On Saturday, July 24, 1847, the first company of Mormon pioneers arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Those first 148 settlers were later to be followed by some 86,000 persons. They came primarily from Nauvoo, Illinois, from all parts of the eastern United States and from Europe. This was the largest migration of a people in the history of the West.

Green Flake is one of the three black pioneers whose names are immortalized on the back of the Brigham Young monument in Salt Lake City. He was one of many enslaved pioneers brought to Utah.

He was born in North Carolina and moved with his family to Nauvoo, Illinois in April 1844. Three years later, Green Flake was chosen to join Brigham Young and the Vanguard Company as the first pioneers to reach the Salt Lake Valley. He was a driver of one of the wagons when they entered this valley.

Green built a cabin for the James and Agnes Flake family and returned to Nebraska to lead them to their new home. On this second journey, he fell in love and married a beautiful young woman named Martha Crosby.

Brigham Young and Green Flake were good friends, and Green and Martha’s children have memories of sitting on Brigham Young’s lap.