Isaac and Laura

Isaac and Laura Goodwin

Isaac and Laura Goodwin
and the Ship Brooklin

July 31^st marks the anniversary of the arrival of the first Latter-day Saint pioneers in San Francisco, who arrived on the ship Brooklyn.

The recent dedication of the Manhattan Temple marked a new era for the Church in New York City. But the Temple is also the culmination of the Church coming full circle in Manhattan: the very first group of Mormon pioneers to settle in the West came from New York City. And they arrived one year before Brigham Young settled in Utah.

The New York City pioneers came by sea to the California Territory, arriving on July 31, 1846. These Mormons accidentally settled San Francisco for the United States and were the first American families to move West by sea. Their saga is a little-known story of relentless courage and newfound faith tried to the extreme. It is the little-known tale of how the California Gold Rush began…it is the forgotten voyage of the ship Brooklyn.

"Brethren Awake! Be determined to get out from this evil nation by next spring. We do not want one Saint to be left in the United States after that time." [1]

Such was the cry from Apostle Orson Pratt to the Saints in New York City in November 1845. [2] At the time, some Mormons practiced plural marriage and communal living, instilling broad suspicion among outsiders. And Church members’ habit of voting as a political bloc aroused lethal resentment. The result was fear and disdain of the Mormons.

In the last decade, Church members had been attacked, beaten, and driven from their homes three times. [3] In Nauvoo, Illinois, during February 1844, [4] the prophet Joseph Smith began making plans to flee America altogether.

He hoped his followers would be free from violence and suspicion in a territory outside the boundaries of the twenty-six United States. Yet, just four months after setting his plan in motion, Joseph Smith was imprisoned by Illinois’ Governor and then murdered by a mob.

Fleeing to Safety

Nearly a year and half later, the new prophet-leader Brigham Young called for implementation of Smith’s idea. The faithful were asked to leave America to settle their own community in the Mexican territory of Upper California—now Nevada, California, Utah and Arizona. Members in Nauvoo would make the journey overland, while those few saints left in the northeast were encouraged to travel west by sea.

On a cold, gray day in February 1846, Old Slip dock of New York City’s harbor was crowded with Mormon pioneers. Nearly 250 in number, most were new converts to the faith.

For John and Elizabeth Horner, a young couple from New Jersey, the sea voyage would be their honeymoon. They were married the day before they set out to port. Before leaving New York, John Horner purchased a shiny Colt six-shooter to protect his new wife from the so-called “savage territory” of California.

Isaac Goodwin and his wife, Laura, sold their farm near New Haven, Connecticut, and arrived at the New York dock with the largest family of the entire group. They had seven children and Laura was pregnant with eighth child.

On their first sea journey, these adventurous families entrusted their lives to a 26-year-old Mormon businessman named Samuel Brannan. [5] Brannan had been a personal friend of Joseph Smith. [6] In New York City, he directed the Church’s affairs and published a LDS newspaper called The New-York Messenger on his own press.

Samuel Brannon as Leader

Brannan was notoriously ambitious and highly unpredictable. Less than a year before the voyage, Church leaders excommunicated him for teaching false doctrine. Brannan managed to get himself reinstated—and only six months later the Church asked him to lead the exodus from New York.

Brigham Young told Brannan that the rest of the Saints might meet him on the California coast. Consequently, the New York Saints packed enough supplies and machinery to establish a new colony in California where all Mormons could gather. Among other things, they stocked sheets of glass, spools of twine, more than 40 pigs and at least two milk cows.

Although not a Mormon, Sam Brannan’s gifted 17-year-old printing apprentice, Edward Kemble, signed on for the trek to help establish a newspaper in California. He and Brannan loaded an immense printing press and enough supplies to run a newspaper for a year.

First Group to Go West by Sea

On February 4, 1846—coincidentally the same day the first Mormons began their overland trek West from Illinois—the ship Brooklyn set out on its own incredible journey.

Brooklyn at Sea: The ship Brooklyn carried the first group of Mormon Pioneers to the West, arriving in San Francisco on July 31, 1846. The ship made a return trip from New York City to San Francisco during the California Gold Rush in 1849.

The “Sea Saints” planned for a daunting, six-month mission. Despite other hazards, horrific storms at the tip of South America were legendary for causing shipwrecks. Only experienced sailors and merchants ever attempted to round the Horn, and even they called it the “Graveyard of the Ocean.”

If the New York Saints made it to California alive, they would become the first group of civilian families to go west by sea. To get there, Sam Brannan hired a crew that was friendly toward the Mormons. Their ship was a tattered, full-rigged vessel called the Brooklyn.

In this “staunch tub,” as one passenger called it, the ocean pioneers planned to follow the only-known sea route from New York to San Francisco Bay: the trade path arched south to Brazil, before venturing down around Cape Horn. To offset costs, the Brooklyn would then carry freight up to a tropical port in the Sandwich Islands, now called Hawaii. Finally, the passengers would travel to present-day San Francisco.

Crammed between decks in tiny rooms, approximately 70 men, 68 women and 100 children huddled in the dark—surrounded by water leaks, stale air, and the pounding of the sea against the hull. Only the children could stand upright between decks.

Sam Brannan, meanwhile, lived next to the Captain’s quarters in a pleasant space with his wife, their 10-week old son, Samuel Jr., and Brannan’s mother-in-law, Fanny Corwin.

Rough Weather

Less than a week at sea, Captain Abel C. Richardson spotted rough weather ahead. The storm turned out to be worst gale he had ever seen. Many passengers were tied to their bunks to avoid falling as the ship lurched back and forth. In crippling parts of the storm, passengers were not allowed access to the toilets and they were unable to eat.

After four days of sickening terror, the Brooklyn emerged into the Atlantic’s southeast trade winds. The only casualties appeared to be two milk cows, killed as the ship pitched to and fro. However, the storm’s real cost came two days later.

Sick with exhaustion and intestinal cramps, the baby of Joseph and Jerusha Nichols died.

Then fate seemed unduly cruel when 56-year-old Jerusha Ensign buried her husband—and then her 20-year-old daughter—in an ocean grave.

Parents and passengers clung to one small comfort: amidst the rolling waters, twenty-four-year-old Sarah Burr gave birth. She aptly named her son John Atlantic Burr.

Difficult Journey

Meanwhile, almost four weeks into the voyage, many passengers grew tired of reading, writing, and waiting—trying to fill endless hours of idleness.

Not that time was always theirs to pass. Sam Brannan developed twenty-one rules of conduct that kept his fellow Mormons on a strict schedule. Days started at 6 a.m. and ended at 9 p.m. Passengers were told when to eat, play, wash, and count the sick. [7]

Meanwhile, Brannan’s family ate with the Captain and he excused them from chores everyone else had to do. At the same time Brannan’s wife of two years, Anna Eliza, inexplicably shunned association with many fellow Mormons.

Rising Temperatures

The rise of some tempers on board paralleled the increasing temperature outside. Approaching the equator, the Brooklyn sailed nearly as far as the Cape Verde Islands off the West Coast of Africa. Captains heading for Cape Horn traveled this Easterly deviation to keep away from the rocky coast of northwestern Brazil.

The route also avoided sailing through the heart of a triangular patch of sea where the northeast trade winds and southeast trade winds collide, canceling each other out. This windless vacuum is a still, scorching limbo known as “the doldrums.”

On March 3, as the heat of the equator swelled, the Brooklyn crossed into the far end of this dreaded dead calm.

The sails…went limp.

As the heat swelled, pitch oozed from the ship’s seams. Passengers were left to smolder below deck in cramped, suffocating rooms — or stand above deck where the air “felt like a furnace” and you “lie panting like a lizard.” [8]

After three scorching days, the Brooklyn crept into the full southeast trade winds. But the doldrums, worsened by the difficulties of sea life, extracted their toll.

Many passengers began suffering from classic shipboard ailments: dehydration, digestive problems, and food poisoning. Children were hit the hardest.

After evening prayers on deck one night, Phoebe Robbins—whose two young sons were ailing—stumbled onto a somber sight. In the moonlight, mournful men gently lowered a small bundle into the water…the telltale sign of an infant burial at sea.

Only days later, Phoebe Robbins herself stood in the same spot on deck, saying a prayer as she buried one—and then her second—son in the rippling surface of the sea. [9]

Just weeks after giving birth to John Atlantic, Sarah Burr peered over the next watery grave as she buried her two-year-old son, Charles. [10]

In less than eight weeks at sail, nine passengers died. And everyone knew that the most dangerous trial of the journey still lay ahead: Cape Horn.

The Terror of Cape Horn

Beating toward the Cape, crewmembers overhauled the sails and strengthened the rigging. Violent, unpredictable winds, hail and sleet made Cape Horn perhaps the most feared place on earth to sail.

Waves could reach 80 to 90 feet in height, and move thirty miles an hour. Maritime crews often saw large pieces of demolished ships floating in the water—a haunting clue of the dangers that lay ahead.

With winds from the west outnumbering the Easterlies three to one, ships sailing against the air current typically took almost a month to round the Cape. And it was not uncommon to spend twice that long battling the wicked winds and ice.

Captain Richardson maneuvered carefully. He inched southward, directly into the worst winds and then slowly moved northwest. In less than two weeks—a remarkable time—the Brooklyn cleared Cape Horn without further loss of life.

The Mormons were half way to their new home. Yet their troubles were far from over.

By now, they had been at sea almost three months without touching land. The Mormons were in desperate need of new supplies. Fleas, lice, rats and roaches infested the passengers’ supplies and even the drinking water.

The plan was to put ashore in the small port of Valparaiso, in southern Chile. And on April 30, the lookout’s cry signaled that Valparaiso had been sighted.

The sea pioneers would never arrive there. Shortly after land was spotted, another storm slammed into the Brooklyn.

As waves pounded against the hull, Laura Goodwin—pregnant with her eighth child—slipped on a stairwell. Traumatized, she went into pre-mature labor and miscarried the baby. Then complications put Goodwin’s own life in jeopardy.

From her small, wooden bunk, she begged her husband and crew not to bury her at sea.

Yet, land was nowhere in sight. For three days, Goodwin clung to life as Captain Richardson battled the winds in vain. Then, with supplies exhausted, the Captain abandoned hope of reaching Valparaiso.

Running with the wind, he turned to Juan Fernandez Island, an almost deserted outpost nearly 400 miles off the coast of Chile.

Finally, on May 4th, 1846, the Brooklyn made port at Juan Fernandez. The passengers found clear, natural spring water and an oasis of orchards: pears, peaches, figs and berries.

But the joy of solid ground was soiled by the grim task of preparing a grave. Safe in the knowledge that a firm burial awaited her, 33-year-old Laura Goodwin finally succumbed.

Pacific Ocean

Three days later, May 9, Isaac Goodwin left his wife behind as the Brooklyn company set sail again — this time heading northwest toward the Sandwich Islands, now called Hawaii.

New hope shined in the calm waters of the Pacific: Phoebe Robbins, who buried two sons in the Atlantic, gave birth to a daughter. She named the child Georgiana Pacific Robbins.

According to one passenger, their trip across the Pacific Ocean was a "dreamy, delightful period of unbroken sea voyaging." [11] Yet, as the weather began to cooperate, allegiances to Brannan began to break down.

Brannan excommunicated four members from the Church for what he said was “immoral conduct.” Several passengers, including at least one passenger who was not LDS, objected.

Irony

On June 20, forty-one days after leaving Juan Fernandez, the Brooklyn arrived in Honolulu Harbor on the island of Oahu. Riding at anchor, framed by tropical palms, was the 44-gun American warship Congress.

The Mormons anxiously watched as its commander Robert F. Stockton rowed across the harbor. He boarded the Brooklyn with unwelcome news: the United States was at war with Mexico — the very nation where the Mormons had hoped to seek shelter.

Seven weeks earlier, mounting tension between the United States and Mexico over American efforts to annex western territory had to come to a head. On April 25, 1846, Mexican troops had attacked U.S. soldiers near the Rio Grande. American President James K. Polk had declared war.

Now, in Hawaii, Commander Stockton encouraged the Mormons to buy more military weapons and to move on to California—in the name of the United States. According to journalist Edward Kemble, not a member of the LDS Church, this was an ironic request:

“To help America establish its authority in a new land was a very wide departure from the original plans, if not in direct antagonism with their designs." [12]

Sam Brannan did buy more weapons, but he bought them to protect his landing party, not to help fight for the United States. “Armed to the teeth” as Brannan described it, [13] the Brooklyn passengers set sail northeast toward their final destination: a modest Mexican whaling village known as Yerba Buena, now called San Francisco.

On deck, the men began military drills as the women sewed denim uniforms. Four weeks later, on Friday, July 31, passengers and crew readied to enter San Francisco Bay.

Upon entering the bay, the Brooklyn passengers were stunned to see another battleship at port. Three weeks earlier, the 22-gun warship Portsmouth had sailed into the harbor. Now, on the decks of the Portsmouth, American soldiers were astonished to see the sails of the Brooklyn emerge through the fog.

Soldiers on shore scrambled and began military procedures until they looked out and saw women on board the Brooklyn. Then, rather than attack the new ship, the soldiers sailed out to greet it.

American Commander John B. Montgomery and several infantrymen climbed on board the Brooklyn. His greeting was met with mixed emotion when he announced that the village of Yerba Buena had been captured and was now part of the United States of America.

The Mormons had sailed 20,000 miles and endured five months and 27 days at sea. Six children, four adults and one crewmember died during the harrowing journey. The Brooklyn sea pioneers became the first emigrant families to sail together from the East Coast to the West.

Now—accidentally—they were also the first U.S. citizens to settle in American California.

American Presence in California

News of their exodus from the eastern states arrived long before they did. Even in the remote outposts of California, American soldiers in the territory’s capital at Monterey received word that the Mormons would "kill you off and take possession of all your worldly gear."

Mormon or not, the U.S. military was eager to establish an American presence in California and encouraged the Saints to settle. American territory or not, the Mormons had few alternatives.

In Yerba Buena, named for its “good herbs”, the pioneers established industries and built homes. They set up shop as craftsmen, tailors, bakers, surveyors, mason, carpenters, cobblers and attorneys. Spreading throughout the region, they established the first local bank, post office, library, and the first English public school in California.

Villagers soon changed the name to match the bay: San Francisco. And in honor of the Mormons’ voyage, a township across the bay was named “Brooklyn.”

Gold Discovery

Gold Rush Delusions: After Sam Brannan announced the discovery of gold in his newspaper, thousands of gold seekers around the world had delusions of finding gold and getting rich quick. Few found their dreams come true. Sam Brannan, who brought his printing press on the ship Brooklyn, established the first local newspaper, The California Star. But perhaps no other contribution is more infamous than when Brannan helped launch the California Gold Rush.

Thirteen months after the Brooklyn arrived, more than 100 new Mormons came to San Francisco from Southern California. They were veterans of the Mormon battalion—a band of men Brigham Young had asked to serve in the Mexican War.

Near Sutter’s Fort, a trading post in present-day Sacramento, six of the men signed on to build a sawmill on the American river. The battalion boys needed money and supplies so they could go to Salt Lake City.

Then on January 24, 1848, foreman James Marshall and the six Mormons unearthed a discovery that changed history: gold.

When Brannan caught word of the discovery, he ran through the streets of San Francisco announcing the news. And his newspaper broke the story for the rest of the world.

Cornering the market on supplies and equipment, Brannan made a fortune on the forty-niners who flooded the region. Sam Brannan became the richest man in California without even digging for gold. However, he lost his faith, he lost his wife and eventually he lost his fortune.

Horner

Meanwhile, honeymooner John Horner still had his gun. When he realized he and Elizabeth were safe, he sold his pistol to grow a vegetable farm. Shortly afterwards, thousands of hungry miners came looking for gold and the Horners made a fortune. In 1853 alone, they grew more than 22 million pounds of potatoes. The Horners made the equivalent of more than five million dollars in one year. However, they lost nearly everything they owned in the financial panic of the 1850s.

Destitute they moved to Hawaii in 1879, arriving on Christmas Day. There, the Horners once again broke new ground in agriculture—this time raising sugar cane. And, once again, they made a small farming fortune.

What Became of the Sea Pioneers

After Brigham Young decided to settle in Salt Lake City, about two-thirds of the Brooklyn passengers moved to Utah. The sea pioneers brought with them more than $40,000 dollars in gold, infusing desperately needed cash into Salt Lake’s economy.

Today, there are nearly one million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in California. A group of Brooklyn passenger descendants has started the Ship Brooklyn Association.

However, little remains to commemorate the impact the Brooklyn pioneers had on the Bay area. A small plaque in downtown San Francisco marks the spot where the ship first arrived. A few blocks away, Chinatown now covers the community where many Brooklyn Saints settled.

Yet, across the bay, in the boundaries of the old township called Brooklyn, the LDS Church has built a soaring temple on the hill. It is a coincidental tribute to the New York City LDS pioneers who first settled in the west.

[1] New York Messenger 15 Nov. 1845.

[2] Times and Seasons, 1 Dec. 1845; HC 7: 520-22; CHC, V.3, Ch.71, p.26

[3] Samuel Brannan Papers: Scoundrel’s Tale, p. 101

[4] History of the Church 6:222, 224

[5] Samuel Brannan Papers: Scoundrel’s Tale, p. 23

[6] History of the Church, 2:205-6.

[7] Times and Seasons, February 15 1846

[8] Samuel Brannan Papers: Scoundrel’s Tale, p. 136

[9] Carter 1960, p. 572

[10] Carter 1960, p. 521

[11] Kemble Reader, 1963, p. 22

[12] Kemble Reader, 1963, p. 24.

[13] Samuel Brannan Papers: Scoundrel’s Tale, p. 123