Messages Regarding the Building of Winter Quarters-- The title of this message is explanatory of its purpose and contents. A letter was also written on September 27 and 28, 1846 to the High Council at Council Point and the Charles C. Rich at Mount Pisgah but no available copy of the letters have been located.
The Building of Winter Quarters And the Conditions of the Saints Cutler's Park September 11th, 1846. Babbitt, Heywood and Fullmer, Trustees, etc., Messrs:-Our present design is to settle our families at this point in such a manner that we can leave them one season, or more if necessity requires, and fit out a company of able men with our best teams and seeds, and at the earliest moment in the ensuing spring, start for the Bear River Valley, find a location, plant seeds, build homes, etc., and the next season be ready to receive our families into comfortable habitation filled with plenty of bread, etc.
We design to build log cabins here and make every possible exertion this winter for an abundant harvest here next summer. Should all these calculations succeed you will perceive that we shall need to carry little bread stuff across the mountains.
Of our particular situation, health prospects, etc., you will doubtless have learned by Bishop Whitney and his associates.
In view of future designs we wish to inform the brethren at Galena, St. Louis and intermediate places, not reckoning Nauvoo and Illinois generally, that those who have their families located comfortably, and young men who have no families, had best come on, so as to be here with a suitable quantity and quality of clothing, to go over the mountains and help fit our the proposed company, leaving their families in a comfortable situation in any civilized community; for women and children it is preferable to a year or two's risk of starvation, or among savages.
Nauvoo and the adjacent country must be cleared, and we send this by some dozen wagons, now starting after those who want to come, and we would send more had the men come we called for to drive teams, but we must at present attend to haying mostly; yet, we remember our pledge to remove all who want to come, and the brethren in camp are determined to fulfill it as soon as wisdom shall dictate. Send us men to drive teams, soon if you can, but be sure to urge all spare men to be here early in the spring, and when we are once located in the Great Basin, and have plenty to seat, it will not take long to gather all our old friends around us. In behalf of the Council, Brigham Young, President; Willard Richards, Clerk. {1846-September 11-RCH 2:165-166;also Journal History, September 11, 1846.}
[source: Clark, James R., Messages of the First Presidency (6 volumes)]
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