The ship captain’s spyglass I hold is at least 170 years old. Nearly 14 inches long when it’s completely telescoped out, its brass shell shows the wear expected on an instrument that weathered countless voyages. Imagine what the spyglass’s owner saw when he peered through it hundreds, maybe thousands of times, searching watery horizons for the land he hoped to see.

That man was Capt. William Sands. He steered a ship, the “Caravan,” across the Atlantic from Liverpool, England, to New York in the 1800s, carrying passengers on perilous journeys that lasted about 80 days. Capt. Sands was known for his uncommon kindness, according to multiple diary entries of his ship’s passengers.

On the February 1856 voyage of the Caravan, a family group of 12 of my ancestors were among the 454 pioneer passengers aboard. Recent converts to the LDS faith, these devoted saints said a forever good-bye to their Suffolk, England, homes and set their faces to the west. The matriarch, Mary King Seamons, paid for their passage with an inheritance she’d received. Among those passengers was Mary and Henry Seamon’s daughter, Rachel, and her husband, James Hancey. Rachel was pregnant when they left England. Three days before they landed, she gave birth to their first son. On a wooden sailing ship. On the Atlantic.

That’s incomprehensible to anyone who’s ever given birth.

Their family disembarked, increased now to 13. Capt. Sands’ spyglass went with them. Why? Capt. Sands’ kindness to the family and the other saints prompted James and Rachel to name their newborn son James Sands Hancey in his honor. Capt. Sands showed his gratitude by gifting them his spyglass, which has been revered and passed down for generations — now to me.

The Seamonses and Hanceys worked in New Jersey for three years to raise enough money to buy an oxen team. Their ultimate goal was to join the saints in Utah. That portion of their journey proved fatal for two of them. James’ and Rachel’s second little son, George, caught a fever and died. Henry caught the same fever and died in Nebraska. A grieving, aging Mary King pushed on. She walked across the United States, next to her family’s covered wagon, at the advanced age of 60. She, with the rest of the Seamons-Hancey group, lingered just two days in Salt Lake City when they arrived, then moved on northward to Cache Valley, where they became two of the founding families of Hyde Park.

The uppermost thought in our minds when we read such pioneer sagas is often, “How on earth did they do this? How did they set their sights for a place they’d never seen, leave the safe familiarity of their homes, board a ship they’d never been on, sail across a wide ocean they’d never imagined, work for years to buy an oxen team so they could walk 2,000 miles across America, bury family members along the way, all to join a congregation they’d never met?”

The answer is their absolute conversion to their cause.

I envy their dedication, their strength, their grit. But I don’t envy the trials they went through to develop those traits. But that’s the secret — their faith-driven willingness to overcome unimaginable trials developed their character, courage and conviction.

I consider my pathetic self, someone who’s inconvenienced when the store doesn’t have my favorite brand of ketchup, or my phone takes longer than a nanosecond to pull up what I’m searching for, or the driver in front of me isn’t going fast enough. Clearly there’s room for improvement here. And clearly, flowing in my veins is pioneer potential to achieve that improvement. I’ve got a spyglass for vision, and ancestors’ stories for inspiration.

I hope to meet Rachel and James and Mary and Henry someday. But not yet. Not yet. First, I have some serious pioneering to do.

D. Louise Brown lives in Layton. She writes a biweekly column for the Standard-Examiner.

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