Transcript
Transcript for Goulter, John Thomas, [Interview], in "Utah Pioneer Biographies," 44 vols., 11:114-15, 117, 120
10. Landed at Castle Gardens, after 56 days on the water. Sailed down to the Mississippi River, to Winter Quarters.
12. [14] Who was the leader of your company or train?
12. [14] Captain Warren snow [Snow] took charge of the company from Winter Quarters.
12. [15] Method of travel (handcart, ox team, mule team, horseback, etc.).
12. [15] Theirs was an ox team train.
34. Tell about coming to your state in a covered wagon.
34. His mother [Eliza Tiley Goulter] and a great many of the others rode, he walked the entire distance, except in such streams as the Platte River where he crawled into the wagon and rode across. He thinks the entire distance was 1300 miles. The wagons carried the luggage, and all who were unable to walk. They gathered every buffalo chip they saw as fuel was very scarce.
What is now the great City of Omaha, was then a small group of log cabins. Some of the Saints took train from there to St. Joseph Missouri. War time was on, and great piles of slabs of fat bacon had been taken from the south, and it was piled almost every where and used freely as fuel by the sea-faring vessels. The bridges were all burned so one could not with safety, depend on going anywhere on the trains. They saw many tracks afire, for miles and miles. Every train had to run the risk of going through the fires that we might meet. They saw many trains going over burning ties in the heated iron rails. At times the trains would go right through the flames. He saw in some places where the tracks had been demolished, at times some of the emigrants who had thought to hasten their arrival in Utah, were forced to stop and carry their luggage from one cattle car to another as the tracts were runined in places for miles at a stretch. They, the Goulters, had traveled in the Steerage passage on the Hudson, but they were glad they had now a safer way of transportation than these travelers who had on the waters of the Atlantic, an upper deck and would have scorned to ride with the steerage passengers.
They arrived in Salt Lake City in November, he had a sister there and a brother in Fillmore.