Transcript

. . . spring of 1848 during that time my husband [William Douglass] and I worked almost night and day and accumulated an outfit of provisions, clothing, etc. for to last us 18 months and also a team and wagon. We left St. Louis on the 10th of March with an ox team and arrived at Winterquarters about the middle of April.

We left Winterquarters on the 17th of May and on the

18th my oldest son Wm. John was born in Pot[t]awat[t]amie County.

On the 19th my husband had to return to Winterquarters to procure some articles that we were in need of and during the time he was gone a very severe storm came on and the sisters in attendance being very weary had retired and left some of my clothing out on the line to dry and not wanting them to get wet I stepped out of our wagon in the strength of Israels God and gathered my clothes piece by piece until I had them all tucked in the front of our wagon and I was not one whit the worse for "God had given me strength sufficient to my day."

On the 20th we resumed our journey,

and crossed the Horn River on the 22nd of June when we were organized into companies of one hundred teams each, and started on our way to the Rocky Mountains. We were in the first company. Brother Lorenzo Snow (now one of the twelve apostles) was our captain. We traveled over trackless prairies, made bridges, and made our own roads except some few when we could find and follow the pioneers tracks, who had traveled the same road in 1847.

We arrived in Salt Lake Valley on the 23rd of September 1848 having stopped two days at Greenriver [Green River] so that President Brigham Young and company might get in ahead of us.