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From: "Ruth Heeder" <>
Subject: ARCHER, Patience Loader Rozsa
Date: Sun, 09 Nov 1997 22:53:17 -0800


Found this site while surfing the web. Hope it helps someone

http://www.xmission.com/~dkenison/lds/ch_hist/arc/pl_hcrt2.html

Patience Loader Rozsa Archer, Faithful Handcart Pioneer

After the death of James Loader, his wife and children continued on
without him as best they could.
With the worsening weather conditions and declining food supplies, it
became ever more difficult.
Patience recorded:

"As the company journeyed on, the weather became cooler, and the
provisions shorter. We were
given four ounces of flour a day for each person. Most of them made
gruel, but mother made hers
into little biscuits and would have them through the day, thus having a
bite or two for us when tired
and faint. I have seen people so tired they would want to lie down and
rest and never get up again.
One day as mother was walking along, she came to a man lying by the
roadside. She spoke to him
and asked him to get up and he said, 'If I had only a mouthful of bread
I could.' So she gave him
some food and he got up and went on. Sometime after, in Salt Lake, that
man stopped her on the
street; she did not know him, but he told her that she once saved his
life."

As the storms came and the camp slowed to a crawl, Patience recorded:
"We were overtaken by
storms in the mountains and many died from hardships and exposure.
Sometimes when crossing
streams and pulling our carts, our clothing if wet would freeze stiff on
us as soon as we were out of
the water." In crossing the North Platte river, Patience recorded:

"The water was deep and very cold and we were drifted out of the regular
crossing, and we came
near being drowned. The water came up to our armpits. Poor Mother was
standing on the bank
screaming as we got near the bank. I heard Mother say, 'For God's Sake,
some of you men help my
poor girls'.... Several of the brethren came down the bank of the river
and pulled our cart up for us
and we got up the best we could. Mother was there to meet us. Her
clothing was dry but ours was
wet and cold and very soon frozen. Mother took off one of her under
skirts and put [it] on one of
us, and her apron for another to keep the wet cloth from us for we had
to travel several miles before
we could camp.... We had to make the best of our poor circumstances and
put our trust in God our
Father that we may take no harm from our wet clothes. It was too late to
go for wood and water;
the wood was too far away. That night the ground was frozen too hard; we
were unable to drive any
tent pins in. As the tent was wet when we took it down in the morning,
it was somewhat frozen. So
we stretched it open the best we could and got in under it."

Soon the rescuers came, and the Loader family was brought to the valley.
Patience reportedly
remarked on her first view of Salt Lake: "If this is the city what must
the country look like. I will not
live here." She changed her mind, though, and soon went to work in Lehi.
She met and married John
Rozsa, a military man stationed at Camp Floyd who had joined the Church.
In 1861, they journeyed
east where her husband joined in the Civil War. They didn't return west
until 1866, but sadly John
weakened and died en route. Patience was left with 3 sons and a daughter
who was born after she
arrived back in Utah. She married again in 1876, and continued to live a
full and productive life until
she died in 1921.

(See Carter, _Our Pioneer Heritage_, 14:260-63; Stegner, _The Gathering
of Zion_, 247;
Arrington and Madsen, _Sunbonnet Sisters_, 49ff.)

=============================================================
Stories from Church History - distributed on the Internet by:
David Kenison,
See archive at http://www.xmission.com/~dkenison/lds/ch_his

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