Transcript

Transcript for Durrant, Elizabeth Jane Ginger, Autobiographical sketch

We traveled the plains in Brother Master’s company. We traveled through Canada by rail in cattle cars. We traveled 250 miles from Omaha to Laramie in box cars.

We took wagons at Laramie. Fifty were in the company. We enjoyed ourselves many times around the camp fires holding meetings. My sister, Kate, played the concertina, helping out in our amusements. We had to gather buffalo chips to cook with many times. Oftentimes a cloud of dust would cover our food while we were cooking and eating it.

While we were traveling the plains, mother received news of my sister Clarice’s great distress and mother, not wanting us to see her grief, took refuge in the core of a large water barrel, alone, sobbing like her heart strings would break. Oh, my blessed mother! Another evening we found mother in a secluded place sitting on a wagon tongue alone, grieving. We put our arms around her and tried to comfort her. The same clergical influence which had tried to keep mother from coming with her daughters also kept Clarice and Walter from coming with us.

We arrived with mule teams in Salt Lake City, August 20, 1868.