Mary Wanless journey to Salt Lake

Mary Wanless journey to Salt Lake

Connection Between Wanlass and Hutchings Families by Janete Hutchings Jensen

In the Provo City Center Temple hangs a painting of Mary Wanlass who at the age of 15, led her family across the plains while her father laid in the back of their wagon suffering from a stroke. The following information explains how this situation came about. Mary's mother died in 1851. In 1852 her father, Jackson Russell Wanlass, married her mother's younger sister, Jane Bell, who then was raising Mary, age four. A son, Jackson, was born to this union in 1853, and a daughter, Sarah, in 1856. Later in that year, the family immigrated to the United States, settling in Richmond, Missouri. Twins, Samuel and Ann, were born here in 1858. Just before the twins were born, Mary's father rode a mule into town to collect on some coal he had sold, as he did every Saturday. On his way home, he suffered a stroke which left him unable to speak or move. The mule took the slumped Jackson to his home where he fell to the ground. The family wanted to head west, but before they could, step-mother Jane took ill and died in 1862. The dying step-mother told Mary, then age 14, "Don't give your father any peace until he goes to the Rocky Mountains." Mary vowed that she would see to it that her disabled father and her siblings would make it to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Having missed the wagon trains of 1862, they joined an Oregon Trail company in 1863 when Mary was almost 15. However, her father had another partial stroke to the left side that caused them delays and to separate from the company. He was not able to travel for a week. They never did catch up to the Oregon Trail company, and the Mormon company they were to join also went ahead, so the family traveled alone. When they reached the Platte River, they failed to cross it and find the Mormon trail on the north side. They traveled on the south side where they would not be able to find other Latter-day Saints. Mary led them along, with her father riding in the wagon. Indians would sit by their campfire at night, look at Jackson Wanlass in the wagon, and did not harm them. They did offer to kill her father so he would no longer be a burden, but she would have none of that. At one stop, a fierce wind picked up Annie, age 4, and dropped her in the Platte River. Mary, who was preparing supper, dove in after her and saved her life. Mary always said that she did not know how she did that because she could not swim. They saw their first white man after they had started down the other side of the Rockies. Fred Trane, a freighter from Lehi, told them they were in Echo Canyon. He knew William Wanlass, Jackson's brother, who lived in Lehi, and gave them directions. It took them both spring and summer to make the journey, arriving in September, 1863. Mary Wanlass became the plural wife of William Hutchings in the Endowment House on March 12, 1864, when she was still 15 years old. William Hutchings was 34, and had been married to Mary Robbins since 1853, but she had borne him no children. Mary Wanlass gave William 10 children, including Samuel Walter Hutchings (Janete Hutchings Jensen's father) and Uncle John Hutchings of John Hutchings Museum fame in Lehi, Utah.