Transcript

We started. What fun the first day, every day walking! Once in awhile Uncle John [Marriott] would say, 'Let her ride a little way.' Traveling sometime we came to a wide river. I did not know why they took the oxen off the wagon and then came back for the next wagon. I learned it was because the river was so muddy and deep that one yoke of oxen could not pull them over, so they hitched two yokes of oxen to one wagon. I remember I rode over and some of the men waded the river. What a lot of fussing and yelling at the teams! I can see now the oxen heads sticking up. We all got over alright."

"One morning we were up early and ready to start, so we walked ahead of the wagons. My mother came hurrying after sister and me, and she said, 'You must not go ahead of the wagons for there is an animal that is running in the hills, and if it saw you it would hug you to death'. I think she meant the bears."

"Then one day as we were going along we saw a large herd of buffaloes with tails up, heads down, running and the dust a flinging. I was having a spell of riding so uncle said: 'Hold on fast; I am afraid the buffaloes will make the oxen stampede.' They ran between the wagons but did not hurt anybody and our oxen did not stampede. Some of the company killed one, and what a feasting we had! Everyone had some, and what we could not eat while good we fixed as we would jerked beef, that is, in small strips about one pound in a piece or strip and hung it up in the top of the wagon bows to dry where the shaking of the wagon would help it to dry."

"Say, what a fuss my father made about milking the cow, as he had never milked one before! At last, when done, he would bring the milk and put it in a little tin pail and hang it up in the top of the wagon bow where the shaking as we were traveling along would churn a little butter. After that I know but little of what happened for some time-only the Indians."

"Just before we reached Salt Lake our food gave out and still we were going along. I remember so well how hungry I was. I kept saying: 'Mother, give me something to eat, please mother-I am so hungry'. Mother would answer: 'I can't; I have nothing to give you, only a little piece of that dried buffalo meat'. It was so hard and dry that I could not get one bite but I kept trying and went to sleep trying. I woke up next morning still hungry; but soon that dear William B. Smith came with bread which his wife, Aunt Anna Smith had baked. She was always helping somebody as that was her life, to do good. You see, William B. Smith knew Uncle John [Marriott] and Uncle Robert [Burton] in Nauvoo; they knew we were coming to Salt Lake."

One thing I do remember; he had brought a big round loaf of bread, the biggest you ever saw. Why it looked as big as a grindstone to me, and it was a sweet piece. You see they did not have stoves in which to bake in those days-just a large iron bake skillet with a lid on it. They would pull out from the fireplace some coals which they would put under the skillet, and then some more coals on top of the lid. If very careful you had a large loaf of bread, nice and brown; so you see how blessed we were."

[also in Hermoine Tracy Jex, The Marriotts: Workers of Flock and Field, 2 vols. [1990], 2:1604]