Transcript

Chairman Clawson yesterday received the following very interesting communication from William H. Wa[l]ker of Halliday, Salt Lake county:

Dear Sir--I see by the DESERET NEWS that the committee is desirous of locating all of the pioneers. I claim that my name should by right be added to the list of 148 pioneers, making that list 149, for the following reasons: I left Nauvoo in the first pioneer company and traveled with it until Council Bluffs was reached. I then enlisted in the Mormon Battalion and went as far as Santa Fe, N. M. From there I was sent back with a detachment of sick men to winter at Pueblo, Colorado. In the spring we struck the pioneer trail at Fort Laramie and overtook the pioneers at Green river. A few of the pioneers were sent back from this point with an express to meet the first companies of emigrants. I was one of that number. We met the first company of emigrants near Fort Kearney. We were six days without food of any kind, except that on one day we had a rabbit, which was divided among ten people, and what wild currants and choke cherries we could gather on the banks of the Platte river. With this company I met my wife, Olive H. Farr Walker, sick in consequence of having driven two yoke of oxen from Winter Quarters to this point. I then returned with these same pioneers and traveled in Captain Daniel Spencer's company, arriving in Salt Lake valley on the 19th of September, 1847. The only difference between myself and the Pioneers is that I traveled about 2,000 miles further than they did.