Transcript

I left New Brunswick May 10, 1854. Two weeks later I was at Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri River. Three miles out we camped on a little spring creek, called at that time Salt Creek, where I saw and passed through the cholera. There were about forty church wagons and about as many independent wagons, and there was one sick to every one well in camp. My cousin, a woman with six children, got cholera and died about one o'clock in the morning. Two of her children were dead the next morning and one of her sister's children also. We buried these four in one grave as they were dying so fast. The government furnished caskets as long as we were in reach of Fort Leavenworth. About this time our leaders told us to move out and go as fast as we could. One morning our captain, Thomas O'Hara [Obray], a young Welchman, lost his wife, Louisa Shelton, a bride of three weeks. We had to bury her beside the road without a coffin. That was the first I ever saw buried this way. Less than six miles farther on we had to stop and bury his niece, a girl twelve years old. By that time every man in camp was ill, so the Aunt and I rolled her in a blanket and buried her.

About this time Brother Pratt's company had lost so many teamsters I was asked to go back and help them, as I was alone. I walked back the fifty miles, and it was back at their camp that I was stricken with the cholera. I soon recovered and drove a team for my board. Several times I was offered a job for fifty dollars and my board the year around, but when I was confirmed a member of the Church I was promised I should live to get to the home of the Saints, and I valued this promise more than gold, even though I was poor, alone, had no money, and was very scantily clothed. We arrived in Salt Lake City the fourth day of October 1854.