Brigham Young Academy organized a scientific exploration of Central and South America under the leadership of its president, Benjamin Cluff. The expedition of twenty-four faculty members and students received the charge of Church leaders to locate Book of Mormon landmarks, to look for opportunities for colonization, and to collect museum specimens. The group left Provo in April 1900 on horseback, looking like a cavalry unit with a bugler, a flag-bearer, and supply wagons.646 They arrived in Thatcher after two months travel and stalled there for a month while Cluff went to Nogales seeking permission to enter Mexico. Mexican officials at the border demanded a bond of $2,367, an amount the group could not provide.
During a dance in Robinson Hall to celebrate the presence of members of the Cluff expedition in Thatcher, a fire broke out in the home of a Mrs. Collier, not a Church member. At 8:45 Friday evening Tempie Collier put her five children (ages three to twelve) to bed and then went to a neighbor’s home to help prepare food for the threshing crew that would be there the next day. She locked the door behind her. An hour later the cry of “Fire! Fire!” went up. A coal oil lamp left burning probably caused the fire.647 The neighbor across the street rushed to open the front door but found it locked. By the time he kicked in the back door, the frame house had already filled with flames. For a second he saw two children lying by the front door and three in bed, but a roaring furnace drove him back. Two hundred people attending the nearby dance rushed to the scene to help. A bucket brigade had no effect. The mother fought wildly to go into the inferno but several men restrained her. Within fifteen minutes the window exploded, the roof fell in, the sides of the house crumpled. And as the fire quickly burned down, onlookers could see five small skeletons with a little charred flesh. The children could be identified only by the size of the bodies.
During the night carpenters made a single casket for the remains of all five children. Sunday morning at 8 a.m. a funeral was held for the children in Robinson Hall. Andrew spoke. The procession to the cemetery was nearly a mile long. Stake conference convened at 10. Mrs. Collier, who lost everything in the fire, received the proceeds of two benefit entertainments.648 Although not a member of the Church, she was a full member of the Thatcher community who had done her share of looking after the sick.649
Five children died in a fire; their funeral was held in Robinson Hall in 1900. Andrew is in the right foreground, next to the bearded patriarch Samuel Claridge.
The expedition members, much celebrated when they arrived, had somewhat worn out their welcome before they left Thatcher a month later.650 Elder Heber J. Grant, there as a stake conference visitor, met with the expedition members in Thatcher and concluded that some of the men were too young and inexperienced. He felt that unless men of more experience joined the party, the expedition would end in disaster.651
After leaving Thatcher the expedition got to the border at Nogales and were stuck there for a month. Finally, President Joseph F. Smith himself arrived in Nogales and conferred with them, resulting in disbandment of the formal expedition, although nine men continued on into Mexico and two got as far as Colombia. The remnants of the expedition returned to Provo after nearly two years.652
Notes
646. For general information on Benjamin Cluff and this expedition from Brigham Young Academy, see Woodger and Groberg, From the Muddy River to the Ivory Tower, 63–64.
