Charles Peter Warnick

Mormon Pioneer:

"...We met ox teams in eastern Wyoming and started for Salt Lake City on August 13th. But the angel of death had not finished his work. Many of our companions were left in shallow graves by the roadside. One noon as we were camping, all the men that were able were busy digging one large grave in which seven bodies were buried.

We had not been out many days when my brother Anders Gustave [Anders Gustof Warnick] said to me "Let us pray for we don't know how soon our turn will come." How true he spoke, for it was only two days later when he passed away, and it was only a few days later when his betrothed Charlotte Bengsten [Bengtson] died. Also one of my brother August's children, and a little girl of my sister Christine. Before we reached our journey's end, another of August's children died, making eight of our number who passed away on this terrible journey. I remember especially one whole family that died, and in many instances there were just one or two left out of large families.

This is the darkest chapter in my life, but yet in this great suffering and bereavement they died in the faith and in hopes of reaching a better land.

The company we traveled with was made up of teams and men from Sanpete County. Our captain's name was Ebnar [Abner] Lowry and he was from Manti.

We arrived in Salt Lake on October 27, 1866. Our family was John August and his wife Mary Bengston Warnick, their little girl Caroline [Augusta Warnick] and myself. Their baby, born on the way, was numbered among the dead.

I was then sixteen years old..."

SOURCE: Warnick, Charles Peter, "The History of Charles Peter Warnick," in Merrill N. Warnick, Warnick Family History, vol. 1 [1967], 234-35. Retrieved from http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/library/source/1,18016,4976-4725,0...