Transcript

after ariving at council bluffes [bluffs] my Father [Richard] Enlisted in the Mormon Batallion[.] he was absent about two years and a half[.] he returned home in the fall[.] the folowing spring we started on our long journey to cross the great desert of a thousand miles in captin Clarks company

i doe not think that i rode to exceed five Miles on the whole journey[.] i had to walk and drive stock and wade the most of the Streams and get across the best i could[.] when the water was to deep i would have to cleave to some annimals tail that would land me safe on the other side of the stream

but to be brief we arived in Salt Lake Valley late in the fall of 1849—