Transcript

Transcript for Carter, Harriet Utley, Autobiographical sketch, 224-25, in Histories and biographies written by members of Camp Sunflower, Daughters of Utah Pioneers of Center Utah County, Provo, Utah, vol. 3, part 1

A terrible misfortune befall our family while we lived in Winter Quarters. We all contacted measles and five of our family died from its effects, leaving father, my youngest brother Gabriel and myself to start on the long journey to the Rocky Mountains. Before starting on our journey to Utah, father taught school and did some farming. He also secured some hardwood, seasoned it and built it into a wagon by himself.

We started on our journey once more in 1852. We had the wagon father had made, two milk cows for our team, and the neccissities [necessities] we needed. We made good progress until we reached the alkali-beds, and then one of our cows died. The captain of the company had some extra animals and he let father have a yoke of oxen. Shortly after this occurance cholera broke out among the company while at Platte River. My father was one of its unfortunate victims. He was laid to rest without a coffin on the plains with other members of the pioneer company.

A man without a team volunteered to drive my team after father died, so I did not have to worry about that. Up to this time we had plenty of bedding to keep us warm, but due to the health measures practiced in those days we discarded all of our bedding, and was only able to secure one pillow from the captain of the company, the epidemic of the cholera surely proved to be a severe hardship on us. We managed with the few things we had, but suffered much from the cold.

When we reached Salt Lake City we felt like strangers in a strange land.