Transcript

We with my first family all left St. Louis for Utah crossing the Missouri river on the 4” [4th] of July, arriving in Salt Lake Valley. We camped about four miles from Salt Lake City. My wife Ann Newman gave birth to her first son Valison Sept. 17” 1853[.] We crossed the plains in an ox team purch[as]ed in St Louis by Bro. Thomas Carter and acquaintance from the Newbury Branch expressly for our journey to Salt Lake City. We brought with us from St. Louis in the team purchased for my wife[’s] brother Wm. Newman’s widow. Sister [Mary Ann] Newman, her two sons Wm. [John] and Stephen, her daughter Sarah Ann, Lucy Francis, a sister who emigrated from England with the[m] and who also remained in the family until death, in Salt Lake City. Our team was pretty well filled, was heavy laden and caused us much annoyance and ill convenience. It was a very trying lesson of experience to my own family, but a kind providence brought us through as is the saying it was by the skin of the teeth. We came in company with Henry [Rod] George, David Wigins, Thomas Atwicks sister Westall. They were all from the Newbury branch. Sister Westall a widow, remained in Council Bluffs with her daughter, a wife of George Canning a tailor by trade from the town of Newbury. They were living in Council Bluffs with her daughter. We traveled across the plains in Claudius Spencers train of about forty wagons, [ sentence unfinished ]