Teaching a Primary class about the exodus of the Saints from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters, I realized that the Saints went right by Osceola, Iowa where many of my ancestors settled.  I wondered if they watched the Saints go by.

That was in 1846-48.  A history of Clark County Iowa says that the first white people in the area were Mormons on their way to the Rocky Mountains.  My people weren’t even there yet!

Adam Kerns came in 1854.  So did Freeborn Wesley Johnson.  Luther Cooley and Samuel Danner would have been about the same.  Also Fredrick Barrows.  They were all there, but later.  They all came via Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.  I wonder what contact any of them might have had with the Latter-day Saints?