Posted by:
tillamook
(
)
Date: May 04, 2012 03:50PM
The story about 3 young men who helped carry people across an icy river during the migration westward by Mormon pioneers in the wintertime. According to the story, the 3 died shortly thereafter due to the effects of their exposure to the cold. Brigham Young claimed that those boys would make the celestial kingdom based on that act alone.
This is a very inspirational story of charity. There is even a monument commemorating the supposed 3 people that died in 1856.
http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~raymondfamily/2002_0621%20Martin%27s%20Cove/images/06210094%20Marker%20to%20the%20four%20boys%20at%20the%20crossing%20of%20the%20Sweetwater.JPGOnly problem is, the story is not true.
In 2006, LDS historian Chad Orton discovered through historical records that none of the "boys" in the rescue mission was eighteen years old; that a number of the men helped the hand carters across the river; and that many of the handcart pioneers crossed the Sweetwater unassisted, and nobody died from the cold.
Orton found the true death dates of the 3:
Grant 1872
Kimball 1883
Huntington 1896
Funny enough, 2 of them outlived Brigham Young, who died in 1877.