Transcript

I with my parents [Maren Evenson Johnson and Christopher Johnson] left Norway in a Bayl [sail] ship in April 1861 and landed in Quebec, Canada on the 17th of May. We moved from there to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the winter of 1862. We lived there until July of 1863 when we left our way to Florence, Nebraska the same month. Oxteams were camped there to take us to Utah. We started from Florence, Nebraska in Capt. John Sanders Company of sixty ox teams and traveled west for one day and camped. Fera More [Feramorz] Little was the Emigration Agent. John R. Young, son of Lorenzo Young with a company of ox teams from Dixie, Utah loaded with cotton was selected by Brother Little to be Captain of an Independent Company that had bought their ox teams and wagons there. This company of Saints were all Scandinavians and under the leadership of Capt. Young came out and camped with us the next day. Capt. Young came over to our camp and asked Capt. Sanders if there was a young man in his company who could speak English, so her referred him to me. Brother Young asked me to drive his team and act as interpreter for him. I answered him, I would do the best I could. We started out the next morning and traveled all day without any mishap and so on every day until we got near the Sand Hills. The Emigrants walked, some ahead and some by the side of the teams. Suddenly the teams all stampeeded and ran over a number of the people that were walking. The brother of the Captain whose name was Lorenzo [Young] was driving the lead team and I was driving the Captain’s team. These teams were from Utah and kept straight on the road. The rest of the teams left the road and a number of people were killed and others wounded and died shortly after they came to the valley. After that we traveled on without much trouble. We passed by big Indian camps that were training for battle with other Indians. We arrived in Salt Lake City in the early part of September and camped on the Eighth Ward Square.