by Dave Jackson

As a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there were a few things missing from my Mormon résumé when I joined the Church. Among the missing were my family history and a heritage of pioneers crossing the plains. Obviously I couldn’t do much about the pioneer thing, except stew over it. Which I did. I’ll explain.

When I first joined the Church as a teenager I marveled at the unbelievable sacrifice and fortitude of those early converts who gave their all, including in many cases their lives, as they followed their new testimonies to their “promised land.”

Then, as I was in the Church for a while, a change took place in my attitude. Not that I had lost my respect for the pioneers, they were still heroes in my eyes. It was the descendants of the pioneers that began to wear on me.

In the 1950’s, when I joined, there were a couple of million members in the L.D.S. Church, and not many of those were converts. Consequently, most of the Church members were of “pioneer stock.”
That in itself was not the problem. The problem, in my sight, was the attitude of those descendents of the early pioneers. (I admit that the real problem was in my perception, not with the “ole timers” in the Church.)

But to me they seemed to wear their linage on their sleeve, as though they were somehow better than we late-comers to the Church. Being the descendant of a pioneer seemed to me to be worn as a badge of honor. It was a badge I would never be able to wear. As a consequence I began to resent the apparent attitude of those members and their pioneers.

Slowly my feelings began to change. As I matured my attitude began to improve. I began to realize that I was the beneficiary of those same early Saints who walked across the plains, whether in the handcart companies or hiking alongside the covered wagons. Eventually I came to realize that I enjoy the heritage of those thousands who walked to the mountains. Those people truly went through the “Refiner’s Fire” and as a result the Church is what it is today. And I can claim them as my own.

And I’ve come to understand that I’m a pioneer as well, having taken the first steps into the Church that my family can follow. This is true of all converts, of course. It is interesting that I worried about something I had no control over while doing nothing about the item I could control, my genealogy.

About three years ago, I had been in the L.D.S. Church almost fifty years, I had done virtually nothing about my family history. What little had been completed had been done by my wife. Then one day I envisioned us crossing to the “other side” together. A large group of people ran up to us and threw their arms around my wife, welcoming her joyfully. Then they turned to me and, pointing, said, “And this is…?.”

I got the hint. In the ensuing three years I have come to learn a lot more about my family, and a lot more about pioneers.

As I have become involved in family history I’ve discovered a few pioneers of my own. For some reason I have never aspired to find kings or presidents in my family line. After all, someone has to be descended from the peasants. Why not me? But as I found pioneers hanging on my family tree I puffed up a little. The pioneers I discovered were important in preparing for those that followed in the mid 19th century, as they marched to their new mountain home.

In the early 1600’s a ship sailed from England for “the colonies.” It was about 115 feet long and carried 102 passengers and a crew of thirty. Among the crew members was a twenty-one year old “cooper.” The passengers included an eighteen year old girl traveling with her foster parents. When the Mayflower returned to England, the young barrel maker remained with the colonists. Two years later John Alden married Priscilla Mullins and began a family that would one day include my mother.

Fast forward 160 years to the hill country of western North Carolina. There William Jackson, along with many of his neighbors, join the so called “rebels” in their fight for freedom.

As the war wound down William married a local girl, Abigail Gillum, and they started their family.
About 1820 William and Abigail packed up and headed west over the Appalachian Mountains, probably to claim “bounty lands” which had been awarded to Revolutionary War veterans. They took along their nine kids and assorted grand kids. The folks would have been in their early sixties when they undertook their migration to Indiana.

Eighteen-sixty-three found William H. Brinson taking a bullet while fighting at the Battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia. He recovered from that wound in time to rejoin the 10th Indiana to be wounded again at the Battle of Atlanta. I am pleased to note that he recovered from that one as well, since he is my great grandfather.

So my pioneers, my heroes, are Aldens and Jacksons and Brinsons and Cristenberrys. Maybe yours will have names like Murdock or Willes or Jensen or Young or Smith, who walked across the plains.
Or perhaps their name is Nolan or Pastrano or Kelm or Chavez or Kikuchi. They may have come through Ellis Island or across the Pacific or from the south. Whoever they are, wherever they came from, or when they came, they are each pioneers in their own way and to their own families.

And I’d like to think that maybe we are all pioneers as well.