Simeon McIntier and Isabel Nicol Pioneer Family

I can speak for at least three generations.

No one during the last three generations has any clear idea why Isabel Nicol, after her abandonment by Simeon McIntier (with no mention of divorce) was married to the same man that her sister Agnes had married (William Austin); neither do we understand why within two years after Isabel's death on the pioneer trail, William, thirty years the senior, would marry her own daughter, Agnes McIntier.

Yet, while puzzled, we have known that pioneer marriages, and later sealings, often had as purpose the safety and welfare of a widow or lone woman. Isabel Nicol had been, as a letter from her brother stated, "deserted" by her husband, somewhere in Iowa. The reason for the desertion is not known, but we acknowledge the stress of poverty and an uncertain future. Did Simeon leave in desperate hopes of bettering the family's economic circumstances? A census record indicates a possible stay in the gold mines of California--but that could be another lost soul of a Simon McIntyre. He apparently left in the company of one or more young sons. Perhaps he had left home more than once over the long thirty years of marriage.

As daughter Agnes tells us, the rural family from the cold but fertile borderline of Canada and New York "had worked their way to the eastern part of Illinois," over tiring years. They had to work along the way: there had been a quiver full of children already at journey's beginning; one, a little girl now lay buried in Nauvoo, Illinois, where she had died in 1843. Shortly thereafter, the family temporarily left Nauvoo looking for work again--and so the pattern unfolded--each step leading inexorably to a greater uncharted loneliness.

Given the circumstances of poverty and exile in a wilderness, a wilderness which would soon claim Isabel's life, we understand that a marriage served the same purpose as welfare services would serve today, that is, the protection and preservation of life. Exiles in the American wilderness had no access to social workers, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and the like. There was, however, a responsible person, who was willing to provide for his wife's sister, Isabel--and later, however baffling to us, for both wife's niece and wife's daughter in marriage: William Austin. William's later marriage with Isabel's own daughter, now bereft of both father and mother, becomes the unanswerable question, but we lose sight of family bonds, of family welfare, of family loyalty, a loyalty forged in refugee trials we scarcely comprehend.

Why William and Agnes decided to seal in marriage Agnes's husband with her own mother in the Endowment House, some twenty years after Isabel's death, is also mysterious beyond measure, even to minds and hearts fully nurtured on multiple family histories abounding in plurality of wives. Yet the doctrine of sealing was only in part understood at that time, and may be best understood by us as an acknowledgment that family belongs together--always. As William Austin had served in place of husband, caretaker of Isabel's temporal welfare after Isabel had been abandoned by her own husband, so in the next world, William Austin would also preside over her spiritual welfare.

Such a network of plural marriages--sisters, and then aunt and niece, mother and daughter--would have been rare (and perhaps exceptional) even in those days of plural marriages and plurality of sealings, but we must recall the plural difficulties, too, of what the younger Agnes later called "the long trek to Utah," a trek that had begun in 1838, from New York, and thence on-and-on, over 15 years. But one thing is for sure. We should not delete the record of marriage--"No marriage"--for William and Isabel, as a well-meaning contributor on FamilySearch, either in bafflement or denial, recently did (and we cannot delete the record of sealing), solely because marriage in the days of the pioneer cannot signify the same thing that it signifies to us today.

Records indicate that Simeon McIntier himself eventually showed up in Utah Territory and, clearly in good favor and standing in the Church, received at journey's end his own pilgrimage promises, blessings, and endowments in the Endowment House. He later died at the home of his son, near Ogden, Utah. Letters between family members show the great concern and love of the Austin household for Simeon McIntier. Had Simeon, lost in dreams or work--and work is also a dream--expected to reunite with his wife in Utah? If so, he was too late. Isabel had died of "mountain fever" in the once great Pioneer Encampment, long lost to view and presumably located a few hundred yards to the Northeast of Cache Cave, just over the border from Wyoming.

Filled with rumors, I went to the Cave on the one day it opens during the year, the first of Spring, seeking traces of autumnal pioneer burials. I found none; for there are none to find. The sheep rancher, who owns the property, drove me a little ways northward from the famous cave, and pointed to the Northeast: "The Camp must have been there," he said. It is there still, in the mystery of an untroubled stillness.

I went on exploring that day--on to Echo Canyon, where the only reverberations one hears today are the tremulous voices of history.

Little, if anything, in letters the children exchanged about their father's death, expresses blame, resentment--or even sorrow. Remember: These were Latter-day Saints and Pioneers. Daughter Agnes McIntier Austin left on record a single, parsimonious, sentence about Bentonsport and Winter Quarters: "We suffered hardships along with the rest of the Saints."

When the grandchildren of Simeon McIntier and Isabel Nicol went to the Logan Temple for the purpose of sealing in eternal marriage this long-separated couple, they did so without any sense of blame, resentment, or even full understanding of two victims, perhaps flawed martyrs, of the American Frontier. They did well.

Sketch of the Life of AGNES McINTIER AUSTIN, written by herself.

I was born in Hammond, St. Lawrence Co., New York, October 11, 1830. My parents, Simeon and Isabell Nicol McIntier, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when I was about seven years old. I was eight years old when my parents left New York and started west. They worked their way into the eastern part of Illinois. While we were living in Illinois, two Mormon Elders came to our house and made it their home for quite some time while they traveled around and preached the gospel to the people in the neighborhood. 

We moved into Nauvoo, Ill. sometime during the year 1841. I have seen the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum and heard them preach the gospel of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, quite a few times. I was present at the conference of the Church which was held in Nauvoo, Ill. on the 6th of October, 1843, and heard the Prophet say concerning Sidney Rigdon: "I have thrown him off my shoulders and you have again put him on me. You may carry him but I will not."

I was baptized in the Mississippi river; I think it was in May, 1844. I was baptized by Elder Augustus Stafford. On May 5th, 1844, my parents moved from Nauvoo for the summer, thinking they might get more work, but they returned to Nauvoo in September 1844, and remained there until the Saints left for the migration westward. 

We crossed the river in April and worked our way westward. We came to Bentensport [Bentonsport, Iowa] in the spring of 1846, and in the fall of 1847 we arrived at Winter Quarters, Nebraska. We suffered hardships along with the rest of the Saints. In 1852 we commenced the long trek to Utah. My mother, Isabell Nicol McIntier, took sick at Green River, with mountain fever. She died, and we buried her in Echo Canyon, Utah, just a little east of Cache Cave. We arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah, on October 8th, 1852.