DAYS OF OX TEAMS TEAM an old time Nor mormon mOw campling camping ground MORMON GROVE kansas june ath 1887 editor deseret news A letter from this prominent point of early emigration history will doubtless be ot ol interest to many your readers this was camping ground reached by the mormon mor mon trains in the year 55 it is located about five miles northwest north west from atchison where most of the outfitting outwitting out fitting was done when the new wagons had bad been put together and the covers fastened over the bows the work of yoking up the oxen commenced and the train consisting of about afif fifty ty wagons laden with supplies bedding and I 1 guess all the worldly wealth of the saints about to travel to utah would roll out as it if to see it if anything was 4 shipshape and make their first encampment on a nice level plateau a few hundred rods distant from an old grove of hickory timber and which was therefore called mormon grove here a horseshoe corrall was formed by driving the wagons about two feet f from rom each other in a slanting position with tongues inward halting in two semi circles so as to f furnish a convenient camp tor for the people and a ble per pea into which to drive the cattle tor for yoking in the morning SOME QUEER SCENES used to be visible iu in the commencement of the journey lou roey fancy lour four or live five hundred people of various nationalities alit ali ties les customs and occupations in life congregated together in a company and the men of this motley throng converted into temporary tempo aary teamsters the oxen not yet accustomed to their mates or their drivers and some ot of them only partly broke or if broke used to working on the other side 17 and not over anxious to work anywhere imagine it you can a darish danish driver tile the same being a cabinetmaker from gopen lagen who had bad never seen a yoke of oxen in his tife talking to a pair of unruly bulls that on their part had never seen a scandinavian and trying to hitch them on to a wagon or to join them with two other yoke in a team team 1 well remember a london barber barbe who had bad char charge chare e of a team ol of this kind and who never did get it t through his cochu head what color his cattle were alue the on only ly way I 1 87 he knew them was by teeing a red string around their horns hords any ox that hud had a red string oa that would led ali the e cockney eaten him was liable to be yoked joked up ap by him on whatever side his string designated regardless of color or ownership here and there a yankee who was used to cattle would instruct advise and help straighten out things go 00 that no mistakes might occur he had to know every ox in tae train and what side he be worked on while the captain kept ids his eye skinned tor for people left behind cattle lost and camp utensils deserted when the company moved camp so it was to MORMON GROVE that the train steered when the teamsters hawed cawed and geed out of atchison in 1855 in that year the cholera struck the camps quite severely it was very dangerous coming down the missouri river the dread scourge would carry off people by the hundred stalwart men would be seen carrying the boxes and helping to load and unload boats and trains or to bury the dead and in one or two hours the dark monster would have them in his grip in that season as many as sixteen persons were in m some cases buried in one grave at this same Mormon grove I 1 myself lost four relatives here and it was really to see if any trace of their graves could be discovered that nay my visit here I 1 was made but no relic of the nesting clay is now visible in this once wild the land was entered in 57 by a man called jack martin he added a mortgage to his other improvements placed on it by the mormon campers who by the by were the ithe prior claimants and to redeem the gior debt abt it became the property oi of a mr osborne who now owns the camp it is now under a wire fence the grove has BEEN REMOVED young timber is growing in another place some of the land has been glowed plowed up and a shanty has been built ailt over tile the spring that used to furnish the drinking water to the emigrants the spring itself still flows and is about tb the e only thing that lastingly marks the spot which supplied the early emigrating saints with a stopping place on their start westward ward I 1 was only a boy when I 1 came here in 55 and I 1 remember being asked by the captain to HOLD A MULE close to that grove he was not one of those these old mules that hate to go whose hair looks like it had been cur lied the wrong way of the grain and with a faizy tail resembling embling Tes a piece of old rope but this mule was slick as a new sealskin and his caudal appendage 1 ippen dage was as flowing as a young ladys adys back hair he was also gifted with discernment for he saw that the party to whom he had been entrusted was a greenhorn and so ne lie soon made the best of his time and hiff hie legs in otting by about ave jumps jump s idao that grove when the captain returned I 1 was minus one fine young mule and a new rope he hunted tho tha fa but neither his patrician c or his appendages were ever seen again by us I 1 looked for him dim again the other day where the grove used to be but I 1 failed to find him they had bad cut cut down the trees and plowed up the ground but the mule was not dincov ered it was over 30 years since I 1 saw him and I 1 suppose he is now working for the government probably as a I 1 punishment tor for his youthful indiscretion unless he has been used for be beef ef or sausages es by the atchison people though thought r thought I 1 saw him tile the other day on a st jo streetcar on the west side of the regular trav aled road is to be seen the CAMPING GROUND ot of the welsh and scandinavians while i on oa the east side was the location of the english and scotch with their usual I 1 national shrewdness tile the latter used to locate nearest to the spring aprin g I 1 have before mentioned they always get near to water unless something stronger is in the vicinity to attract their attention I 1 that Is in their own owa country but they quit it when they come to america C W S