We arrived in New York on June 19th. My destination was to Burlington, Iowa, but Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow met us in New York and advised us all to go to Utah as there would be two hundred church teams to meet us at Omaha or Florence, Nebraska; and as the war between the North and South had just started we were glad of the chance to go to Utah. We traveled by rail from New York to St. Joseph, Missouri and then by Steamboat to Council Bluffs, Iowa. The trip across the plains as it was then called, is probably familiar to most of us so I will not say very much about it. I don’t remember the date we left Florence, but we arrived in Great Salt Lake City on September 12th. I had neither money or clothes as I had worn my clothes out crossing the plains, as we had to walk every step of the way, or nearly so. In my case I drove team nearly all the time as some of the teamsters would be taken sick. The captain came to me and asked me to drive their teams until they got better. In this way I learned to handle oxen pretty well by the time we came to Utah, and then I drove considerable for the man in whose wagon I came. As he was a good hunter he killed quite a lot of game so we had some fresh meat, and as I was pretty good with hook and line, we had fresh fish once in a while or else our fare consisted of flour and bacon that was all hauled from Utah, or nearly so. John R. Murdock was our captain and he was a splendid Captain. He would rout us out about four o’clock in the morning so we would be ready to start between six or seven.