Melissa Burton Coray Kimball

Lisaja

Written by Melissa Garff Ballard

I am Melissa Burton Coray Kimball, one of fourteen children born to Samuel and Hannah Burton. We joined the LDS Church in Canada when I was 10 and soon gathered to Nauvoo committing our lives to building the kingdom of God on earth. In 1845 we abandoned that “City Beautiful” and struck out into the wilds to “find the place which God for us prepared far away in the West.” There were thousands of us; my sweetheart William Coray, a member of the Nauvoo Legion, was one of them.

William and I married June 22, 1846, at Mt. Pisgah, Iowa, in a camp of 2,000 religious refugees. I was eighteen; William was twenty-three. Only four days later, U.S. military officers began requesting Mormon men ages eighteen to forty-five enlist in the Army to participate in the newly declared war with Mexico. Brigham Young supported the plan. The prospect of leaving families in such impoverished and uncertain conditions took great courage and faith.

William joined the Battalion. So did I. I could not see “why women must always stay behind and worry about their husbands when they could just as well march beside them.”

We were called the Mormon Battalion. William was assigned to Company B and soon became a sergeant. I signed on as a laundress. There were four to a company. By July 16, 1846, five hundred Mormon men had enlisted. 21 women and 28 children also started out marching with the Battalion.

I remember my father’s parting words: “You are going on a long journey, my girl. Your mother and I may never see you again. You are going with a good man and you are going for the Church, but you may have much to suffer and endure.” He counseled me to always stand by the Church and see that my children did as well. “Obey the president and the Twelve,” he said, “and you’ll keep right. You have a strong healthy body; keep a strong spirit in it. A Burton never whines. You are a Burton, and Burtons always see things through.”

The men treated their army service, for the most part, as if they were serving a mission for the Church. Instead of receiving uniforms, the men sent their forty-two dollar clothing allowance to the Church to pay expenses for the pioneers. They also gave the Church over $72,000 of their payroll money.

When we reached Santa Fe, all but four of the women and all of the children with the Battalion were dispatched and sent to Pueblo, Colorado to meet up with the companies of saints crossing the plains. The trip had been far more grueling than imagined and many were ill or unable to keep the pace. I was now pregnant with our first child. I must have looked so exhausted that Col. Philip St. George Cooke offered me his white horse. To ride that day was a special blessing.

I stayed with William.

We encountered the sands of the desert, the mountains of Chihuahua, and rugged terrain with no trail to follow. We experienced wind, rain and blistering sun. Most of the men were without shoes. Some could not keep up and fell by the way each day, reaching camp by morning just as another day’s journey was beginning.

We had insufficient food and water to sustain us. I calculated how many days the food would have to last until we met the next supply wagons. William and I would use only the portioned amount each day. We may not have been full at the end of our meal, but neither did we go without a meal. I struggled to teach the men of our company to do the same though my efforts were not well received. Many of the men ate their rations without considering what food they might have left for tomorrow, or the next day.

In addition to our hunger, we were thirsty. Again, my father’s counsel saved me: “When you get where it’s hot and dry, find a small pebble and carry it in your mouth. That will keep a flow of saliva and you won’t feel so thirsty.” Today I carry that precious pebble with me to remember those days.

The Battalion also was charged with making the first wagon road to the Pacific coast. The men marched two abreast, packing the sand to make tracks for the wagons and then pushing and pulling them along.

We were at war, yet we never faced battle --- only a skirmish with wild bulls that charged our soldiers, animals, and wagons caused great destruction. The 1,125 mile journey took only 102 days. I walked most of the way, being with child most of the way. Robert Bliss said of our journey, “We have endured one of the greatest journeys ever made by man, at least in America, and it is by the faith and prayers of the Saints that we have done it.”

The Mormon Battalion was honorably discharged July 16, 1847 in Los Angeles. Many of us set out to join the saints in Salt Lake City. William purchased a wagon and we headed north, stopping in Monterey to await the arrival of our first child. On September 2, 1847, little William was born, but only lived a few weeks. We were so grief stricken when he suddenly died. We buried him in Monterey, in a small pine box his father made. I said a prayer. William read aloud scriptures. I then knelt at his tiny grave and placed a small bouquet of wild flowers on the little mound. Then we turned our wagon towards San Francisco and journeyed on. For us, this was the most trying time of our journey.

We stayed in San Francisco through the winter. We ventured to the gold fields long enough for William to fill three small pouches with gold and then began the last leg of our journey home - - To a land we did not know but to a people with whom we shared a deep conviction of God and his ways.

This last trip was difficult. Again, I was with child, and was the only woman with forty-five men. There were 17 wagons and more than 300 horses, mules, and cattle that struggled through the Sierra Mountain passes. At Pass Canyon, “it took five days to cut a road seven miles long.” “The sharp canyon rocks made the mules lame.” We had no hammers or drills, so we often set fire to the large rocks in our way. We then crossed the Nevada desert, and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1848 – blazing yet two more trails for others to follow.

William’s health had been failing since the sandy deserts of Santa Fe. Our daughter Melissa was born February 6, 1849; My William died one month later, March 7. “We had such plans and anticipations. [Yet I was consoled in] losing my companion. [For I knew] he was willing to go inasmuch as it was the will of the Lord.” “I do not feel to complain yet I think my trials are great for one so young.” We were married two years and nine months.

It had been a short time, yet a long journey. Three thousand miles. “I didn’t mind it. I walked because I wanted to. My husband had to walk and I went along by his side.” Not once on the journey did the men fail to respect me as a woman. They treated me like they would their sisters.

The Mormon Battalion completed their assignment and then some. It can be said, “They were builders of the nation.” They participated in the Mexican War, and as promised by Brigham Young, “…If they honored the priesthood, they would never fire a shot at their enemy”. They never engaged in battle with the Mexican People. They blazed roads into the West that became national highways. Their pay helped finance the massive Mormon migration. They were part of the discovery of gold in California. Because of their presence in California, they provided the way for the land of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico to become part of the United States rather than be owned by Mexico. They pioneered irrigation for farming. They helped settle the West. As they built the first fired brick schoolhouse and courthouse in San Diego, they treated those with whom they worked and associated with respect and dignity. As Brigham Young said, “They will be held in honorable remembrance to the latest generation.”