Transcript

In the summer of 1848, we crossed the Missouri River back into the state of Iowa. My father secured a large farm where he raised a hundred bushels of corn that he sold to the gold seekers to get money to go to Utah. He also made wagons for people to cross the plains. My mother spun and made cloth for clothing and every effort was made to get fit out to cross the plains, with hard work and economy they got a good outfit together but as there were some poor that had to be helped to cross the plains, my father had a widow and three children in one of his wagons

On June 28, 1852, we were ready to start for Utah again. My father and mother left everything only that which they could put in two wagons. Left their farm and never got one cent for it; their home and nearly everything that was in it. Only a small stove and a chair or two; not even a table, but we had plenty of provisions and clothes and had no regrets for what we had left. The only thing was to get to Zion, the valley of the Mormons. We had quite a time getting started. The cows decided that they did not want to go to Utah but with much persuasion and some other things we got to the Missouri River. There were hundreds of wagons waiting their turn to cross the river. I think we stayed two nights before we could cross, as their was only one boat and two wagons with teams could cross at a time. Then their was all the loose stock to cross after. Father had gotten all his things over, they with a hundred wagons traveled several miles to a large flat where we camped and the companies were organized into fifties with a captain over each fifty families and a captain over each ten.

Our company was the 12th and our captain was Harmon Cutler. Two other companies were organized at the same time; the 10th and the 11th. We traveled together for several hundred miles for mutual protection. We saw lots of Buffalo and Indian scares. If there were wood and grass, and water for the teams, our captains always camped over for Sunday and held meetings and we generally had meeting on Thursday nights. There they sang the songs of Zion and rejoiced to think they were going to the valley. No one grumbled over their hardships. We went on and on and had dances. We stopped and dried Buffalo meat and washed our clothes when we stopped for a day or two. The women would take their stoves out and wash the clothes and bake up a lot of bread and cakes. When we milked the cows, mother would put the milk in the churn and when we camped at noon the butter would be churned and we ate the milk with our bread and mush. They never cooked at noon. That was a time to rest. When we got to a place called Ash Hallow, the Indians stole all our horses. So the captain had to have oxen draw his carriage the rest of the way to the valley. When we got to Independence Rock we had a wedding, lot’s of young people went through the Devil’s Gate. I wanted to go but mother would not let me. She said that I was to little.

Our captain was awful slow and some of the company got dissatisfied and said that the snow would catch us before we got to the valley. So they divided the company and put my father in as captain and we went along fine but had some snow in the south pass. We were all glad when we saw the valley of the Great Salt Lake. It surely looked beautiful to us. We beat the other part of the company by fifteen days.