Mormon Battalion has Ties to Fallbrook and It’s Residents

 

It must have seemed like paradise in January of 1847 to the half-starved 335 men and 4 women of the Mormon Battalion who straggled into the little mission of Little Mission of San Diego. Saturday, January 31^st at Old Town State Park hundreds of participants, many from Fallbrook, enjoyed paradisiacal winter weather while commemorating the 161^st Anniversary of the Mormon Battalion’s arrival there after one of the longest, most torturous marches in military history. 

 

Residents from all over San Diego and neighboring counties enjoyed entertainment and demonstrations reminiscent of the period.  Fallbrook residents, Aileen and Terry Erard, made it a family affair, meeting up with their daughter and grandchildren from Orange County.  They spent the morning going from booth to booth learning the Pioneer arts of making such things as rope, bricks, dolls, quilts, scones, and even roasting biscuits on a stick over the embers of a campfire.

 

The story of the organization of the Mormon Battalion is a tender one.  June of 1846 found 15,000 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints members strung out across Iowa, in half dozen or more makeshift encampments, after having been forced to leave their comfortable homes, they had endured a tragic exodus across Iowa. Many died of starvation, exposure, and disease during the cold winter and wet springtime. They had no homes, no property, and no clothing except what they carried in their wagons or wore upon their backs. Food was scarce and the U.S. Government seemed to show disinterest in their plight. By crossing the Mississippi River, these pioneers had left the United States. However, it was from these encampments that a little over 500 men and a few women were recruited by the United States Government to form a Mormon Battalion to assist in the Spanish American War. They followed their leaders west to a destination they knew nothing about and a purpose they knew not.

 

The trials suffered by the members of the Mormon Battalion cannot be captured adequately by the written word, physical hardships that were so difficult to bear.  Six months into their trek, most of the men had traded away any spare clothing in exchange for food.  Rags and pieces of hide took the place of shoes. Hair and beards were unshaven and uncombed. Skin was darkened to a deep, leathery brown. Bones and ribs of man and beast protruded through stretched flesh.  This is the condition in which they arrived that lovely mid-winter day in San Diego.  They had come through for their country – never having fired a single shot. 

 

One of these battalion members, James S. Brown, was the great, great grandfather of Fallbrook resident and former CA State Assemblyman Bruce Thompson.  Thompson and his wife, Donna, were in attendance at the commemoration on Saturday.  “Most Fallbrook residents don’t realize that the Mormon Battalion marched right through Fallbrook on their way from Temecula to the San Luis Rey Mission,” Thompson said.  He pointed out that the Mormon Battalion played a significant role in California history, helping to carve out transportation paths still in use today, such as the Butterfield stagecoach route.

 

The commemoration Saturday in Old Town was the 6^th annual tribute to these historic contributions by the Mormon Battalion to California’s and San Diego’s history.  You can learn more about the history of the Mormon Battalion by visiting the Mormon Battalion Association’s website at www.mormonbattalion.com.