Transcript
Transcript for Hunter, Lola Simmons, History of Joseph Marcellus Simmons
on Muddy 12 Miles from Bridger
Nov 24th 1856
Bro Horace
As Some of our Company Start for the City to Morrow morning I improve the opportunity by writing you a few scrawls. I am setting. not on the stile. mary. but on a sack of oats with the paper on my knee, by the side of a blazing Camp fire, surrounded by some eight hundred persons, one old lady lays dead within twenty feet of me, babies crying. Some singing some praying, &c &c. but among all this, I feel to rejoice. for the hand of the Lord has been continually with us. Almost every day angry Storms arise very threatening, and judging from this appearance one would think that we should be unable to with stand to tempest but the prayers of the holy men of God are heard, the clouds, divide to the right and left, letting the saints pass through in safety. The suffering of the camp from frozen feet and various other causes, I will not attempt to describe, suffice to any bad. bad. The boys, including your humble servant are all enjoying the bles[s]ing of health, lonely in their feelings, and doing all in their power to make the saints comfortable. We have sone seventy waggons, divided into six divisions one Captain appointed over each, but all make one camp at night. We intend reaching the vally next Saturday but this calculation is founded upon the faith of our heavenly Father being continualy with us, Staying the storm as in the past for without the help of high heaven, we should have been Snow bound in the mountains long ago. I wish you to tell the foremen of the different departments of the P. Works to keep their books until I return. this will made [make] less labor for me, and shall be able to sooner port up the books. Bro Burton is writing to Bro Brigham [Young] and will probably present more fully the situation of the camp at all events this is all you will get from me this time. Give my love to everybody.
May our heavenly Father bless Bros Brigham [Young,] Heber [Kimball], Jedediah [Grant] all the saints throughout the World. & all honest hearted people.
Your devoted friend J M Simmons
John Whiting says he is all right except frosten [frozen] toes.