Mormon Summer Quarters

Sketch by Alton Larsen used by permission of artist, Alton Larsen, a Washington County resident

Young appointed five men, including John D. Lee, as farmers and then called for volunteers. Each man was to create a surplus to provide for his family during the trek. Although Lee had an intense desire to be one of the band of first pioneers, President Young told him that he was needed more to stay and help raise corn.

As to the location for a farm," Young said, as recorded in Lee's diary, "I know of no place equal to a piece of land lying a short distance above the old fort (Ft. Atkinson) and 12 miles from this place (Winter Quarters). There are about six hundred acres that have been cultivated (by soldiers at the fort) that is as mellow as an ash heap. We can enclose, with very little labor, some two thousand acres including the broken land where we can, with industry, raise almost any amount of grain."

By the end of March, "80 men had entered" as volunteers, but later entries recorded fewer than fifty men listed by name as being part of the venture. "And family" often followed each name and Lee said that he was "responsible for feeding 65 persons, including women and children." Not all of them were his own, though he had over a dozen wives at this time. He was caring for some families of soldiers fighting in the Mormon Battalion of the Mexican War. Lee's Life and Confessions written in 1877, says there were thirty-seven families in the farming group.

Lee drove one of the first ten teams that headed north out of Winter Quarters on March 29, 1847. The company camped the first night on a creek "about 3 miles north of the old fort". At dawn, Lee and a companion set out on horseback to explore the country for five miles around.

At length," says Lee, "I found a splendid location for buildings and farming where there were 6000 (600) acres of rich fertile land which can be fenced by 10 days labor."

As described by Lee, the land was bounded on the west by the bluff that runs between Moor Creek and Mill Creek, north of present day Fort Calhoun; on the east by the Missouri River; on the north by Mill Creek; and on the south by Moor Creek, part of which had been farmed by the soldiers in the spring of 1820.

Lee began building at once, near the bluff on the south bank of Mill Creek. At Young's suggestion, the houses and stock pens were to form a compact unit to ward off the Indians. Lee afterward referred to it as a fort, with guarded gates. Timber for logs was cut by hand. Brick for chimneys and foundations was hauled from "ruins of the fort and neighboring buildings". Lee surveyed the cultivated land "and measured it as about 140 acres". He mentioned an allotment of land when 160 acres were parceled out to companies and individuals, but no place in his diary does he make an estimate of the total acreage farmed. Lee got his early potatoes and "a quantity of garden seeds" on April 13, in spite of breaking two plows. His beans were up and "nipped by frost" on May 3. On May 22, "20 hands planted corn, beans, melons and squashes." Lee was through planting corn and had begun plowing by June 14. The next day, "plowing and harrowing" had begun and "the camp was contending with weeds". Buckwheat was sown on and again on July 15 and turnips on July 16.

Effective fencing was not so simple as Young and Lee had predicted. The often repeated cry that "the cows are in the corn", evoked admonitions, orders, and threats from Superintendent Lee. "Sheep must be herded; cattle must be herded or pastured beyond the farm" he wrote. A large herd of cattle from Winter Quarters had been put to graze in the "rush bottoms" near present day Tekamah. The cattle were still there in the summer, tempting Indians to an occasional theft. Lee mentioned, from time to time, the passing of some of the herd to Winter Quarters. Pigs were not listed as fence breakers, but the "wild hogs" shot by hunters of early Desoto, may well have been escapees from Mormon pens or descended from strays from soldiers' pens as noted in military records.

Lee never failed his diary, but when farming was strenuous, he was brief. Activities at the camp, other than farming, were few. We know that the women helped build the houses, milked the cows, cleared, plowed, harrowed, gardened, sewed and attended religious meetings. They went with the young folk who camp up from Winter Quarters to pick gooseberries and raspberries along the bluff. They may have paused to watch a steamboat that Lee said "went down". The men seined in a lake north of camp, and hunted game. Deer, turkeys, prairie chickens, swan, and crane are mentioned in his diary.

An epidemic struck the camp in mid-summer and eighteen persons died. Burials were made in the prairie on a "high eminence" about a half-mile south of the settlement. Lee named the spot Fair View.

Indians threatened the settlement, when they demanded beef for the rent of their land. Lee was "not to be intimidated". The Indians were "met with firmness" and they left. He tells in his confessions that his firmness was backed by "seven of my wives with guns in their hands ready to shoot if I was attacked". Later in 1847, Lee promised the Omahas five hundred bushels of corn as rent. He agreed to give the same amount to the Otoes and when they insisted the land to the north of Fort Atkinson belonged to them and not the Omahas.

Lee's memorandum in the spring of 1848 dealt largely with two subjects; one being the making of wagons for the trek "to the valley", and the other the sale and barter of corn. The diary indicates almost daily hauling of corn to Winter Quarters. Corn sold at twenty-five cents a bushel and bread corn at fifty cents. Fifty bushels of corn paid Lee's city taxes, one hundred twenty bushels went for a wagon and another fifty bushels bought a rifle. No estimate of aggregate yield was given.

The threat of Indians remained, though, for the Mormons were on their ground. Young sent out word that all who were not leaving for "the valley" in the spring of 1848 should look for claims on the Iowa side of the river. Lee told of excursions across the river from Summer Quarters to look for land on the Boyer River, so departure was imminent. It was hastened by visits from the Indians when twenty-five Pawnees arrived in camp on April 15 and asked for food. Lee housed them, fed them and they left. Ten days later however, one-hundred sixty, which included women and children, descended on the camp. Lee provided them with lodging, pens for their stock, and called on the camp to "throw in and feed them". He then dispatched a messenger to Young at Winter Quarters and put the whole settlement under strong guard for the night. He warned the Indians that "anyone lurking about after dark was liable to be shot by the guard". In the morning, at the request of their four chiefs, Lee gave them "recommendations to the camp below". After they had been fed and given corn and other food, "they began to shove out" toward Winter Quarters.

Brigham Young ordered the immediate evacuation of the farm. So, on April 26, 1848, "at 10, the teams began to roll in from Winter Quarters." The camp was "in a bluster to gather at so short a notice". The first wagons started at 11 in a pouring rain, and wagons continued, still in rain, until 4:00, "when 22 wagons ascended the hill six miles distant from camp". This entry closes the written chapter on the Mormon's Summer Quarters.

Source: Summer Quarters brochure, Blair, Nebraska, 1997, by Merri Allen Vinton, Washington County Historical Association