When Captain Fremont Slept in Grandma McGregor's Bed

When Captain Fremont Slept in Grandma McGregor's Bed

BY NEVADA W. DRIGGS

AT THE TIME THAT Captain Fremont slept in her best bed, she was not Grandma McGregor, but the wife of John Calvin Lazelle Smith, head of the colony sent by Brigham Young to go south and settle Parowan, Utah. Calvin Smith was from Massachusetts, and his wife, Sarah Fish, was a girl of eighteen from Quebec when they were married in the Nauvoo Temple May 12, 1846.

During the Nauvoo exodus, Calvin and Sarah crossed the river ice with a pair of white steers. They stayed at a place called Farmington, Iowa, and left Council Bluffs for Salt Lake Valley in 1848. Smith was established as a school teacher in Centerville, Utah, when Brigham Young called him to settle Parowan so named by the Indians because of the clear water gushing down the canyon.

Calvin was presiding over the settlement when Captain Fremont came through in February 1854, four years after the town was founded. It was really a fort with walls five feet thick at the base, reinforced by cedar posts and filled with tamped earth. There were inner and outer gates to the fort. The outer gates closed at sundown, and a guard was posted for those working until dark. Already Parowan had become fairly self-sufficient, having a flour mill, a carpenter shop, and a tannery. We tend to think of pioneers as being old, but Calvin was in his early thirties and Sarah in her twenties,, and most of the members of the colony were young and vital, capable of extreme hardship.

When I was a very small child my mother, Emily Craine Watson, a school teacher from England already widowed with a large family, was commissioned to write the life stories of the then remaining first pioneers of the town.

Calvin Smith had died in his thirties, and Sarah had married William C. McGregor, a Mormon convert from Scotland. Sarah had a family by Smith and also one by McGregor. Two of her sons, Joseph and Donald McGregor, became eminent doctors.

My mother had to go out to work every day, so later she would go to the homes of these elderly people to have them tell her the stories of their lives. I well remember her going to Brother Thomas Durham's.

He had been a member of that ill-fated Martin Handcart Company, surviving because of his youth. Then there was "Auntie Ward," whose husband had passed away, and several others. When mother announced that she was going to visit Grandma McGregor I begged to go along. Though I was very young I knew that Grandma had raised two families and also an Indian girl who had been rescued from hostile tribes. Mother sat with her pencil and paper; she wrote swiftly with a beautiful Spenserian hand. This is the story Grandma told my mother:

They had a bright fire burning on the hearth, although Calvin had gone to bed tired from his long clay at the flour mill. Sarah was setting her bread dough when she heard a cry of distress. She ran and awakened Calvin who said it was probably a coyote or an Indian, but then the cry came again. Calvin quickly dressed, but Sarah begged him not to go out alone, so he went for his neighbors Jesse N. Smith, John Steele, and Edward Dalton. These men wrapped up warmly; one took a gun, and they followed the cry. About a quarter of a mile away they found a man almost buried in a snowdrift. He was completely exhausted, so they carried him to Sarah. She had already built up the fire and heated water. The man was undressed and placedin Sarah's best, big white bed.

When he revived he told them that he was Captain John C. Fremont who had been sent by the federal government to discover a new route to California but had been overtaken by heavysnows. The company of men had been reduced to eating their horses and mules, and their last meal was a dog given them by an Indian. He said his surviving men were huddled in a canyon about five miles back (probably Red Creek Canyon).

Calvin told the captain to relax and allow Sarah to nurse him with her remedies for cold and exhaustion—that come daylight they would assemble a rescue group and seek out his men. In the morning ox teams were hitched to sleighs loaded with quilts and food. The half-frozen men were brought to the fort, and each was placed in a home for care. There they were nursed back to health. The company was reoutfitted with horses and supplies and continued a successful trip to California.

Grandma asked me if I would like to see the bed in which Captain Fremont had slept. It was a large white bed with handturned posts, most probably of mountain pine. The coverlet was a handmade quilt which I touched reverently, because I loved and honored the pioneers.

While a student at the University of California at Berkeley, I researched in the Bancroft Library and found Fremont's journal in which there is an account of this incident. I also found the account by his wife, Jessie, which had been published in a magazine of that time called Wide Awake. She had titled her account "A Modern Ghost Story," and in it she told of how she was suddenly seized with anxiety about her husband, though he had made many explorations and returned safely. She became quite distraught. When there appeared before her a big white bed in which her husband lay relaxed, she immediately told all those in the house that he was safe.

Some weeks later a Mormon missionary traveling east brought a letter to Jessie from her husband, reassuring her of his welfare. When Captain Fremont returned home he verified that at that same moment he had been so wishing he could communicate with his wife to assure her of his safety.

Because Jessie's story in Wide Awake was brought into question, all members of the household were interviewed, including Fremont. Their replies are also found in the Bancroft Library. In Irving Stone's book Immortal Wife, which is the story of Jessie Fremont, this incident of thought communication between Jessie and her husband is also recounted.

This brief incident in Fremont's life is recorded by his biographers, and his stay in Parowan has been remembered by my family because the captain slept in grandma's big white bed.

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