When I was growing up, my family never talked about pioneer ancestry, and I just assumed I didn’t have any pioneer ancestors. Many years later, after I was married, I learned that I did indeed have many pioneer ancestors and one of them has a remarkable story which I would like to share.

My great, great grandmother, Charlotte Dansie and her husband converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Suffolk, England. They were determined to make their way to the Salt Lake Valley, which involved crossing an ocean and a continent with five children, leaving behind the graves of two of their children. My grandmother was pregnant with her eighth child during this time. 

They sailed from Liverpool on May 14, 1862, aboard the sailing ship William Tapscott, and arrived in New York on June 25, after 42 long days at sea, a voyage that harmed the health of many of the passengers.  

The Church had chartered a train to take the converts to Florence, Nebraska, where they gathered to outfit for the trip to the Salt Lake Valley. The Dansies were assigned to the company of Capt. Ansil P. Harmon, which consisted of 48 wagons and nearly 500 individuals. They left Florence on August 2, 1862. Ansil Harmon’s journal stated that there were eight deaths while the company camped at Florence, and probably at least 25 more before the company reached South Pass on the Sweetwater River.  

My grandmother was pregnant, but we do not know how far along her pregnancy was. She had suffered during the voyage, and her health had continued to deteriorate during the wagon journey. Before she died, she was in such pain that she told her husband she could stand her suffering no longer and asked him to pray to God that she might be released and return to her maker. It was only a matter of minutes until both she and the baby died. A few men from the company began to dig a grave for her and the baby, and for Caroline Myers, another sister who had also passed away that morning. My great, great grandfather put a strand of blue beads around Charlotte’s neck and, from the family belongings, tore the lid off a large trunk and placed it over Charlotte’s body. The baby was buried in the arms of his mother.

Some of the family members later tried to locate Charlotte’s grave, but without success. In 1939, some members of the next generation, armed with an earlier letter to the family from D T McAllister, another member of the Harmon company, made another attempt. When they reached Pacific Springs, WY, they found a man they described as a “Mexican sheepherder” camped nearby. They asked him if he knew of any old graves in the area. He told them that some other sheepherders had dug into a grave, but when they found that three people were buried in the grave, two adults and a baby, it had been covered back up. After they questioned him further, it began to appear that the man himself had dug up the grave. He later admitted to it and produced a string of blue beads that he had found in the grave. The necklace was recognized as the one placed around Charlotte’s neck by her husband before her burial.

Scrap metal from the trunk, copper rivets, brass hinges and a lock engraved with the image of a lion were scattered around the grave. All this evidence led the family members to believe they had finally relocated the grave of Charlotte and Joseph Dansie and Caroline Myers, who had died the same morning. 

Little more than a month later, the present monument and fence were installed and dedicated by more than 80 members of the Dansie family, including my great grandmother, Sarah Ann Dansie, Charlotte’s last surviving child, who had been 4 years old when she witnessed her mother’s burial 77 years before. 

In 1958, President Eisenhower authorized the Secretary of the Interior to convey an acre and a quarter of land to be used as a grave site and memorial to Charlotte Rudland Dansie. The words quoted on the monument are from the hymn, “Come, Come Ye Saints”:

“And should we die before our journey’s through, Happy day! All is well! 

We then are free from toil and sorrow too; With the just, we shall dwell.

But if our lives are spared again, to see the Saints, their rest obtain,

Oh how we’ll make this chorus swell – All is well! All is well!”

I’m so thankful for this story of the courage and devotion of these family members. What an incentive to try and live up to their faithful example.

-Pauline Smith, Consultant, Granite Family History Center