Arthur Parker - The red shawl
Captain McArthur Handcart Company
The Red Shawl
In a pioneer diary is this story dated July 1858. The Parker family was traveling west in a handcart company. One night as a thunderstorm blew up, they hastily made camp, and it was then the Parkers discovered their six-year-old boy, Arthur, was missing. Robert and Ann Parker spread the alarm to the rest of the camp, and someone remembered seeing the little boy earlier in the day settling down to rest in a wooded area. He was exhausted from the trip.
For two days the men in the camp searched for the missing child, and then, with no alternative, the company moved west. Robert Parker went back alone to continue the search, but as he left, his wife, Ann, pinned a red shawl around his shoulders. She said if he found the boy dead to use the shawl to bury him, but if he were alive to signal them as he came back to camp.
For three nights Ann and her other children watched, and finally, just as the sun was setting on the next night, they caught a glimpse of the shawl waving in the last rays of day. The pioneer journal records, "Robert Parker came into camp with his little boy that had been lost. Great joy throughout the camp. The mother's joy, I cannot describe." Apparently a nameless woodsman had found the terrified boy and cared for him until his father came. One who later retold the story asked: "How would you, in Ann Parker's place, feel toward the nameless woodsman who had saved your little son?
The Red Shawl
In a pioneer diary is this story dated July 1858. The Parker family was traveling west in a handcart company. One night as a thunderstorm blew up, they hastily made camp, and it was then the Parkers discovered their six-year-old boy, Arthur, was missing. Robert and Ann Parker spread the alarm to the rest of the camp, and someone remembered seeing the little boy earlier in the day settling down to rest in a wooded area. He was exhausted from the trip.
For two days the men in the camp searched for the missing child, and then, with no alternative, the company moved west. Robert Parker went back alone to continue the search, but as he left, his wife, Ann, pinned a red shawl around his shoulders. She said if he found the boy dead to use the shawl to bury him, but if he were alive to signal them as he came back to camp.
For three nights Ann and her other children watched, and finally, just as the sun was setting on the next night, they caught a glimpse of the shawl waving in the last rays of day. The pioneer journal records, "Robert Parker came into camp with his little boy that had been lost. Great joy throughout the camp. The mother's joy, I cannot describe." Apparently a nameless woodsman had found the terrified boy and cared for him until his father came. One who later retold the story asked: "How would you, in Ann Parker's place, feel toward the nameless woodsman who had saved your little son?
