On my maternal side, the Jeffries side, under the Maxfield name, my Grandmother Georgia Maxfield Jeffries, her grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Baker Maxfield left Canada when her husband abruptly converted to Mormonism, taking her and their six children in a covered wagon from their farm, leaving it to be sold by a lawyer, who swindled every dime from them.
Along the trail, their two youngest sons, and their fifteen-year old son Jesse, perished along the trail at Council Bluffs, on July 9th, 1850, when he attempted to harvest medicinal herbs for his dying baby brothers, eighteen-month old Benjamin, who died soon after and ten-month old John. Jesse was swept into the Missouri River never to be recovered. They only found poor Jesse’s hat. He died heroically. In one week their mother lost half of her children.
They buried the babies along the trail, and she wrote this poem for her three sons in remembrance.
“Beloved little sleepers, let mother sing your sleep song.
Yet if I leave you there alone, cradled underneath a stone, It is not that I forget.
Could the wagon’s creaking weight and the oxen’s heavy gait turn about and bring me back to you, All the pain fraught track, born again where previous freight.
Now the rain falls, dark with fears, do my words reach heaven’s ears? Are you listening and know that I sing again to you. Not to be afraid, my dears.
Never, never as you rest, there upon the Earth’s languid breast, shall there be a moment I walking on will let you lie, unremembered and unblessed.
Every looming brooding rock, crouched before me as I walk is some fortress where you creep, Indian playing; when I sleep every dream bears baby talk.
Not a bird can rise and stir. Dusk’s fine air with singing whir. But your voices fly to me.
Luminous, again I see, two small faces through the blur. I shall carry as I go, hurt and aching plodding slow, over every rutted mile, every little childish smile, every laugh, and tear, and know if your palely lidded eyes search no more these alien skies for a gift of quail or grouse to our needy wagon house.
God is good and God is wise.
If my groping senses find any pain unjust or blind with bitterness I weep, rest my little ones, asleep. I must trust, God is kind.
Beloved, little sleepers, let mother sing your sleep song. Yet when I leave you there alone, cradled underneath a stone, it is not that I forgot.