 June 1855), Daniel died. Young Elizabeth (almost four years old) remembered her mother washing all their bedding while men buried her father near the grave of her baby brother. Then Elizabeth and her mother and her two older sisters went on west with her father's brother and his family and the rest of the wagon train.
Today there is nothing left of Mormon Grove and the many graves there. It is covered with prairie grass. Like the many other places I have been in the past month, I stood on this site and, looking out over the prairie, imagined the people there so long ago, busy with preparations, children's voices carrying on the breeze, bodies sweating with exertion in the 90 degree weather but enjoying an occasional rest in the shade of the trees that gave the place its name, Mormon Grove.
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