Comments on: Wilford Woodruff’s First Mission, part 10 (Graphic History)

By: Steve C.

Steve C. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:19:19 +0000

To be honest, I know very little about WW’s mission to Arkansas/Tennessee. I have learned quite a bit reading this graphic serial. All I can do is add the “color commentary” but I can’t do the “play-by-play.”

Too bad he had to leave Arkansas so soon. Beautiful area. I can imagine how the swamps of eastern Arkansas might have looked. I’ve seen some. I really can’t blame him for wanting to get out of the swamps. I’m sure that if he were in the swamp regions he wasn’t traveling 40 miles a day. Depending on conditions he might have made four miles a day. I didn’t realize the Old Military Road traversed swamps. (FIY: The Old Military Road extended from Little Rock to the Mexican, later Texas, border. It runs right outside of town here.)

Western Arkansas in the “River Valley” (Arkansas River valley) and the area of the Petite Jean river it is really pretty. The forests are very thick so travel overland on the primitive roads would have been somewhat slow. Perhaps that is why they made a canoe.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:37:10 +0000

Not that we're anxious to get out of Arkansas (c'mon, Steve, tell us why!), but as long as we're headed into Tennessee pretty quickly, let us hie to Bruce's blog and read about the missionary who beat Wilford Woodruff there by several months.

By: Bruce Crow

Bruce Crow — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:15:45 +0000

He had been a great companion. Plus Wilford asked him to come along, they weren’t assigned to each other “randomly”, so he must have thought a great deal of him. There is more to this story that Wilford just hasn’t told us. Too bad it happened in Arkansas. It is out of my area. Where is Steve C. when we need him?

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:41:57 +0000

His name is Harry Brown; I haven’t tried to hunt up anything about him beyond a quick bit of Googling to see that he remained connected to the Church beyond the point of this mission. WW doesn’t give his name in “Leaves from My Journal,” for whatever reason, so I think the artist just didn’t know his name. WW does name him in his fuller record, though. This episode isn’t flattering, but he’s been a pretty darned good mission companion up to this point, don’t you think?

By: Researcher

Researcher — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:33:32 +0000

It is true; when I read the line “My companion…left me sitting in an alligator swamp,” I did wonder who this companion was and if that’s why he was not generally named throughout the story…

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:42:03 +0000

Oh, yes, let’s keep it a secret!

I think the cartoonist must not have known his name, but I named him in the first installment.

By: Bruce Crow

Bruce Crow — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:34:58 +0000

He is about three days from Memphis. I know it says 40 miles a day. But in Tennesse he traveled about 18-20 miles a day when walking alone. I’m guessing he wasn’t going nearly that fast through the swamps. So perhaps he was less than 50 miles from Memphis when Elder Brown left him.

Or maybe Elder Brown wanted to go 40 miles a day, and Wilford just couldn’t keep up that pace. I wonder if Elder Brown ever wrote about this experience.

Oh wait, was I not supposed to give his name? I noticed that Wilford didn’t give his name, though it certainly wasn’t a secret.

By: Maurine

Maurine — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:28:41 +0000

I hate it how we are always left hanging after each episode, so I can’t wait until the next segment.

By: Steve C.

Steve C. — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:48:01 +0000

The accuracy of the distances is a little off. It’s not 370 miles from Little Rock to Memphis. It’s just a little over a hundred miles. I believe that by the time WW reached Little Rock the state house was either completed or under construction. It was/is quite an impressive building, especially for the time and location. It’s still standing overlooking the Arkansas River.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:43:10 +0000

When first posted, panel 3 was missing and panel 4 was repeated — that has been corrected.