Warburton Mormon Trek 1849

In 2014 I added the story They crossed the Plains with a Handcart to the Papers page of the Website. It was the story of a party of Mormons travelling from Iowa to Utah in 1856. I announced it in this Post.

Recently Ian Sanderson sent me a link to a story in the Lincolnshire Family History Society Journal, Volume 29, Number 3, entitled My Ancestor was a Saint. I have added it to the Papers page as Warburton Mormon Trek 1849.

The story describes a party of Mormon converts from Louth in Lincolnshire who sailed to the USA in 1849 and gathered in Council Bluffs, Iowa before setting off in wagons to the recently established Salt Lake City. The party included a Warburton family consisting of Edward Warburton, his wife Sophia nee Bywater, their son Richard, aged 19, and daughter Mary Ann, aged 9. Edward was originally from Yorkshire, having been baptised in Dewsbury in 1806. However he married Sophia, a local girl, at Louth in 1828.

Unfortunately Edward died at Council Bluffs before the trek could begin, leaving his family to travel without him.

The story of the trek includes a number of recollections from Richard.

Richard settled in Tooele, Utah where he had 2 overlapping marriages and several children. He died in 1907, aged 78. Sister Mary Ann was the only wife of a Canadian, Francis Lougy, and also had a large family, and dying in Tooele in 1912, aged 73. Their mother Sophia lived in Tooele until 1868 when she died aged 62.

I have been unable to attach these Warburtons to any of my existing family trees, but there are a number of public trees on Ancestry. These take the family back a couple more generations in Yorkshire, but the only attempts I have seen to link them to Warburtons west of the Pennines look speculative.

If anyone has further information on the family I would be delighted to hear it. A Y-chromosome DNA result from a direct Warburton descendant would also be very interesting.

However, at the moment it doesn’t seem that notifications of my posts are being sent out, so if anyone does get one please let me know.