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Recollections of Past Days: The Autobiography of Patience Loader Rozsa Archer
Patience Loader has become an icon for the disastrous winter entrapment of the Martin and Willie handcart companies, who traveled the Mormon Trail in the 1850s. Her autobiography offers an important record of those events, but also of much more. Wife of a Civil War soldier, Patience served as an army laundress in Washington DC and ran a boarding house as well. After the war, her husband died of consumption, and Patience returned to Utah alone, where she became a cook in a mining camp.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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June 9, 2022I read this book to learn more about Patience Loader, as I am telling the story of her for my trek. This book was amazing! I loved hearing Patience’s own words as she described her conversion and journey of life and the hard trials she had to overcome. I was amazed at her gratitude for God even in the most trying of times. The author did a very good job of keeping the book as true to the original text as possible, while making minimal but helpful corrections to make the story easier to understand. One unique thing about this book was there were no periods, and the spelling was off. However, this brings to life the authenticity of it and adds charm.
Patience was born in Oxfordshire, England to Amy and James Loader on August 23, 1827. She had 12 siblings.
Her parents were good and kind. They taught her to love and fear God and keep commandments. They taught her to love work and reading. The lessons her parents taught her helped her as she raised her own children.
When she was seventeen she went out to gain her own living. But when she thought of leaving her home and family, she nearly backed out. She knew she must go on her own, even though it would be hard to leave.
One time she and her sister Ann sneaked out of her house to go to the “fares” where young men and women would go dancing. She said it was altogether a good day, but she wrote “To tell the truth, I did not have any real enjoyment. The thought that we had run away from home unknown to our parents spoiled all my pleasure.”
It was the first and last fare Patience ever went to.
At age 18 Patience traveled to London at the request of her brother Jonas.
Patience worked many different jobs as a housekeeper, cook, maid, and seamstress.
While she was working in London she found out her father and mother had converted to Mormonism. She couldn’t believe it and thought it was very foolish of her parents to join this church.
When she returned home for a visit, she was converted. She writes, “his spirit worked upon Me and opened my eyes and my understanding to and shoed me the necessity of baptism for the remission of our sins and true repentance and obedince to the gospel of Jesus Christ would bring everlasting joy and happeyness . but the pleasures of this world was only for a short time it seemed that I had the two spirits to contend with the good and the bad I did not feel that I realy could settle down to live a religious life as the world beleivd allways going to religious Meetings and gatherings and there faces allways looking so Sad and Searious and thay think ^it^ a sin to sing a laughable song or go to a dance or Theater this way of living was so contrary to my Nature that I could not think of living this way and mope my life away . . but I found the Latter day Saints did not doctering was verey different to the religion of the [below the line: world] and I could see that in the Gospel of christ there was true happeyness and true enjoyment and before I left My parents roof I was led by the Spirit of God to chuse the good part and I went fourth and was baptised and into the Church of Jesus Christ39 and in two days after returned back to London rejoicing ^but^ in a different way to which I had intended to rejoice when I left London two weeks previous to my going home the hand of God was with me and his Spirit was around me to teach me the way to real happeyness and I am thankfull I accepted it just at the right time it was a safe guard to Me at a time when I was Young and full of life and Needed aguardian angle around Me . in the Midst of the worldly pleasur She struggled because religion to her always seemed so somber and dreary. She soon found out that Latter Day Saints was very different than the religion of the world and she saw that in the gospel of Christ there was true happiness and true enjoyment. She was led by the Spirit of God to choose the good part and was baptized into the church.
While she was working in a hotel, the housekeeper Mrs. Graison found out she was Mormon, Patience lost her job. However, Patience was able to convert two girls, Sarah and Susan Mancell who joined the church.
Her own sister Eliza lived in the hotel with Patience, but she felt as bitter towards Patience as the housekeeper did of her religion. Eliza would scarcely speak to her and never said goodbye when Patience lost her job.
Although she had to endure jeers and remarks, and lost her job, she knew it was not in vain, for she was able to bring two souls to the fold and she had found the true way to enjoyment and was anxious that others should enjoy the same blessings.
Heavenly Father was with her and guided her to find friends that found her a comfortable situation with higher wages. She worked for an invalid and her husband when she was 26. The wife died and Patience continued to work for the general. He was very old and in his will he was to leave all of his inheritance to Patience, money that would allow Patience to never work another day in her life. However, her father came to London and told her that the Mormons were gathering to Utah, and that Patience should come. Although it broke Patience’s heart to leave the old general, she followed God and went with her father when she was 28 to begin the journey to Utah.
Patience voyaged on the John J. Boyd ship and had quite the adventure. Patience and her family arrived at the ship, but they were told it wouldn’t leave until the next day. Patience went to visit and stay with her sisters for the night who weren't coming with them. In the afternoon, she went to the ship. She wrote “Lo and behold to my great surprise the ship was in readiness to start out and the men were just taking away the last plank. There were all my folks standing on deck watching anxiously for me and shouting to the top of their voice ‘For the Lord’s sake bring my girl on the ship and don’t leave her behind.’ There was just the one plank to walk on from the dock to the ship and father and mother were so afraid I would fall off into the water.” Two men were able to help her onto the ship. She writes “I thanked them and got on the plank with the assistance of those two brave sailors. I got safe on the ship and felt very thankful to be with my father and mother and brothers and sisters again.”
The first night on the ship, Patience and her family had to sleep on the floor in the darkness with little fresh air. Patience used a loaf of bread for a pillow.
The family consisted of her father, mother, three sisters and two brothers, and her brother John’s wife and their two children.
They were on the sea for eleven weeks. They were all seasick for 5 weeks except her father and her brother. They waited on them.
During the time on the ship, the captain told the passengers to stop praying and preaching, as they would never land in New York. Patience told the mate that the praying and preaching were the only thing that saved his vessel. She told the mate “For he was such a wicked drinking Man and neglected his duty it was a wonder that he was suffered to live”.
On one occasion the Captain got drunk and had kicked over his stove. Patience acknowledged the hand of God in preserving their lives, as the stove could have burned down the entire ship if it had not been for some men who had smelt the fire.
The passengers on board were only allowed one pint of fresh water for drinking. This was because some more men had come aboard to help because men had become injured or had died.
Patience’s brother had to bury his little girl Zilpha at sea. Although it was a very hard journey, they danced to music played by the saints.
On the ship Patience received a heavenly visitor who she believed was the Savior. The man told her that they would arrive on land and to not worry about being lost at sea.
Their voyage was the last one that the ship ever sailed.
Patience and her family landed safely in Cassell gardens New York in February 1856.
Each family member got a job and expected to stay there for a year to buy an outfit to go to Utah, but they were greatly surprised.
They were told to leave New York the beginning of July and go to Iowa to join the handcart company to cross the plains. Patience’s mother was in delicate health and she had not walked a mile for years, and the girls had never been used to outdoor work.
Patience was not anxious to pull a handcart. She did not think it was necessary to make people pull hand carts when they could have bought good teams and wagons if they stayed in New York another year.
Patience’s father was accused of apostasy because he would not follow orders to take a handcart. Once her father heard this, he determined then and there that he was going to Utah and would pull the handcart if he died on the road.
When Patience was 29 she left New York to start her journey to Utah.
Multiple times Patience wrote that she went through “many hard and severe trials [during] the first part of our journey.”
For the first hundred miles they were able to endure the travel pretty well but then Patience’s father’s health began to fail him. He became weak and sick. 4 men came and gave James Loader a blessing and in it it said that he would get better and get to Salt Lake City.
At one point it was just the sisters who had to pull the handcart because their father was so weak.
Two of Patience’s sisters became very sick, so the Loader family had to stay behind to care for them, while their company went ahead. Her sick father and her brother kept watch for wolves.
They met five Indians and when the Indians saw their sick and the new baby, they moved out of the way and motioned for them to get on. Patience knows it was the power of God that saved them from the Indians when they were all alone.
They had many close calls with the Indians, and Patience wrote of how much gratitude she had for not being hurt by them, and knowing that it was the hand of the Lord.
They finally caught up with their company, but Patience’s sisters were still sick.
Patience remarked that although they didn’t have much to eat, the hand of God was over us and that he made good his promises.
Patience writes “We know god our Father has promised us these blessings if we will call on him in faith we know that his promises never fail and this we proved day by day, we knew that we had not strength of our own to perform such hardships if our Heavenly Father had not helped us and we prayed unto God continually for his help and we always acknowledged his goodness unto us day by day. Sometimes in the morning I would feel so tired and feel that I could not pull the cart the day through, then the still small voice would whisper in my ear as thy day thy strength shall be. This would give me new strength and energy and thus we traveled on days after day week after week and for four months before we reached the valley; we would travel all day and when we got into camp we would get some little to eat then we would sit around the camp fire and sing the songs of Zion.
Food was getting short and Patience’s father became progressively sicker. Patience and her family had to pull her father in a handcart. James Loader died on September 24, 1856.
It was a severe trial for Patience and her family. They knew that they would meet him again in the morning of the resurrection.
Patience thanked God that two great brethren had dug a deep enough grave so that the wolves wouldn’t eat their father.
Patience and her sisters had to pull the cart through armpit deep water and nearly drowned. Their skirts froze.
Patience and her sister Maria had to travel in the snow knee dep for nearly a mile to find wood. She chopped wood.
They were reduced to four ounces of flour a day.
“Our provisions would not have lasted as long as they did had all our brethren and sisters lived, but nearly half the company died and caused our provisions to hold out longer.
There was a pile of wood that had been chopped, and everyone got one piece. Some were greedy and wanted more than their share. A brother grant “said to hold on, there is one sister standing back waiting very patiently and she must have some.” I called out “Yes brother grant my name is Patience and I have waited with patience.” He laughed.
They crossed several rivers. There were three men who helped them cross the river and they were very grateful for them.
They sang songs.
They ate bone soup for breakfast.
Her mother told them to get up, but they wouldn’t. So the mother danced and pretended to slip so that the girls would get up.
Patience arrived in Salt Lake City on Sunday November 30, 1856.
The saints opened their homes to Patience and her family and provided shelter and food to them.
Some of the elders can be very nice to a young lady when she is well dressed and can entertain them, but when a poor girl has pulled a handcart over a thousand miles across the plains and lands in Salt Lake city in rags and tatters an scarcely a pair of shoes on their feet, as this was my condition when I called on a man, he treats one with indifference.
Once she arrived in utah, all of her troubles were not over. She was in a strange country among strangers with no home, and no clothes or food to wear and eat except for what she had been given.
She stayed with the Nailes, and her first night slept in a beautiful feather bed. But she woke up in the middle of the night because she was too warm and sore. She had gotten so used to sleeping on the cold hard ground that her body rejected the soft warm house.
One day Mr. Nail asked Patience to go fetch some sheep while riding on a horse. However, the horse was wild and uncontrollable. Patience rode for 2 miles on this crazy horse. She was also kicked off a mule.
On December eighth, 1858, when Patience was 31 years old she married John Rozsa.
She went with her husband to Camp Floyd, as John Rozsa was a soldier.
She had a baby in 1860 at age 33 whom they named John James Rozsa.
She had a man come to the Camp when her husband was away and broke down the door. She was able to get away with her baby, but she had guard with her the rest of the time in her husband’s absence.
Patience and her husband left camp on July 18, 1861. They were ordered to go to Washington D.C.
A woman tried to persuade Patience not to go to Washington D.C. with her husband, but Patience loved her husband too much to desert him.
She rode in a wagon to Washington D.C. The man driving the wagon was a cruel man and tried to drown the mules and his passengers, and then flipped the wagon over so that Patience and her baby were badly bruised.
At the camp 9 men were struck by lightening
She was traveling across a river in a boat, and was about to get on one, but a man told her to get on a different boat. She agreed and went on the boat with her baby. The other boat flipped over and some of the passengers drowned.
At the camp she was made fun of for being a Mormon.
Someone wanted to see the Mormon woman, and the rest of the woman pointed her out. He was very surprised, for she looked no different than the other ladies. She said “they all stood looking at me with surprise I guess they expected to see me with horns or having a dark Skin like and Indian.”
She arrived in Washington when she was 34
She had three boys and a daughter.
Left for Utah on April 18, 1866
First husband died May 24, 1866
Arrived home July 21, 1866
Thanked God for everything. Especially in her hard times.
Her son Frank died on October 20, 1866 just five months after her husband died. She believes partly it was because he missed his father so much.
She had to support three children all on her own. She worked at the Miller mine to cook for the men. She called it a God-forsaken place. She worked for 17 hours without any rest. She didn’t see outside for nearly two months because it snowed nearly every day. She wondered how her boy and her lived through the winter. Her bedroom was full of chipmunks and she had to wear rubber boots all of the time because there were pools of water.
Patience never felt poor as long as she had flour and wood.
Sometime in 1878, when she was fifty-one years old, Patience married John Archer, whom she had met many years before in England.
She raised her cousin’s son and provided a home for a George Hathaway. She also took care of her stepdaughter, Zilpah Archer. They also adopted another daughter, Ruth who was left intentionally on Patience’s doorstep to be raised.
Served as President in Relief Society
Elected treasurer for the City of Pleasant Grove, a position she held for two years at seventy-one.
Between the ages of 80-90 Patience learned to play the organ.
She died on April 22, 1922.
Patience was born in Oxfordshire, England to Amy and James Loader on August 23, 1827. She had 12 siblings.
Her parents were good and kind. They taught her to love and fear God and keep commandments. They taught her to love work and reading. The lessons her parents taught her helped her as she raised her own children.
When she was seventeen she went out to gain her own living. But when she thought of leaving her home and family, she nearly backed out. She knew she must go on her own, even though it would be hard to leave.
One time she and her sister Ann sneaked out of her house to go to the “fares” where young men and women would go dancing. She said it was altogether a good day, but she wrote “To tell the truth, I did not have any real enjoyment. The thought that we had run away from home unknown to our parents spoiled all my pleasure.”
It was the first and last fare Patience ever went to.
At age 18 Patience traveled to London at the request of her brother Jonas.
Patience worked many different jobs as a housekeeper, cook, maid, and seamstress.
While she was working in London she found out her father and mother had converted to Mormonism. She couldn’t believe it and thought it was very foolish of her parents to join this church.
When she returned home for a visit, she was converted. She writes, “his spirit worked upon Me and opened my eyes and my understanding to and shoed me the necessity of baptism for the remission of our sins and true repentance and obedince to the gospel of Jesus Christ would bring everlasting joy and happeyness . but the pleasures of this world was only for a short time it seemed that I had the two spirits to contend with the good and the bad I did not feel that I realy could settle down to live a religious life as the world beleivd allways going to religious Meetings and gatherings and there faces allways looking so Sad and Searious and thay think ^it^ a sin to sing a laughable song or go to a dance or Theater this way of living was so contrary to my Nature that I could not think of living this way and mope my life away . . but I found the Latter day Saints did not doctering was verey different to the religion of the [below the line: world] and I could see that in the Gospel of christ there was true happeyness and true enjoyment and before I left My parents roof I was led by the Spirit of God to chuse the good part and I went fourth and was baptised and into the Church of Jesus Christ39 and in two days after returned back to London rejoicing ^but^ in a different way to which I had intended to rejoice when I left London two weeks previous to my going home the hand of God was with me and his Spirit was around me to teach me the way to real happeyness and I am thankfull I accepted it just at the right time it was a safe guard to Me at a time when I was Young and full of life and Needed aguardian angle around Me . in the Midst of the worldly pleasur She struggled because religion to her always seemed so somber and dreary. She soon found out that Latter Day Saints was very different than the religion of the world and she saw that in the gospel of Christ there was true happiness and true enjoyment. She was led by the Spirit of God to choose the good part and was baptized into the church.
While she was working in a hotel, the housekeeper Mrs. Graison found out she was Mormon, Patience lost her job. However, Patience was able to convert two girls, Sarah and Susan Mancell who joined the church.
Her own sister Eliza lived in the hotel with Patience, but she felt as bitter towards Patience as the housekeeper did of her religion. Eliza would scarcely speak to her and never said goodbye when Patience lost her job.
Although she had to endure jeers and remarks, and lost her job, she knew it was not in vain, for she was able to bring two souls to the fold and she had found the true way to enjoyment and was anxious that others should enjoy the same blessings.
Heavenly Father was with her and guided her to find friends that found her a comfortable situation with higher wages. She worked for an invalid and her husband when she was 26. The wife died and Patience continued to work for the general. He was very old and in his will he was to leave all of his inheritance to Patience, money that would allow Patience to never work another day in her life. However, her father came to London and told her that the Mormons were gathering to Utah, and that Patience should come. Although it broke Patience’s heart to leave the old general, she followed God and went with her father when she was 28 to begin the journey to Utah.
Patience voyaged on the John J. Boyd ship and had quite the adventure. Patience and her family arrived at the ship, but they were told it wouldn’t leave until the next day. Patience went to visit and stay with her sisters for the night who weren't coming with them. In the afternoon, she went to the ship. She wrote “Lo and behold to my great surprise the ship was in readiness to start out and the men were just taking away the last plank. There were all my folks standing on deck watching anxiously for me and shouting to the top of their voice ‘For the Lord’s sake bring my girl on the ship and don’t leave her behind.’ There was just the one plank to walk on from the dock to the ship and father and mother were so afraid I would fall off into the water.” Two men were able to help her onto the ship. She writes “I thanked them and got on the plank with the assistance of those two brave sailors. I got safe on the ship and felt very thankful to be with my father and mother and brothers and sisters again.”
The first night on the ship, Patience and her family had to sleep on the floor in the darkness with little fresh air. Patience used a loaf of bread for a pillow.
The family consisted of her father, mother, three sisters and two brothers, and her brother John’s wife and their two children.
They were on the sea for eleven weeks. They were all seasick for 5 weeks except her father and her brother. They waited on them.
During the time on the ship, the captain told the passengers to stop praying and preaching, as they would never land in New York. Patience told the mate that the praying and preaching were the only thing that saved his vessel. She told the mate “For he was such a wicked drinking Man and neglected his duty it was a wonder that he was suffered to live”.
On one occasion the Captain got drunk and had kicked over his stove. Patience acknowledged the hand of God in preserving their lives, as the stove could have burned down the entire ship if it had not been for some men who had smelt the fire.
The passengers on board were only allowed one pint of fresh water for drinking. This was because some more men had come aboard to help because men had become injured or had died.
Patience’s brother had to bury his little girl Zilpha at sea. Although it was a very hard journey, they danced to music played by the saints.
On the ship Patience received a heavenly visitor who she believed was the Savior. The man told her that they would arrive on land and to not worry about being lost at sea.
Their voyage was the last one that the ship ever sailed.
Patience and her family landed safely in Cassell gardens New York in February 1856.
Each family member got a job and expected to stay there for a year to buy an outfit to go to Utah, but they were greatly surprised.
They were told to leave New York the beginning of July and go to Iowa to join the handcart company to cross the plains. Patience’s mother was in delicate health and she had not walked a mile for years, and the girls had never been used to outdoor work.
Patience was not anxious to pull a handcart. She did not think it was necessary to make people pull hand carts when they could have bought good teams and wagons if they stayed in New York another year.
Patience’s father was accused of apostasy because he would not follow orders to take a handcart. Once her father heard this, he determined then and there that he was going to Utah and would pull the handcart if he died on the road.
When Patience was 29 she left New York to start her journey to Utah.
Multiple times Patience wrote that she went through “many hard and severe trials [during] the first part of our journey.”
For the first hundred miles they were able to endure the travel pretty well but then Patience’s father’s health began to fail him. He became weak and sick. 4 men came and gave James Loader a blessing and in it it said that he would get better and get to Salt Lake City.
At one point it was just the sisters who had to pull the handcart because their father was so weak.
Two of Patience’s sisters became very sick, so the Loader family had to stay behind to care for them, while their company went ahead. Her sick father and her brother kept watch for wolves.
They met five Indians and when the Indians saw their sick and the new baby, they moved out of the way and motioned for them to get on. Patience knows it was the power of God that saved them from the Indians when they were all alone.
They had many close calls with the Indians, and Patience wrote of how much gratitude she had for not being hurt by them, and knowing that it was the hand of the Lord.
They finally caught up with their company, but Patience’s sisters were still sick.
Patience remarked that although they didn’t have much to eat, the hand of God was over us and that he made good his promises.
Patience writes “We know god our Father has promised us these blessings if we will call on him in faith we know that his promises never fail and this we proved day by day, we knew that we had not strength of our own to perform such hardships if our Heavenly Father had not helped us and we prayed unto God continually for his help and we always acknowledged his goodness unto us day by day. Sometimes in the morning I would feel so tired and feel that I could not pull the cart the day through, then the still small voice would whisper in my ear as thy day thy strength shall be. This would give me new strength and energy and thus we traveled on days after day week after week and for four months before we reached the valley; we would travel all day and when we got into camp we would get some little to eat then we would sit around the camp fire and sing the songs of Zion.
Food was getting short and Patience’s father became progressively sicker. Patience and her family had to pull her father in a handcart. James Loader died on September 24, 1856.
It was a severe trial for Patience and her family. They knew that they would meet him again in the morning of the resurrection.
Patience thanked God that two great brethren had dug a deep enough grave so that the wolves wouldn’t eat their father.
Patience and her sisters had to pull the cart through armpit deep water and nearly drowned. Their skirts froze.
Patience and her sister Maria had to travel in the snow knee dep for nearly a mile to find wood. She chopped wood.
They were reduced to four ounces of flour a day.
“Our provisions would not have lasted as long as they did had all our brethren and sisters lived, but nearly half the company died and caused our provisions to hold out longer.
There was a pile of wood that had been chopped, and everyone got one piece. Some were greedy and wanted more than their share. A brother grant “said to hold on, there is one sister standing back waiting very patiently and she must have some.” I called out “Yes brother grant my name is Patience and I have waited with patience.” He laughed.
They crossed several rivers. There were three men who helped them cross the river and they were very grateful for them.
They sang songs.
They ate bone soup for breakfast.
Her mother told them to get up, but they wouldn’t. So the mother danced and pretended to slip so that the girls would get up.
Patience arrived in Salt Lake City on Sunday November 30, 1856.
The saints opened their homes to Patience and her family and provided shelter and food to them.
Some of the elders can be very nice to a young lady when she is well dressed and can entertain them, but when a poor girl has pulled a handcart over a thousand miles across the plains and lands in Salt Lake city in rags and tatters an scarcely a pair of shoes on their feet, as this was my condition when I called on a man, he treats one with indifference.
Once she arrived in utah, all of her troubles were not over. She was in a strange country among strangers with no home, and no clothes or food to wear and eat except for what she had been given.
She stayed with the Nailes, and her first night slept in a beautiful feather bed. But she woke up in the middle of the night because she was too warm and sore. She had gotten so used to sleeping on the cold hard ground that her body rejected the soft warm house.
One day Mr. Nail asked Patience to go fetch some sheep while riding on a horse. However, the horse was wild and uncontrollable. Patience rode for 2 miles on this crazy horse. She was also kicked off a mule.
On December eighth, 1858, when Patience was 31 years old she married John Rozsa.
She went with her husband to Camp Floyd, as John Rozsa was a soldier.
She had a baby in 1860 at age 33 whom they named John James Rozsa.
She had a man come to the Camp when her husband was away and broke down the door. She was able to get away with her baby, but she had guard with her the rest of the time in her husband’s absence.
Patience and her husband left camp on July 18, 1861. They were ordered to go to Washington D.C.
A woman tried to persuade Patience not to go to Washington D.C. with her husband, but Patience loved her husband too much to desert him.
She rode in a wagon to Washington D.C. The man driving the wagon was a cruel man and tried to drown the mules and his passengers, and then flipped the wagon over so that Patience and her baby were badly bruised.
At the camp 9 men were struck by lightening
She was traveling across a river in a boat, and was about to get on one, but a man told her to get on a different boat. She agreed and went on the boat with her baby. The other boat flipped over and some of the passengers drowned.
At the camp she was made fun of for being a Mormon.
Someone wanted to see the Mormon woman, and the rest of the woman pointed her out. He was very surprised, for she looked no different than the other ladies. She said “they all stood looking at me with surprise I guess they expected to see me with horns or having a dark Skin like and Indian.”
She arrived in Washington when she was 34
She had three boys and a daughter.
Left for Utah on April 18, 1866
First husband died May 24, 1866
Arrived home July 21, 1866
Thanked God for everything. Especially in her hard times.
Her son Frank died on October 20, 1866 just five months after her husband died. She believes partly it was because he missed his father so much.
She had to support three children all on her own. She worked at the Miller mine to cook for the men. She called it a God-forsaken place. She worked for 17 hours without any rest. She didn’t see outside for nearly two months because it snowed nearly every day. She wondered how her boy and her lived through the winter. Her bedroom was full of chipmunks and she had to wear rubber boots all of the time because there were pools of water.
Patience never felt poor as long as she had flour and wood.
Sometime in 1878, when she was fifty-one years old, Patience married John Archer, whom she had met many years before in England.
She raised her cousin’s son and provided a home for a George Hathaway. She also took care of her stepdaughter, Zilpah Archer. They also adopted another daughter, Ruth who was left intentionally on Patience’s doorstep to be raised.
Served as President in Relief Society
Elected treasurer for the City of Pleasant Grove, a position she held for two years at seventy-one.
Between the ages of 80-90 Patience learned to play the organ.
She died on April 22, 1922.
September 23, 2012
I also recently read a autobiography called Recollections of Past Days The Autobiography of Patience Loader Rozsa Archer, edited by Sandra Ailey Petree. This book was recommended to me by my sister-in-law, JanaRae. I found it fascinating. Patience had an amazing life. She was born in England and joined the LDS Church there with her family. They crossed the Atlantic by boat and joined the Martin Handcart Company. Her recollection of traveling the plains is fascinating. For those who don't know, the Martin Handcart Company were a group of pioneers that left from Iowa late in the season. They hit blizzards in Wyoming and many people died from exposure and starvation. Brigham Young sent rescue parties to save the survivors. Patience lost family members, including her father during this trek. After making it to Salt Lake City, she married and then traveled back across the plains with her husband to Washington DC, because her husband was a solider and his regiment was called to fight in the Civil War. Patience has some amazing life stories from both her pioneer experience and her Civil War experience. She was one tough lady! I really admired her faith. She witnessed miracles that both preserved her life and the life of her family. And even among her trials, she still recognized the grace of God helping her through it all. I also liked how real she is; she just told it how it was. I learned some interesting things about life at that time in Salt Lake.
Anyway, I would highly recommend this book. One thing I should mention is that the whole book is Patience's exact words that she wrote down in notebooks. She wasn't highly educated, so there are many spelling and grammatical errors. It takes a little bit to get used to, but I feel like it helps you get to know her better. However, I know that would drive some people crazy trying to read with so many mistakes. I feel a little weird rating a autobiography, because how can you rate someone's life experience? She wasn't writing it to be published as a book or anything, so I'll give it 5 stars, since I really liked it.
Anyway, I would highly recommend this book. One thing I should mention is that the whole book is Patience's exact words that she wrote down in notebooks. She wasn't highly educated, so there are many spelling and grammatical errors. It takes a little bit to get used to, but I feel like it helps you get to know her better. However, I know that would drive some people crazy trying to read with so many mistakes. I feel a little weird rating a autobiography, because how can you rate someone's life experience? She wasn't writing it to be published as a book or anything, so I'll give it 5 stars, since I really liked it.
November 30, 2014
I'm glad Patient's journal was published. I am a descendant of her family, and a recipient of countless blessings because of their sacrifice and faith. This is Patient Loader's first hand account of following her faith, coming to America, and pulling a handcart thousands of miles across the plains in pursuit of Zion.
May 29, 2008
This book is one of the best written on the subject of the handcart companines. She is a very discriptive writer
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