Relief Society and the Handcart Companies

At the October 1856 general conference, President Brigham Young announced that handcart pioneers were stranded hundreds of miles away. He declared "Your faith, religion, and profession of religion, will never save one soul of you in the celestial kingdom of our God, unless you carry out just such principles as I am teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the plains, and attend strictly to those things which we call temporal, or temporal duties, otherwise your faith will be in vain."

Lucy Meserve Smith recorded: Those in attendance took action to provide relief for their brothers and sisters. Women stripped off their petticoats, stockings, and every things they could spare, right there in the tabernacle and piled them into the wagons to send to the saints in the mountains."

"We did all we could, with the aid of the good brethren and sisters, to comfort the needy as they came in with handcarts late in the fall.

"...As our society was short of funds then, we could not do much, but the four bishops could hardly carry the bedding and other clothing we got together the first time we met. We did not cease our exertions until all were made comfortable. When the handcart companies arrived, a building in the town was loaded with provisions for them. I never took more satisfaction and, I might say, pleasure in any labor I ever performed in my life, such a unanimity of feeling prevailed. I only had to go into a store and make my wants known, if it was cloth, it was measured off without charge. We wallowed through the snow until our clothes were wet a foot high to get things together."

They continued to gather bedding and clothings for the Saints who would arrive with only a few belongings in small handcarts.

Daughters in My Kingdom p. 36-37