Transcript

April 1859 we started from England and crossed the sea with a large company of saints to New York, then we traveled by Railroad and Steam boat to Florence where we waited 4 weeks to get our outfit to cross the Plains with. Here we sold part of our clothing and bedding to get the other part hauled across the plains in an ox team, and we traveled with the Hand Cart Company. We suffered extremely for the want of Provisions, my Mothers [Jane Morris Jarvis] health was poor and it was impossible for us to get her the nourishments that she needed. We was four days without one bit of either Bread or flour with nothing to eat but what we could pick from the bones of an old ox that was killed to keep us alive, and that she could not touch it. On the third day that we was without bread, she died very sudden just as she was starting out of camp on the journey[.] she fell down and we thought she had fainted and applied what we could to restore her but all in vain. She was entirely exhausted for the want of bread. She sighed twice after my father [William Jarvis] picked her up and life was extinct. If she could have bread to eat she would have lived. She said she felt better on the morning she died than she had done for a long time. She walked four miles that morning and died as we was camped for breakfast. It was on August 24th 1859. She lived and died a faithful Latter Day Saint beloved by all who knew her. She never murmured although she suffered starvation for the Gospels sake, and she now lies a Martyr on the Plains. She died and is burried six miles this side the crossing of Green River, on the old Emegration [Emigration] road. We mourned her loss severly. It hurt us to leave her as we were compelled to do. She was burried without any Coffin. The sisters was very kind to us. They washed her and put her some clean clothing on, and then sewed her up tight in a white bed blanket, and put her in the grave that way, and just as soon as the grave was filled up we had to travel on, never to see it again. I was 13 years old at this time and I walked all the way and pulled at the hand cart every day. We arrived in Salt Lake City Sept. 4th 1859 . . .