Messenger of the Lord

Intrepid Traveler

Ellen White’s pioneer spirit was probably best manifested in her remarkable travel itinerary. By 1885 she had crossed the United States from California to Michigan about twenty-four times by train, only sixteen years after the transcontinental connection had been made at Promintory, Utah! Obviously, these trips were nothing like what people today can even remember, nothing resembling the “romance” that people attached to rail travel in the first half of the twentieth century. ¹⁵ MOL 104.2

Wooden passenger cars, hazardous in accidents, were the order of the day, not being replaced by all-steel cars until 1907. “Seats were straight backed and thinly cushioned, if at all. A coal stove furnished the only heat; candles and oil lamps provided the light. Open platform vestibules offered little protection from the weather when walking from one car to another.” ¹⁶ The engineer “could be identified by his aroma of bourbon as readily as a drummer by his sample case.” ¹⁷ MOL 104.3

The first forty years of rail travel to the West were the “heyday of the miner, the cowboy, the train robber, and the bad man, any and all of whom you might find riding the plush or the wooden slats of the steam cars.” The country going west “was bare and harsh, buffeted by cruel winters, baked by torrid summers. Rain, when it came, was a destructive torrent. Droughts occurred at regular intervals.... In 1874, with most railroad construction halted by the financial panic of 1873, the grasshoppers struck, eating every growing thing from the Canadian border to northern Texas. A Union Pacific train at Kearney [Nebraska] was stalled in a three-foot drift of ‘hoppers.’” ¹⁸ MOL 104.4

In 1876 the conventional travel time between the Pacific coast and New York was seven days and nights, with changes of cars at Omaha and Chicago. ¹⁹ MOL 104.5

Three times Ellen White took the hazardous ocean trip to Oregon (1878, 1880, 1884) when facilities were still primitive. Of her visit in 1878 when she was 50, a worker’s wife reported: “Sister White was so ambitious when here, when contemplating work that was to be done, that it really seemed that she forgot her years. Her visit to Oregon was of the most valuable benefit to the work of Present Truth [sic] here.” ²⁰ MOL 104.6

In 1852, the Whites left Rochester, New York, for a two-month trip to New England by horse and carriage. James arranged the itinerary and informed Adventists through the church paper as to the time and place they could expect the Whites. The schedule was grueling; one leg of 100 miles was allotted only two days! But with good weather and no breakdowns, they managed to meet their appointments. While they bumped along in an open carriage, James thought of what he would write to the Review and Youth’s Instructor. When they stopped to let Charlie, their horse, eat, he would write the articles “on the cover of our dinner box, or the top of his hat.” ²¹ MOL 104.7

Ellen White’s experience trying to get to a camp meeting appointment in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, early in June, 1889, well illustrates her persevering, pioneering spirit. This was the year of the heavy rain and the Johnstown Flood. Many roads and bridges were washed away enroute. The train moved slowly from Battle Creek. When they reached Elmira, New York, they were advised to return home. But Mrs. White (now 61) and Sara McEnterfer forged ahead. When the train could go no further, these two women hired a carriage. When the carriage was forced to stop, the women walked— completing the last 40 miles in four days. MOL 104.8

The phenomenal journey is described in Ellen White’s report in the The Review and Herald, July 30, 1889. In that report she wrote: “We were obliged to walk miles on this journey, and it seemed marvelous that I could endure to travel as I did. Both of my ankles were broken years ago, and ever since they have been weak. Before leaving Battle Creek for Kansas, I sprained one of my ankles, and was confined to crutches for some time; but in this emergency I felt no weakness or inconvenience, and traveled safely over the rough, sliding rocks.” ²² At the Williamsport camp meeting, she spoke thirteen times, including all the early-morning meetings—and that without a public address system! MOL 105.1

This persevering, cheerful, pioneer spirit was evident, as usual, when the Whites crossed the Mississippi River in December 1857. A foot of water flowed over the ice, other teams with wagons had broken through—but the White party pressed on. In Iowa, through fierce, cold winds, with their horses breaking paths through high snow, they finally reached their destination. ²³ MOL 105.2