October 4th-6th, 1847, the Jedidiah Grant-Willard Snow Overland Pioneer company of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrives in the Salt Lake Valley completing roughly a 1000-mile trek from the Elkhorn River, west of Winter Quarters, Nebraska. Among the families are Fielding Garr, a widower with eight children and a grand-daughter, a couple William and Ann Bringhurst, George Washington Bean, his sister Sarah (Bean) Casper and child Sarah Jane.
Families in pioneer overland trail companies had been organized by Brigham Young into groups of ten, fifty and one hundred. The Garrs and Bringhursts were in the same group of ten under the direction of Jacob Gates. All three families were in the same group of fifty under the command of Willard Snow. One can only imagine the shared experiences and closeness that developed as they crossed the plains.
These families would become prominent pioneer families and cross paths many more times. The Garrs would settle on Antelope Island, raising cattle for the Church’s Perpetual Immigration Fund and then help to settle Cache Valley. They became an important part of the supply chain of the California Gold Rush of 1849 by providing supplies and fresh horses to travelers heading west. The Bringhursts and Beans would settle in Utah County, southern Utah and have descendants that would help pioneer Arizona. Abel Garr and George Washington Bean crossed paths again as they rushed to the rescue of the Willie and Martin Handcart companies less than a decade after their association with each other on the plains of the Mormon Trail. William Bringhurst presided over the Las Vegas Mission and served alongside brothers George Washington Bean and James Addison Bean. Caroline Garr, a daughter of Fielding Garr, married Nathaniel Vary Jones who would be called by Brigham Young to open a lead mining operation near Las Vegas and Caroline Garr’s husband would interact extensively with Bringhurst. Of course, many of the early pioneers of Utah toiled together and shared common descendants as their lives were necessarily entwined. Yet, the Garrs, Bringhursts and Beans continued to cross paths some six generations later, which is roughly one hundred and fifty years as their descendants find each other, marry and have children.
Perhaps these descendants’ marriages with common pioneer heritages are merely serendipitous, perhaps not. Maybe there are common threads and character traits that decorated their lives in ways that naturally attracted them to each other. This is my family and I have pondered questions like these related to coincidental events and circumstances. These seem to be meaningful, at least to me. Is there an invisible pull or help from ancestors that bring descendants together? Many coincidences with family roots have surfaced repeatedly as I have explored my family’s history over the past decade. This book/blog is my contribution to my family to help them both discover our family’s stories and to consider these from the perspective of fascinating, air quotes ‘coincidences’.
