The Lost Boy

This is one of my favorite stories from Church History. This event happened in the McArthur Handcart Company, which is the same handcart company in which my father's ancestors, the McCleve family, came to Utah. (See my blog entry of July 25, 2009). It really touches me that my own ancestors probably lived and grieved and rejoiced right alongside the family in the following story.


The Lost Boy
(told by Boyd K. Packer, in his book "Teach Ye Diligently"

"I read the following in the book "Handcarts to Zion" by LeRoy Hafen, and I present it as I have retold it on occasion.

The Lost Boy

In the late 1850s many converts from Europe were struggling to reach the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Many were too poor to afford a covered wagon, so they had to walk, pushing handcarts with their meager belongings. Some of the most touching and tragic moments in the history of the Church accompanied the handcart pioneers.

One such company was commanded by a Brother McArthur. Archer Walters, an English convert who was with the company, recorded in his diary under July 2, 1858, this sentence: "Brother Parker's little boy, age six, was lost. The father went back to hunt him."

The boy, Arthur, was the next to youngest of four children of Robert and Ann Parker. Three days earlier the company had hurriedly made camp in the face of a sudden thunderstorm. It was then that the boy was missed. His parents had thought he was playing along the way with the other children.

Someone remembered that earlier in the day when they had stopped, the little boy had settled down to rest in the shade of some brush. You know how quickly a tired little six-year-old can fall asleep on a sultry summer day, and even the noise of the camp moving on might not awaken him.

For two days the company remained while all the men searched for him. Then on July 2, with no alternative, the company was ordered to head west.

Robert Parker, as the diary records, went back alone to seek once again for his little son. As he was leaving camp, his wife, Ann, pinned a bright red shawl around his shoulders with words such as these: "If you find him dead, wrap him in the shawl to bury him. If you find him alive, the shawl can be a flag to signal us."

Then, with the other little children, she took the cart and struggled on with the company. Out on the trail Ann and her children kept watch. At sundown on July 5, as they were watching, they saw a figure approaching from the east. Then, in the rays of the setting sun, Ann saw the glimmer of a bright red shawl.

One of the diaries recorded, "Ann Parker sank in a pitiful heap upon the sand. That night, for the first time in six nights, she slept."

In his diary on July 5, Brother Walters recorded, "Brother Parker came into camp with his little boy that had been lost. Great joy throughout the camp. The mother's joy I cannot describe."

We do not know all the details. A nameless woodsman had found the boy. He was described as being ill with sickness and terror, but the woodsman had cared for him until his father found him.

Here a story, commonplace in its day, ends--except for a question. How would you, in Ann Parker's place, feel toward the nameless woodsman had he saved you little son? Would there be an end to your gratitude?

To sense this is to feel something of the gratitude our Father must feel toward any of us who saves one of His children. Such gratitude is a prize dearly to be won, for the Lord has said, "If it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!" (Doctrine and Covenants 18:15)."

Told by Boyd K. Packer, in book "Teach Ye Diligently"