Transcript

My father joined the church at Portsmouth England. in 1850, and emigrated to Utah in 1854, bringing the family with him. We located at Payson, and lived there principally all the time, till 1860. The church records of Payson shows that I was baptied on the 16th day of March 1857, by Elder John Loveless.

The hard times, the destruction of crops by grasshoppers, and the great change in the manner of living to what we had been accustomed, caused my mother to become very much dissatisfied, and finally my father concluded to go back to the States, which we did in 1860. 

Arriving at Troy, Doniphan County, Kansas, about 15 miles west from St. Joe. Mo. we found the country in a state of great agitation on account of the slavery question, and the attempt to make Kansas a slave State, so much so, that my father and mother concluded to return back to England, from whence they came. I told them that I did not wish to go, that I would rather return to Utah; that I would try and find where the emigration would start from the next spring, and return with them, but they insisted on leaving, sold everything we had to get the means to pay their way back, and started back that fall.