Also, if you visit the museum near Newton, Kansas commemorating the rescue of starving Mennonite immigrants from Russia in 1874-75 (the Mennonite version of the rescue of the Martin-Willie Company), the hymn is used as the theme of the interpretive video. (Or at least that was the case in 2003 when I visited.)

That’s a dilemma for me. As I’ve typed up these stories (not just “Dennis” but many others that are in the queue), I’ve noticed a lot of this kind of error. Some small part of it may be dramatic license, but most of it, I think, is misunderstanding, simplification, stereotyped views of Mormon history, whatever.

How should I handle that? A lot of you are just as able to identify those problems as I am — you’ve just proved that. But other readers may not realize there are historical problems. I don’t want to be tedious (pedantic?) about pointing them all out, and have decided I’ll only say something if I think some error will seriously skew somebody’s view of an important bit of Mormon history.

Otherwise, I’ll leave it to you-all to do just what Coffinberry has done: Note what may not be accurate, and explain why, and in a way — like this one — that doesn’t destroy the fun of the stories themselves.

– Iowa mud… that I know about. My ancestors hail from Southeast Iowa; the Saints passed through either near or on their land in Lee County on their way westward.

– Do y’suppose this tale is part of the Centennial of the events spoken of?

– Nancy dates the events to the year 1846. The raininess (and mud, which suggests eastern Iowa more than western… Lee and Van Buren counties along the Trail are all up and down, up and down into muddy creek bottoms… it flattens out some ‘long about Davis County) would indicate that the story takes place earlier in 1846 rather than later. If Brother Clayton penned “Come Come Ye Saints” in April 1846, when the Saints had made it nearly half-way across Iowa near Corydon, then that song had to have spread like wildfire to become so popular (and maybe it did) by the time of these events. Not to mention that the Saints seriously weren’t at the Plains yet in 1846, and certainly not while they were encountering the worst of Iowa’s mud. So I think there’s a little retrospective description going on here.

After the story concluded in the Children’s Friend, the author published this as a standalone book. Maybe that’s an indication of a better-than-usual story from the magazines.

Enjoy!