Archives West Finding Aid

In their migration from Missouri to Illinois, there developed a "covenant" among the LDS to assist their poor who were unable to provide for their own removal. The covenant was renewed in their exodus from Illinois to the Salt Lake Valley and led, in 1849, to the creation of a volunatry fund to aid, not only Nauvoo LDS to Utah, but was extended to aid the immigration of thousands from Europe. The money advanced to aid in emigration was to be returned to the fund for repeated use, thus making it a perpetual instrument. Organization for travel across the plains was also perfected, differing from the usual habits of overland migrations in the middle nineteenth century.

The operations of the emigrating fund assumed such proportions, and its activities, in collecting and disbursing funds, chartering ships, establishing buying agencies, and converting its varied accumulations into ready cash, were of such a nature as to demand a businesses-like organization. To accomplish this end, and to give it a legal status, the fund was incorporated into the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company by the Provisional State of Deseret in 1850. This company continued to operate until 1887, when it was dissolved by the Edmunds-Tucker Act.

The Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company spent, in its repeated use of funds, millions of dollars for emigrant transportation, but failure on the part of a large percent of the beneficiaries to pay off their obligations handicapped its operation. The total LDS emigration from 1840 to 1887 was 85,220 of which no less than 70,000 were aided by the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company.