On our recent vacation I picked up a copy of the book "The Mormon Battalion" by Norma Baldwin Ricketts. I was curious because, although Edward was not a direct ancestor, he was the brother of my direct ancestor. I had known that he was a member of this group, but I did not know anything about it, so I thought I'd read up on it. I found this book to be fascinating! The amount of research done by author Ricketts must have been overwhelming. Any member of the Dover Branch (or anyone else, for that matter) would find it interesting, I think. It's amazing what those people accomplished. In the Foreword, she notes "...one of the longest marches in the annals of military history." She goes on to point out just how significant their journey was to US History, at that time being powered by Polk's "Manifest Destiny" doctrine. And, for those of you not familiar with California history, they were present (actually witnessing) the discovery of gold by Marshall. They opened the Mormon/Carson Emigrant Trail over the Sierra Nevada and drove the first wagons over the Spanish Trail and Hensley's Salt Lake Cutoff of the California Trail. All this without clothing, and frequently without food and water. Oh, and did you know that they started out with thirty-one wives and forty-four children? Most of the women and children were left behind when the battalion came near to Pueblo, Colorado, but several continued to reach California - and one was pregnant, too. This book gives the full roster of soldiers (who were full-fledged members of the U.S. Army) and, in general, what happened to each one of them. A book written by an Edward Bunker descendant, Josephine B. Walker, titled The Bunker Family History was published in 1957 at Delta, Utah. In it is a brief autobiography written by Edward himself, and his remembrances can be coordinated with the movements given in the book. (He doesn't make much of it other than the fact that, after returning with other men to Salt Lake City, he then walked back to Council Bluffs without food, and accordingly had to eat his saddlebags!) I heartily recommend the Ricketts book to anyone interested in that era. Unfortunately, I do not know of any current (or reproduction) printing of the Walker book.