Transcript

In 1864 I left St Louis about steamboat at the age of 4 years. While on the steamboat my baby brother took scarlet fever and died and we had to give him to a strange man for burial and pay him five Dollars to bury in a place called Pink Town. We landed at Levensworth [Leavenworth] Kansas. We then started on the plains, my grandfather [Peter] Burgess and family and my father [Thomas Slater] and family, with five wagons, two yoke of oxen on each wagon. We were on the plains three months. My grandfather had to bury two loads of goods as several of his cattle died. My mother and I had to ride with a company of twenty men and my mother had to cook for ten of them and another woman for ten. We had to live on corn bread and bacon.

My Mother and I got to Salt Lake two weeks before my father, and when he arrived we moved to Huntsville in October.