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Friday, July 25, 1997

Texans celebrate 150th anniverary of Mormon journey to Utah

By DAVID BAUERLEIN / Beaumont Enterprise

PORT NECHES, Texas - John Rappleye had a couple of advantages over his Mormon ancestors when he built a wooden handcart like the ones they pulled on the 1,000-mile journey to Utah 150 years ago.

Rappleye got a blueprint for the cart by looking it up on the Internet. And when he built the cart, he plugged in his power tools.

Amid the conveniences of modern life, the Rappleye family of Port Neches is striving to understand what it was like for pioneers to load all their belongings into a cart and pull it to the frontier in an exodus from religious persecution.

"When we went to Colorado, we put everything we needed for two weeks into that big van," Denice Rappleye said, nodding toward the van before turning back to the handcart. "I don't know how we could do it for three months with that cart."

A few hundred Mormons sought to relive the experience, riding in horse-drawn wagons and pulling handcarts from Omaha, Neb. to the Salt Lake valley. Their three-month journey ended Tuesday.

Thursday, they joined Mormons worldwide celebrating the 150th anniversary of the day Brigham Young arrived in the valley and declared, "This is the right place."

"It's a very exciting time," said Marshall Hayes, the president of the Beaumont stake for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Hayes, a physician, and his wife went to Utah so they could see the trail riders arrive this week in Salt Lake City.

"They were energized again, but you could tell that their skin had been burned by the sun, and they had lost a lot of weight," Hayes said. "There was just a good feeling when they entered the valley."

In Southeast Texas, Mormons have kept track of the trek in other ways. The Rappleyes have used a computer site that gives a day-by-day account of the journey. And John Rappleye, an engineer for the Clarke refinery, built the handcart that poorer Mormons used to make the overland crossing in pursuit of religious freedom.

Rosemary Powell of Groves has tuned in each Sunday to the Odyssey cable channel for a show that recaps the past week's progress. It's not hard, she said, to feel like she's watching the original journey.

"There are beautiful vistas of Wyoming prairie, and the mile and a half train of wagons," she said. "It's pretty amazing."

For the original pioneers, the beauty of the open plains also contained the risk of death. From 1847 until 1869 - when the transcontinental railroad gave Mormons a safer mode of travel - more than 70,000 believers started the 1,000-mile journey. About 6,000 died before reaching Utah, which then was Mexican territory.

In 1856, almost 250 of the 1,000 Mormons traveling to Utah with handcarts in tow were killed when a snowstorm trapped them in Wyoming.

Dale Jones, a weatherman for KBMT-TV Channel 12, and his wife, Joyce, have been marking the sesquicentennial by reading accounts from the early pioneers, including ancestors of Joyce Jones who survived the 1856 trip.

A family history recounts how the daughter of James and Eliza Hurren suffered such a severe case of frostbite that a doctor urged amputation of her legs to save her life.

"This little girl didn't walk a thousand miles to have her legs cut off," James Hurren responded.

In time, the daughter, Mary, recovered, walked again, and had children, the family history says.

Now a worldwide religion, the early Mormons went west because no state in the union at that time would give asylum to the faith's believers. In Missouri, the governor issued an order in 1838 calling for the "extermination" of Mormons.

Robert Rappleye, 16, said when Mormons celebrate the 150th anniversary of Brigham Young's arrival, he will feel a "little bit of pride" that he has ancestors who made the overland passage at risk to their lives.

"They went through a lot," he said of the persecution Mormons faced at the time. "I can't see someone getting angry enough to shoot someone else because they're a different religion."

Mormons in Southeast Texas plan a local sesquicentennial celebration on Aug. 9 at the Montagne Center on the Lamar University-Beaumont campus. The Rappleyes will join a handful of other area Mormons who also built handcarts for the celebration.

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