. . . The urge to gather with the Saints in Zion was so strong that the family sold [p. 1] their business and made ready to leave England. They left Cambridge Feb. 23, 1851 and arrived in Liverpool Feb. 24 and took temporary quarters in the Temperance Hotel. On Sunday, March 2, they went to a music hall to hear three apostles speak: John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow, and Franklin D. Richards. On Mar. 4, they set sail on the ship Olympus.
Charlotte did not suffer from seasickness, so was able to enjoy the voyage. From a diary they kept, this note is made concerning the trip. March 10, 1851. "The sea is more calm and beautiful. The wind is in our favor and although I long to see my friends in Cambridge, I console myself with the thought of going to Zion, to the promised land. Oh! Glorious thought!
The captain was very kind and gave the elders on board permission to hold meetings every day. He brought a box for them to stand on and chairs for the ladies to sit on."
March 17. "A child one year old died and was buried overboard. There were four men baptized in the ocean. A lady spoke in tongues, and an elder sang in tongues and then gave the interpretation in the same tune."
Surely they must have suffered the pangs of homesickness during this journey, leaving friends and loved ones who had enriched their lives and the comforts of a good home. They bade farewell to their homeland to seek security in a strange land. If such suffering was theirs, it was never made known by any complaint from them. They were always courageous and hopeful, thinking and planning for the new life ahead of them.
On April 26, 1851, they arrived in New Orleans. Monday evening they all went to a theater, a great treat after their voyage. On Tuesday they took cabin passage on the steamboat "Atlantic" and sailed up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, arriving May 3. They then embarked on another steamboat and arrived in Council Bluffs in a heavy rainstorm, May 20. They remained long enough to make arrangements for continuing the journey west. They purchased a wagon, 2 yoke of oxen, 1 yoke of cows, and ferried across the Missouri River to begin their long trek across the plains as members of the Orson Pratt Company. They left the first part of June. A man by the name of Wilson Nowers drove the team for them. Charlotte and her sister, Sarah [p.2] Elizabeth, walked beside the wagon. Martha, the youngest, having poor health, rode with her mother. . . .
. . . They arrived in Salt Lake Valley Wednesday, Oct. 1, 1851, seven months after leaving their home in Cambridge. . . . [p.3]
BIB: Foxley, Grace Evans McLachlan. [Biographical Sketch of Charlotte Jarrold Hyder Evans, 1967] (Ms 10455), pp. 1-3. (CHL)
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