Grass Hoppers and Frost

May 5th, 2013 by Lynn C. Rees

The last major swarms of Rocky Mountain locust were between 1873 and 1877, when the locust caused $200 million in crop damage in Colorado,Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and other states. The cause of their extinction was probably the plowing and irrigation by settlers that disrupted the natural life cycle of the insects in the very small areas they existed in between swarms. Reports from this era suggest that farmers killed over 100 egg cases per square inch while plowing, harrowing or flooding. More likely the extinction was by a new plant by farmers like Neem tree with poison meliantriol already known for stopping locust spreading…

…the species was apparently extinct, with the last recorded sighting of a live specimen in 1902 in southern Canada. And because no one expected such a ubiquitous creature to become extinct, very few samples were ever collected (though a few preserved remains have been found in Grasshopper Glacier, Montana). Though grasshoppers still cause significant crop damage today, their populations do not even approach the densities of true locusts. Had the Rocky Mountain locust continued to survive, North American agriculture would likely have had to adapt to its presence (North America is the only continent without a major locust species outside of Antarctica)

Margaret endured to the end, seeing six of eight children reach adulthood and prosperity (11 year old Sarah and 7 year old Morgan died within a month of each other in late 1871-early 1872 from diphtheria).

Margaret outlived Edmund by 29 years, living to 72 despite dwelling high in the arid mountains of frontier Utah. She died on July 17, 1896, a few months after Utah became the 45th state on January 4, 1896 and just six years before her old nemesis Melanoplus spretus was last seen on this Earth.

[originally posted on Chicago Boyz on April 26th, 2012, republished here with minor corrections and links]

Page 3 of 3 | Previous page

Posted in 19th century, history, immigration, Lynn C. Rees, resilience, superempowered individuals | 6 comments

Previous post:
Next post:

  1. Charles Cameron:

    May 5th, 2013 at 5:01 am

    Great story, Lynn: 

    for every pan of milk that she set out they threw her down a sack of provisions and when they left she had enough food for the winter

    I used to have — probably still do in my storage unit — a facsimile of James Linforth’s Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake valley from the 1950s or 60s. If I recall correctly, Liverpool was the port most of the Welsh converts used to get to the US.

  2. Lynn C. Rees:

    May 5th, 2013 at 6:14 pm

    Hi Charles,

     

    Most converts from Europe were routed through Liverpool. My folks’ journey is representative of how LDS emigration was organized by the end of the 1850s as technology shrunk the globe (it grew even more effective with the coming of the Transcontinental railroad ten years later):

    ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH COMPANY. — William Tapscott, 725 souls. On Monday, April 11th, 1859, the ship William Tapscott sailed from Liverpool, England with 725 British, Scandinavian and Swiss Saints on board. The Scandinavian portion of the company, consisting of 355 souls, had sailed from Copenhagen, Denmark, on the steamer L. N. Hvidt April 1st, 1859, in charge of Elders Carl Widerborg and Niels Wihelmsen, and reached Grimsby, England, on the sixth, after a rather long and stormy passage over the German Ocean. From Grimsby the emigrants continued by rail to Liverpool, when they, on the seventh, went on board the William Tapscott, and were joined by the British and Swiss emigrants. Elder Robert F. Neslen was appointed president of the company, with Henry H. Harris and George Rowley as counselors.

     

    After going through the process of government inspection, clearing, etc., President Neslen, in connection with his counselors, proceeded to organize the company into ten wards, namely, five English and five Scandinavian, appointing a president over each, to see to the faithful observance of cleanliness, good order, etc. The Scandinavian Saints occupied one side of the vessel, and the British and Swiss the other…

     

    Elder Neslen writes that he felt it quite a task when he was appointed to take charge of a company composed of people from so many countries, speaking nine different languages, and having different manners, customs, and peculiarities, and thrown together under such close circumstances; but through the faithfulness and diligence of the Saints, which were universally manifested, he soon found the load far easier than he had anticipated, and on the arrival of the company in New York, it was pronounced by doctors and government officers to be the best disciplined and most agreeable company that ever arrived at that port.

     

    Arriving safely in the New York harbor, the emigrants were landed in the Castle Gardens on Saturday, the fourteenth of May. On the same day, in the evening; most of them continued the journey by steamboat up the Hudson River to Albany, where they arrived the following morning. Thence they traveled by rail via Niagara to Windsor, in Canada, where they, on the sixteenth crossed the river to Detroit, and thence continued the journey by rail, by way of Quincy to St. Joseph, Missouri, where they arrived on the twenty-first. In the afternoon of that day they boarded the steamboat St. Mary which brought them to Florence, Nebraska, where they arrived on the twenty-fifth, in the morning. The whole route through the States was one which no former company of emigrating Saints had ever taken. Brother George Q. Cannon and those who assisted him in the emigrating business were quite successful in making arrangements for their transportation by rail direct to St. Joseph, instead of, as first contemplated, shipping them to Iowa City.

     

    On their arrival at Florence the Saints were organized into temporary districts and branches, with presiding officers over each, whose duty it was to look after the comfort and welfare of the people which encamped at that place…

    Family history may record our original travel route incorrectly: “Upon arrival in America, they came up the Mississippi River to St. Joseph Mo. then to Council Bluffs, Iowa”. Over the years, I’ve taken this to mean that they took an all water route (as itemized above). Since economically viable rail transport had reached Iowa by 1859, that route seems more plausible than a passage through malaria country.

     

    Family history also records that coming over on the “William Tapp” was “a rough voyage, with much wind and waves”. Most accounts of the voyage agree with the official report that it was “a most pleasant and agreeable voyage, which lasted only thirty-one days”. Even though their Old World home in Pengam, Glamorganshire, Wales was 15 miles or so (as the crow flies) from the Atlantic, crossing that ocean (or Canada or the Mississippi) for the first time may have turned even the brief squall in life into an hurricane in memory. Such was the unfolding experience of many as 19C advances hurled the world forward.

  3. Lexington Green:

    May 5th, 2013 at 6:39 pm

    Here is the book Charles mentioned:  http://archive.org/details/routefromliverp00linfgoog
     

  4. Charles Cameron:

    May 5th, 2013 at 8:19 pm

    Many thanks, Lex.

  5. Spencer:

    May 5th, 2013 at 11:56 pm

    I found this site a little while ago with a link to a piece on “Duck of Minerva.”  It has become one of my favorite reads in my RSS reader and a part of my daily routine.  

    I was happily surprised today to find an LDS connection among the authors.  I hadn’t known or realized that before.  My own relatives came from Denmark and England (various waves) through Nauvoo and Iowa City.

    Thanks for a great blog product! 

  6. zen:

    May 6th, 2013 at 1:33 am

    “Margaret made the trip on foot without snow shoes in mid-winter while carrying 50 pounds of flour.”
    .
     Reading life in the 19th century is always an eye opener given the level of comfort Americans take for granted. Even by the early 1900’s, standards had changed so much that President Theodore Roosevelt’s order that the US Army personnel be tested annually by undergoing a 50 mile hike – and not in snow or carrying a 50 lb sack of flour -was passively resisted by Army leaders and TR was unable to make this stick.