STRENUOUS LIFE IN NAUVOO—CITY BESIEGED—THRILLING EXPERIENCE—MIRACLE OF QUAILS—RUN OVER BY WAGON—WAGON SINKS TO BOTTOM OF RIVER—LIFE IN UTAH—MISSION ABROAD—HER POSTERITY.

They succeeded in acquiring a fairly comfortable home in Nauvoo, and a farm a short distance outside of the city, but they were not destined to long enjoy their possessions. The enemies of the Church were not content with having killed the Prophet and Patriarch; they were determined to drive the Saints from the state of Illinois, as they had previously been driven from Missouri. The Saints, especially in the outlying settlements, were continually being harassed by the lawless mob. Farms were frequently pillaged or their crops burned. Domestic animals were driven off, and the inhabitants in some instances severely beaten and compelled to flee from their homes to save their lives. Many of their houses were also set fire to before the owners' sight.

Not only were the Saints the victims of these ruthless depredations, but they were actually accused of being the perpetrators of the same, and this made the pretext by the mob for demanding that the Saints remove from the state or abandon their religion. Is it any wonder that some of the more weak and faithless of the members chose the latter alternative?

An agreement was finally entered into, between the Saints on one side, and state officials and leaders of the mob on the other, that the Saints should leave the state as soon as they could sell their possessions. It soon became apparent, however, that they would have to abandon their homes instead of selling them, as their enemies, though anxious to secure them, showed little disposition to pay for them.

The majority of the Saints living in Nauvoo left there to journey westward in the early part of the year 1846, leaving those whose services to work upon the Temple were required, or who lacked the necessary equipment for the journey, to follow on afterwards. When the Apostles returned later to Nauvoo to dedicate the Temple they exacted a promise from those yet remaining there, and who possessed the necessary outfits to undertake the journey, that they would not abandon any of the less fortunate Saints who might desire to accompany them, but help them out of the state. Before they were ready to depart, however, the mobocrats, in far superior numbers, surrounded and besieged the city.

Charles Lambert took a prominent part in the city's defense, helping to manipulate one of the cannons, which, in the emergency, he and others had improvised from an old steamboat shaft, and which had been mounted upon a part of the running gear of a wagon.

Mother Lambert was an interested and anxious spectator of the battle. In addition to having her own small family to care for, a Mrs. Haines, a neighbor, who was very ill, had been brought to her home to be nursed, her husband being absent from the city. During the bombardment, which continued for several days, some of the cannon balls fired by the mob passed close by, but none of them actually struck the house. In one instance an old gentleman, who felt too feeble to be among the city's defenders, but whose anxiety to see how the battle waged led him to ascend to the top of the roof of the Lambert house to get a good view, was so alarmed by a cannon ball passing close by his head, that he rolled from the roof to the ground.

A flag of truce was finally raised by the mob and a treaty effected, one of the provisions of which was that the Saints would vacate the city within three days. Such of the household goods possessed by the Lambert family as could be, were loaded into a wagon box and an attempt made to remove across the river. As they approached the Mississippi, however, in the lower part of the town, so many other wagons were found to be ahead of theirs, waiting to be ferried over, that a temporary camp was made near an abandoned home.

While on the way from their home to this point the family had been surrounded by a large posse of the mob and compelled to give up to them such fire arms as they possessed. Soon after reaching the temporary camp, and while Father Lambert was absent with his team for the purpose of hauling John Haines' wagon, with his household goods and his sick wife in it, down to the same point, a second mob appeared and demanded that Mother Lambert give up to them whatever fire arms were in the wagon. In vain she told them the weapons had already been surrendered, and that she did not have the keys to unlock the boxes in the wagon. They used a hammer to forcibly break open the boxes, and proceeded to ransack all that the wagon contained, with the result that they obtained possession of a sword and bowie knife. These they brandished before the frightened mother and panic-stricken children, accusing her of lying to them when she said she had no fire arms, and threatening to cut her head off.

A sister of the Prophet Joseph Smith was a witness of this scene, she having proffered to remain with Mother Lambert for company while her husband was absent, and expressed regret that she didn't have some weapon to shoot the men with while threatening her friend.

In course of time they succeeded in getting ferried over the river and formed a camp on the Iowa side until Father Lambert could fulfill his pledge to help the poor Saints who had no means of conveyance, across the river, where they would be free from the power of the mob.

While engaged in this mission of charity, a party of mobocrats recognized him as one who had been conspicuous in the fight, and, with guns aimed at him, ordered his surrender. Then, while the two largest men of the party took him down into the the river and held him under the water three times in succession until his breath was gone, fourteen others, with their guns cocked and ready for action, threatened to shoot him if he attempted to resist.

Of course, he did not resist, neither did two brethren who were with him at the time—Thomas Harrington and Daniel Hill—for they were unarmed and knew it would be folly to do so. They were silent witnesses of the scene, and neither they nor Father Lambert made any response to the oaths of their persecutors, nor to the threat that if they ventured upon that side of the river again they would be shot on sight. Notwithstanding the threat, however, Father Lambert was in Nauvoo the following day, and continued to go over there until all the poor Saints who cared to be helped across the river had abandoned the city.

On one of these occasions he was detained in Nauvoo, because of the pressing nature of what he had in hand, and Mother Lambert, fearing the mob had caught him and executed their threat, walked the bank of the river all night in the greatest agony of suspense, and inquired anxiously about her husband of every passenger that crossed on the ferry boat, but all in vain. However, he showed up the next morning, with an additional yoke of cattle which he had secured on an account due him.

While encamped on the bank of the river on the Iowa side, a rain storm occurred, which continued without cessation for three days and nights, until the wagons and their contents, as well as the clothing worn, were thoroughly soaked. The sick woman, Mrs. Haines, was placed on a bed under the wagon, that being the most sheltered place available, and there Mother Lambert and others waited upon her as best they could, even holding milk pans over her bed to catch the water as it dripped through the wagon box, until she died—a martyr to the persecution to which the Saints were subjected.

It was while encamped on the bank of this river that the Saints, many of them suffering for want of food as well as otherwise ailing, were visited by a flock of quails, miraculously rendered so tame that some of them alighted on the beds occupied by the sick and were caught by their hands, and others allowed themselves to be killed with sticks. Those persecuted and suffering Saints, the Lambert family among the rest, accepted the birds as sent of the Lord, considering themselves as much the objects of divine favor as were the Israelites of old when fed with manna, and cooked the quail and ate them with the greatest possible relish.

The journey through Iowa was a very difficult one, and not entirely devoid of danger. The country was very sparsely settled, there were no really good roads except occasional stretches of natural prairie, and the numerous streams encountered generally had to be forded because of the absence of bridges. However, they did not travel continuously, a stop of some weeks being made at Bonaparte, and employment obtained by which supplies were earned.

It was while traveling westward from that point that a very serious accident occurred. Mother Lambert was very nervous about riding over bad places, preferring to walk when allowed to do so. The fact that the team animals, which consisted of two yoke of steers and one yoke of cows, were not well broken—in fact, quite wild when they left Nauvoo—rendered her more chary about riding. When approaching Soap Creek, which she had learned was a difficult stream to cross, she alighted from the wagon, and soon afterwards, by some accident, fell in front of the wagon wheel, and, before the team could be stopped, two wheels had passed over the small of her back. In addition to the weight of the wagon itself, its load amounted to fully 3500 pounds, making a combined weight sufficient to crush the life out of a person under ordinary circumstances. Indeed, it was supposed when she was picked up that she was dead. Father Lambert, however, was not willing to admit such a possibility, and called upon as many of his fellow travelers as had any faith to join with him in administering to her. His wife was miraculously spared, and the journey resumed the following day, but she has suffered more or less ever since from the effects of the accident.

Winter Quarters, on the west bank of the Missouri river, where the main body of the Saints had encamped, was reached late in November, and, as soon as Father Lambert had constructed a log house to shelter his family during the winter, he made his way to Missouri and found employment by which he earned supplies, and sent to his wife and children. He and his family were ambitious to journey westward with the pioneers in the spring. They were prevented, however, from doing so by the Indians killing their team animals after they had been brought through the winter in good condition, and shortly before the journey was to be undertaken.

It was a sad disappointment, but only a temporary set back. With courage unabated, the family removed to St. Joseph, Mo., where living was cheap and work abundant, and in February of the following year, with a new team and supplies earned in Missouri, Mother Lambert and the children were sent forward to Winter Quarters, to be ready to undertake the journey westward, while Father Lambert remained in Missouri to work as long as possible before rejoining them.

That journey of 150 miles in that inclement season was a terrible one, but it was bravely accomplished. In crossing the river from Ferry Point to Winter Quarters, however, a new misfortune occurred. The river had been frozen over for a considerable period, and teams had passed over it on the ice with impunity. Even that very morning two heavily loaded wagons had gone over. Yet, when the Lambert wagon was being taken across, although the precaution had been resorted to of taking the team over first and drawing the wagon over from a distance with a rope, the ice gave way. There, in that bleak March weather, six weeks before her son George was born, Mother Lambert stood upon the bank of the Missouri river, with her child in her arms and her two young brothers and younger sister clinging to her skirts, and saw the wagon containing all the family's earthly substance sink through the ice to the bottom of the stream. Sister Jane Dutson, (afterwards Mrs. Alexander Melville, of Fillmore) who had accompanied Mother Lambert from Missouri, stood beside her when the wagon disappeared, and the catastrophe almost made their hearts cease beating.

They never expected to see the wagon or its contents again. The accident, however, didn't prove so serious as that. The occasion served to illustrate how spontaneously kind, sympathetic and resourceful Latter-day Saints are. Though Mother Lambert had few acquaintances in Winter Quarters, the news of her misfortune soon spread, and proffers of help and expressions of sympathy came from all quarters. Volunteers soon plunged into the ice-cold water and readily reappeared bearing in their hands articles recovered from the wagon, which in turn were seized by others standing near the edge of the ice and then loaded upon hand sleds and conveyed to the shore. Before night set in most of the contents of the wagon had been recovered—damaged, of course, but not completely spoiled, and all done without any intimation of a favor being conferred thereby, much less any kind of remuneration being expected. Depend upon it, though, Mother Lambert was not lacking in gratitude, and in her prayers that night as she enjoyed the shelter of Brother Harrington's hospitable roof, she thanked God with all the fervency of which she was capable that she was a Latter-day Saint, and for the fraternal spirit that abounded among her fellow members.

The next day, by some method not now remembered, the wagon also was recovered.

Very soon afterwards President Young, who was then at Winter Quarters, preparing to start on his second trip to the Salt Lake Valley, accompanied by his family, wrote to Father Lambert in Missouri, advising that he remain there another year, promising, as a condition of his doing so, that he should lose nothing, but be able to go with a much better outfit than he otherwise could. Mother Lambert and the children accordingly returned thither, and awaited the arrival of the spring of 1849.

The journey to the valley, which occupied six months, was full of vicissitudes and rich in the experience that tends most to develop character. The goal for which the family had longed and prayed, though a wild region, forbidding in appearance, was hailed with joy, as promising exemption from contact with a sinful world, and freedom from persecution.

One thing that was specially disappointing to Mother Lambert and her three proteges was, that their brother George Q., who, with his sister Ann had reached the valley in 1847, soon after the pioneers landed, had only the day before started on a mission to California, thence to proceed to the Sandwich Islands. This involved a separation, as it afterwards proved (counting from the time they parted in Winter Quarters,) of almost eight years. He had, in anticipation of the family's arrival, arranged for the purchase of a lot—the same lot which was the family's home for so many years, and still in their possession, and made some adobes from which they might construct a house.

As illustrative of Father Lambert's disposition to follow the counsel of the church leaders, it may here be mentioned that President Willard Richards, one of the pioneers, and second counselor to President Young, who entertained a very strong friendship for Father Lambert, had saved a corner lot on Main Street—that which Walker Bros. bank occupied for so many years—for his friend, and so informed him on his arrival. Father Lambert expressed his gratitude for the kindness, but said, as President Young's counsel was that no family should have more than one city lot, and his brother-in-law, George Q., had bargained for a lot for him a couple of blocks distant from Main Street (the price of which must be paid) and made some adobes with which to build thereon, he felt that he ought to decline Brother Richards' kind offer. One has only to recall the almost fabulous value of that Main Street lot at the present time to realize what he lost by that declination, and yet, if its possession would have made the family become worldly-minded and think less of their religion, Father Lambert must even now, if permitted to know anything of mundane affairs, thank God that he did not accept it.

Those early years in Salt Lake Valley were years of desperate toil, hardship and privation, of which the Lambert family had their full share—perhaps more than their share; not however, from want of effort on their part, for none were more industrious or frugal, but largely because of their willingness to help others.

A more generous man than Charles Lambert probably never lived. He found more pleasure in relieving the wants of others who were in need than self gratification ever could have afforded him, and his wife was a worthy partner in that same respect. The needy did not have to apply to them to obtain assistance; they were sought for and their wants relieved without ostentation. No family ever bore privation with less complaining. When the crops failed through the ravages of grasshoppers, weeks passed without even the children of the household and served first the were they and bread, tasting the last to go without.

No woman in Utah probably had the faculty of preparing for her family a more palatable meal from herbs and roots than Mother Lambert, nor more wholesome and enjoyable fare when food was more plentiful and varied. How she accomplished the herculean tasks which came to her, and which she performed uncomplainingly, is incomprehensible to the present generation. Her first three children being boys, and their services being otherwise required, she had very little help in the household the greater part of the time she was bearing children, and she was the mother of fourteen. (She didn't shirk the duties of motherhood.) She was the dressmaker and tailoress for the family, even to the carding and spinning of the wool some of the time. Hers also was the task of cooking for the family, and not with the present facilities either. The open fireplace with its bake kettle and skillet and frying pan, and the adobe oven, were her early culinary conveniences in Utah. These were succeeded by the sheet iron stove, and that by the cast iron stove, and so on up to the range. She did the butter making and washing and ironing and mending for the family too, and it was always a big family, frequently including hired male help. She was the housekeeper also, and a good housekeeper too, the house being seldom out of order. It presented a cheery welcome to friends and acquaintances from far and near, and many availed themselves of it.

Hers was no stinted hospitality. The best she had was at the disposal of all who called, and frequently even the floors were taxed to their capacity to find room for the beds of those she entertained.

She was a good disciplinarian too. All her children as they grew up were taught to work, and in turn bore their share of the burden. She was also a famous nurse, and possessed of considerable skill in the use of the simple remedies that served so well to maintain a standard of health that has not been equaled in more recent years, notwithstanding our numerous and high-priced doctors. In these latter respects her services were not limited to members of her own household by any means.

Her own health was never especially robust, though she must have inherited a strong constitution and possessed naturally an indomitable will. She was seldom free from pain in her back, as a result of the accident before mentioned. Her powers were taxed too, upon numerous occasions, and for extended periods, in caring for an ailing husband, although he was a man who would bear any amount of pain without complaint. He was a great sufferer from inflammatory rheumatism, which caused a partial loss or his eyesight several times, and for more than six months at one time he was without the use of one arm, through having his shoulder dislocated.

The death of her husband, which occurred more than twenty-two years since, added an additional burden to her, but it also called forth her self-reliance, and proved that she possessed considerable executive ability.

In addition to all the labors and cares and duties mentioned, Mother Lambert found time throughout a very large part of her career for a great deal of charity work. For fifteen and a half years she was secretary of the relief society of the 7th ward, and for the succeeding twenty-two years was its president. She filled the last named office up to the time she removed from the ward, and her removal was for the purpose of being near the Temple, having been called to be one of its regular workers at the time that edifice was completed in 1893.

She filled a mission to England with her husband in 1882-3 and spent several months visiting different countries in Europe in 1906, mainly for the purpose of obtaining genealogical data. She has performed ordinances in the Temple for hundreds of her relatives and friends who died without the privilege of accepting the Gospel. She has also labored to a considerable extent as a missionary from the general board of the Relief Society, her travels in this capacity extending from Idaho in the north to Mexico in the south.

As an indication of the devotion of Mother Lambert and her family to the cause of truth, it may be said that the missionary work performed by herself and direct progeny (including the general work in the Temple, by direct call of the Church authorities) amounts in the aggregate to more than fifty-eight years.

Hers has been an unusually busy and useful life, and, according to her opinion, a rather happy one. She feels that she has had more real joy during her eighty-five and a half years upon earth than usually falls to the lot of mortals. And why not? A faithful adherence to duty throughout her life has left her comparatively little to regret, and unhappiness is largely the result of regret and remorse for sins committed and opportunities lost. Happiness depends less upon worldly possessions and a life of ease than upon a pure heart and a clear conscience. Her present joy is all the more complete for the sorrow she has felt; the peace of her recent years all the more enjoyable for the trials and turmoil of the past, and the comfortable competence she now enjoys is all the more appreciated because of her early privations.

If happiness is at all dependent upon the love of kindred, she ought to be supremely happy; for she has a numerous posterity, who almost idolize her. She is not able to wholly gratify the wishes of her several sons and daughters, because of her inability to spend her remaining days in mortality as a member of the household of each; so until recently she maintained her own modest but comfortable home and enjoyed a hearty welcome at the home of any of them as often and as long as she chose to visit.

During recent years the infirmity of age has led her to give up housekeeping and take up her residence with her eldest daughter. She receives every attention that love and duty can suggest, and is happy and contented. She is still a model of industry, seldom being seated for many minutes without having some kind of needlework, writing or reading to give her attention to.

In this connection it may be mentioned that for a great many years past it has been her habit to exhibit specimens of her needle work produced during the previous year at the annual State Fair, and has always received recognition, and sometimes the highest prizes, for the excellence of her productions.

As an indication of her methodical habits, it may be mentioned that she keeps a diary, or journal, in which she daily records, with her own hand, passing events of local or general interest, and especially happenings among her own family or progeny, and her financial transactions, as well as how she spends her time and the condition of her health. This has been her daily practice ever since shortly after her husband's death, and is a continuation of the journal which he kept during the greater part of his life.

It may be mentioned that Mother Lambert's personal accidents during her later years have been somewhat numerous, mainly because of her independence and disposition to do things herself rather than ask anyone else to do them for her. She has suffered from broken ribs no less than six different times, but she has always rallied wonderfully quick from any injury or ailment.

She takes a great interest in all of her progeny, remembers their names and quite generally their birthdays, and frequently visits among them. Her children appreciate her wise counsel and motherly interest, and feel, one and all, that whatever of merit they have accomplished in life has been due to the inspiring example and wholesome precepts set before them by her and their revered father.

To him not less than to her do they feel indebted, and forever shall be though they become the best and most dutiful of sons and daughters, for he was a model father, as loving, kind, self-sacrificing, honest, industrious and faithful as mortal father ever was. He alone of all his father's family embraced the Gospel as revealed anew, but from him and Mother Lambert, through the blessing of the Lord, a direct progeny has resulted (including three generations) to the number of 201, all of whom are living except 29, and all in the faith for which he sacrificed so much, and which was his guiding star through life.

Scarcely less remarkable has been the increase from the Cannon family generally, although the posterity of Mother Lambert outnumbers those of any one of her brothers or sisters. The direct descendants of George Cannon (including the six children already mentioned as having been left orphans, and their sister Elizabeth, born as a product of the second marriage six months after her father's death) who are living number almost 700, to say nothing of those who have died. In view of the fact that their numerous relatives left in England and the Isle of Man have actually decreased until their known descendents scarcely outnumber the fingers on one's two hands, we may well exclaim, "What hath God wrought!"