Charlotte Clark’s Shoes

This is not my personal memory but it is an experience recounted by an ancestor of mine.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon when the mob came to the Clark home in Nauvoo.  Father Clark tried to reason with them, but there was no reasoning to be done.  The minds of the mobbers were made up and their edict was unyielding, be gone from Nauvoo by eight o’clock the following morning or be tied to a tree and whipped by every man present.  Father Clark, like every other man in Nauvoo, bowed to the inevitable.  He and his family spend the ensuing hours in an effort to prepare themselves for what was to come.  The base essentials they prepared to take with them.  Everything else was left for the mob.  Knowing that no mobber could be trusted to keep his word, even if a few hours had been guaranteed to them, the family hid in the cornfield of a friendly resident, who was not of their faith, until their preparations were complete.  Then, with the help of that same friendly family, they crossed the Mississippi and worked their way to Winter Quarters where the Church had set up a new community for the people.  At Winter Quarters Father Clark was called to fill a mission to the branches of the Church in Iowa and Missouri leaving his family to be provided for by John, who at that time, was 19 years of age.  The other children were Eleanor 17, Eliza 16, Hannah 13, Thomas Jr. 9, Mary Ann 3 and Charlotte 1.  The mission assigned to Father Clark was duly completed, but the time had not come for him to return to his family.  Through the Prophet Brigham Young he was called to go to England and there preach the gospel.  For three years he labored in his native land and upon his release was assigned to bring a company of Saints to Zion.  Among them was a young girl, Ann Micklewright, whom he jokingly said he had brought as a wife for his son John.  A short time later John and Ann were married.  Upon his return to America the entire family set about the task of preparing wagons and good teams as well as farm tools and household equipment.  Since all those things required money and daily labor was the only means of securing it, three more years went by before they were ready.  Finally, on July 11, 1852 they began the long trip westward.  All the pioneers traveled in companies with captains over hundreds, fifties and tens.  Father Clark was appointed as captain over the ten wagons which made up his group.  Since their whole objective was to get to their destination as quickly as possible, the journey was a rigorous one.  Every morning at five a bugle sounded and everyone arose and joined in family prayer before leaving their wagons.  Then the feeding of teams and the eating of breakfast followed and at seven the wagons were rolling.  During the day, the families walked by their wagons with every man carrying a loaded gun or having one within easy reach.  At night, the wagons were formed into a circle with the tongues outward.  After supper, the whole group engaged in singing and storytelling and sometimes in dancing until the bugle sounded at 8:30 for the benediction. Afterwards each family returned to its own wagon where family and personal prayers were said and all was quiet by 9 o’clock.  At that time, the Clark family consisted of ten souls.  In addition to Father and Mother Clark, and John and Ann, there were six other children mentioned above.  During the journey cholera struck the wagon train and many died.  The Clark family was severely afflicted, but due to their great faith, none were lost.  The ground over which they traveled was interminably rough and since Charlotte, then aged 7, was an unusually active girl and never seemed to tire of exploring every nook and cranny, the day came when her only pair of shoes could no longer be worn.  After that it seemed that all the rocks and brambles and all the hot, burning sand combined together to make her tender feet even more tender.  Her mother did all she could every night to relieve her condition, but it never really helped.  Charlotte’s solution to her problem was to kneel every night by her blankets and ask God to send her a pair of shoes.  The fact that a pair of shoes could not be had in exchange for the most reassured heirloom never occurred to her.  She knew only that she needed shoes and that she believed God would send them to her.  One day while walking beside the wagon, Charlotte and her sister Mary Ann saw some berry bushes growing along a creek.  They were some distance from the trail and while it was an unusual thing for them to do, they asked their mother if they could run to the bushes and pick some berries.  It was even more unusual for their mother to consent, due to the ever-present danger from Indians. But the thought of fresh fruit for their supper coupled with the girl’s eagerness to go, impelled her to give consent.  They were instructed, however, to fill their pails as quickly as possible and to hurry back to the wagon as fast as they could run.  Once in the bushes the two little girls were eagerly picking berries and laughing over their good fortune when suddenly Charlotte cried out, “Oh, He sent them!  He sent them!  I knew He would send them if I only asked Him!  Mary Ann, come here and look!”  When Mary Ann came running she found Charlotte kneeling on the ground, clutching to her bosom a pair of sturdy shoes.  Between alternately laughing and crying, Charlotte sat on the ground and pulled on one of the shoes.  In her excitement, she turned to Mary Ann, “Look, Mary Ann, Heavenly Father knew just my size.”  She pulled on the other shoe and jumped to her feet.  Then she grabbed the nearly empty pail in one hand and her sister’s arm in the other.  “Come on, Mary Ann.  Let’s go show them to mother and father!”  When the mother saw her two girls running at breakneck speed toward the wagons and shouting excitedly with every breath, she feared something terrible had happened.  She started toward the girls and when they met Charlotte, her first words were “Mother, He sent them to me and they just fit!”  She was still puzzled.  “Who sent you what, dear?  Did you get your berries so soon?”  “No mother, not berries, my shoes.  See, Heavenly Father sent me the shoes I asked for!”  By this time the father, who had been walking on the opposite side of the wagon came into view.  Charlotte ran excitedly to him.  “See, father, my shoes!”  Heavenly Father put them over there by that bush for me and they just fit!  Oh, isn’t He just wonderful to us?”  The father was as perplexed as his wife.  He looked at the shoes, then at his exuberant girl, then at his wife.  His wife, realizing what had to be done, shook her head sadly.  He picked up the girl in his arms and walked along beside the wagon with her.  “Now,” he said, “Tell me what this is all about.”  “Well, Father, I asked Heavenly Father to send me a pair of shoes.  You said that He always sends us the things we really need and I really needed a pair of shoes and I asked Him to send them to me.  Here they are and they just fit!”  “Where did you find the shoes, dear?”  “Back by those bushes.  Mother said that Mary Ann and I could pick some berries and these shoes were under a bush.  I know they are mine because they just fit!”  A mist began to form in the man’s eyes.  “Heavenly Father wants you to have a pair of shoes, dear, and so do I, more than you know, but these shoes belong to someone.  Someone put them over there by that bush and when he goes back for them they won’t be there. We couldn’t take someone else’s shoes, now could we, dear?  That would be stealing.”  No one was more opposed to stealing than Charlotte, but still she was undismayed. “If Heavenly Father put them there,” she said, “it wouldn’t be stealing to take them and I know that He put them there for me.”  Finally, the solution seemed to come to the father.  “If those shoes belonged to someone in a wagon train that has already gone by, then you may have them.  If they belong to someone in our wagon train, then we must return them, so I’ll tell you what we’ll do.  We’ll tie them here on the end of our wagon and tonight when we are camped they will be on the inside of the circle so that everyone can see them.  We will leave them there for a week and if nobody claims them, you can have them.”  Charlotte was reluctant, but she removed the shoes from her feet and her father tied them to the wagon.  The week passed with her hardly taking her eyes or her thoughts off the shoes.  Every night in her prayers, she asked God to watch her shoes and not let anyone take them.  At the end of the week no one had claimed them although there were many children in the camp who were barefoot and who would have given almost anything to have them.  That night Father Clark untied the shoes and gave them to Charlotte.  Charlotte wore them not only the balance of the journey into the Salt Lake Valley, but for many months after they had established themselves in their new home in the little community of Grantsville.  Charlotte lived until 1923.  She raised a family of six children under the most trying of pioneer conditions.  All of her children heard from her lips the story of her shoes and her unshakable testimony that God had heard and answered her prayers.  There is one phase of the story, however, that Charlotte never knew.  It came to light only recently when a member of the family attended a meeting where interesting events of pioneer life were related.  He shared the story of Charlotte’s shoes and before he had finished he noticed that one woman in the group was becoming so excited that she could hardly contain herself.  She stood up immediately when he had finished and said she believed she knew where the shoes came from that Charlotte had found.  She then told of her great grandfather who had crossed the plains that same summer in a wagon train which arrived in Salt Lake ahead of the one in which the Clarks traveled.  He was a young boy at the time and like all boys was fond of water in its natural state.  After walking all day in the hot sun, a cool stream was more than he could resist and he would remove his shoes and wander up and down the creek until the wagon train was completely out of sight.  His mother emphatically forbade him to do it because of the danger from Indians, but he never got to the point where he could resist the temptation.  On a particularly hot day he spied some bushes growing along a creek some distance from the trail and when his mother was not looking, he ran away from the wagon train and hid behind the bushes.  When he saw that he was not followed, he removed his shoes and placed them under a bush where he could find them and stepped into the water.  The cool liquid felt so good that he wandered up the stream farther than he realized.  When he finally decided that he must be getting back to the wagons he looked for his shoes but they were not under the bush where he was sure he had put them.  He ran frantically to another bush and then to another, but soon all the bushes looked alike and he was no longer sure where he had left them.  He searched up and down the stream until dark without success and finally had to go back to the camp barefooted.  He was a thoroughly repentant boy after that.  He never left the camp again without permission and he never complained that the rest of the journey had to be made without shoes.  He even accepted the rocks and the brambles and the hot sand as his just punishment for disobedience.  In later years, he too, reared a family and he used to tell his children the story of his shoes and would conclude the story by warning them that if they wanted to be happy, they would first have to be obedient.