Transcript

Transcript for Lyman, Albert Robison, An Appreciation and a Biographical Sketch of Benjamin Perkins, 1936, 5-7

. . . first of August.

"As we traveled through the states people would come to meet us wherever we stopped, and they would try to persuade us not to come to Utah, telling us the people in Utah were a bad lot. I told them I was acquainted with quite a few of the people there, and I could not see how they could have gone from good to bad in such a short time, anyway I was going on and see for myself.

On the train we got acquainted with quite a number of Welch people, and some of them expressed their regrets that we were going to Utah to live among the terrible Mormons.

Before we got off the train we got a sight of the emigration teams waiting there for us. Four or five hundred people were gathered around the camp indulging in a rough and rather uncouth dance. There were no ladies participating, however; it was only a stag dance of the teamsters.

The language they used was very astonishing to us from the old country where we expected to find the people of Zion almost perfect. If such language had been used by the Church members in Wales, they would have been required to ask the pardon of the other members. But we soon became acquainted with their ways and shortly became one with them.

We started on West with the teams next morning, and traveled three days, going of necessity very slow because some of our members were still ill and others just recovering.

On the morning of the fourth day we met another party of teamsters going back after more emigrants, and their captain asked our captian for six volunteers to take the place of six of his men who had been drowned at Green River by a boat breaking loose.

I was one of the volunteers. The affection of my friends was certainly shown at this time—I was almost suffocated with farewell hugs and kisses.

I was given charge of a team but of course it was necessary for me to have some assistance as these were the first oxen I had ever seen worked. For sometime I couldn't tell the oxen apart and often hitched up the wrong one.

A corral was made of the wagons to keep them in at night. It was a practice of mine to be among the first to hitch up, but as a rule I was among the last to leave as I so often had the wrong ox, and frequently had the off ox on the near side; very much to the disgust of the oxen and the teamsters.

When a teamster would miss his oxen, he would come and examine my outfit, and too often he would find there what he was looking for, and it became a byword among the crowd, "Look out for that d-----d Welchman."

One morning as I was leaving with my six oxen they stopped me and took six out of my team, leaving me to go and find my own oxen.

The crownd was divided into parties of six, and as I was a new hand they were all willing to let me show how much I could do around a camp. As soon as the oxen were unyoked, my orders came thick and and fast from all sides. It was "Ben get some water," "Ben, get some wood." When it had gone on a week, I decided I had had enough of it. So after bringing in the wood, when the order came to get the water, I told them in my plainest English, for I was learning now to speak a little English, "Go to Hell!" The fellow jerked off his coat, and taking it as a warning I jerked off mine. He asked if I meant what I said and in my broken Welch and English I gave him to understand that I meant it all and more. After that I had considerable troulbe [trouble] with them and several times the boss threatened to show me my place.

Our next stop was at Echo Canyon, a Mormon camp on the railroad. Oh what a pleasant reunion! I had found a number of my boy friends from Wales. After giving them an account of my trip I had a hand full in keeping them from making a row over the way I had been treated, and the only way I could pacify them was by promising to stay there with them in the camp. So I stayed, but I had difficulty getting the boss of the teams to let me off.

When the boss found out that I wanted to earn money to send for my parents and the rest of the family in Wales, he gave me forty dollars with a "Bod bless you," and he promised I would soon have the necessary money."

This company from Laramie City to Echo Canyon was under the Direction of President William S. Seeley. There were thirty-nine wagons and 272 souls, though four of them died on the trip. . . .