Heber McBride, then 13 years old, traveled to the Salt Lake Valley in the Martin Handcart Company in 1856 with his parents, Robert and Margaret, and four brothers and sisters.
The following incident, found in his memoirs, occurred one day after the company crossed the North Platte River, just west of present-day Casper, Wyo."That evening as we crossed the Platte River for the last time it was very cold. The next morning there was about six inches of snow on the ground, then what we had to suffer can never be told. Father was very bad and could hardly sit up in the tent. . . . I managed to get father in one of the wagons. That was the last we ever saw of him alive. . . .
"[That evening] the snow was getting very deep and my sister and me had to pitch our tent and get some wood, but there were plenty of dry willows. After we had made mother as comfortable as possible, we went to find father, but the wind was blowing the snow so hard we could not see anything. . . . We did not find father that night.
"The next morning the snow was about eighteen inches deep and awful cold. While my sister was preparing our little bite of breakfast I went to look for father, and found him under the wagon with snow all over him and he was stiff and dead. I felt as though my heart would burst as I sat down beside him in the snow and took his hand in mine and cried, `Oh, Father, Father.'
"There we were, away from everything, away out on the plains with hardly anything to eat or wear, and father dead and mother sick; a widow with five children and hardly able to live from day to day. After I had my cry out I went back to the tent and told mother and the children. To try to write my feelings is out of the question.
"We were not the only family called upon to mourn the loss of a father that morning, for there were thirteen men dead in camp.
"The men that were able to do anything cleared off the snow and made a fire and thawed the ground and dug a hole and buried all in one grave. I can assure you that the men had no heart to do more than they had to do." (Source: Memoirs of Heber McBride, October 1856.)