. . .We reached Liverpool all right and as we sought our berths on Ship Zetland, Father pointed out parts of the ship which he had before described to us. In the night following our arrival on board determined was he to come. He paid our passages on the ship and settled all business matters but as the sip could not sail on account of high head winds in the Irish Channel. We [p.460] didn't start for several days. He became to all that he was compelled to leave the ship to seek medical aid. He told those who were with him that his body could not go on but that his spirit would. He died Jan. 26, 1849 at 9 a.m. and was buried at noon in St. Martin's church yard. Our ship sailed the same evening with the rest on board. Orson Spencer was President of the Mormon emigrant William C. Mitchel and his son William.
On account of so many head winds, we were nine weeks on the Ocean. Nothing unusual happened on board except when a mall blaze was started in the cooking gallery. The people became excited as usual but the fire was soon extinguished, and order restored.
We arrived at New Orleans April 1, 1849 and after three or four days started on the steam ship Iowa for St. Louis. Where we arrived April 13, we rented a house on Green Street between third and fourth south street while there a steam boat caught fire and before it could be removed or the fire extinguished forty other boats caught fire and several blocks of wholesale business houses of the city were burned. While we were in the midst of it our house escaped injure.
My mother kept house and worked at any kind of work she could get to do. My sister Sarah did dressmaking and millinery work and as her services were in demand se earned considerable money. I secured a job in a cake and candy establishment at a small wage, where I worked for two months. My nephew Tom Le Fevre became errand boy for hotels and offices, and t us among us we able to furnish considerable food. We were soon able to rent better and more comfortable quarters, near the courthouse. Mrs. King and Mrs. wood had lived with us, each doing such work as she was able to get. This was during the epidemic of cholera which raged for so long with unrelenting fierceness in St. Louis. Its victims numbered into the thousands. Tom was first to contract it in our family. At his recovery my Mother was taketh down and while she was yet unconscious my sister Sarah was stricken that night and died the next morning. She was buried before my mother gained consciousness. During Sarah's illness Tom and I were sent for the Elders. We were unsuccessful in getting them. We were stopped three times by the police because it was after curfew hours. Each time we told them of the condition oat home and invited them to accompany us there and see for themselves and so each time were permitted to go on. Mother recovered and I fortunately did not get it . . . .[p.461]
BIB: LeFevre, William. [Autobiography] Our Pioneer Heritage, comp. by Kate B. Carter, vol. 5 (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers,
1962), pp. 460-61. (CHL)
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