1. Ireland's potato crop did fail. This was during the great Irish potato famine. Most of their crops failed and they were forced to live without any food and thousands of people died of starvation. A huge number of Irish people decided to go to the United States because of this which is why there's a lot of Irishmen in the States.
2. They were called Prairie schooner. These schooners were small wagons that had wooden wheels with metal bands around them so it happened sometimes when the wood would reduce in size that the metal is separated form the wagon which made the wagon useless. They were called schooners because they resembled boats.
3. We call them pioneers, just like we call the first people to come to the United States pioneers, way before it even became a series of colonies. They were pioneers of the west and were going towards the west coast following the Oregon trail and looking for a better life.
4. They wanted to escape economic failure that was common in the east. They went westwards in order to get their own land and start cities and farms and find financial security which was very difficult on the eastern coast which was overpopulated and there was not enough land and jobs for everyone so they decided to go westwards.
5. This is also true. People would take their families and would meet other families and would decide to travel together. As they would band up like this, many groups would even decide to stop their voyage to the western coast and just inhabit a piece of land on the road there. Numerous cities sprang in such a way and they would profit from trading with those going westwards.
6. The church was found by Joseph Smith. He was a religious leader that wrote the Book of Mormon which he believed was a book that would present to people how Christianity really should work and he believed that his church was the closest one there is to the original way that Christianity was led. He attracted tens of thousands of people during his lifetime.
7. People who weren't followers of the church most commonly called them mormons, which is the name that is still used today even though the followers of this version of Christianity mostly call themselves latter-day saints. Mormons is a name based on the book of mormon written by Smith so they are non-formally called mormons.
8. They went west because of extremely heavy religious persecution. They differed a lot from all other Christian schools of religion so many branded them as heretics or as a cult or similar things. That's why they constantly had to move westwards, finally finding their safe haven in the area of Utah, where they are still strong today.
