The president of the Liverpool Conference sent to Father that they expected to have a ship chartered and ready to sail by the forepart of February 1856. Father was later notified to be at Liverpool on the 7th of that month. The day before we started the neighbors from all around came to bid us goodbye. We all felt sorrowful at leaving our dear homes and friends, although many had turned against us because we were "Mormons." We were two days getting to Liverpool, where we had to remain a few days while they were getting the ship ready. This was completed by the 14th of the month. On Monday morning, February 18th, about two thirty a.m., the ship, Caravan, set sail, with 454 Saints on board, under the direction of Daniel Tyler. Among those on board were my father and mother, James Hancey and wife, John Reynolds and wife, William Beddingfield and wife, my brother Samuel and three unmarried sisters, Jemima, Lydia, and Eliza.
"We were six weeks. lacking one day on the ocean. During the voyage a terrible storm arose and broke one of the masts of the ship. One sailor was killed and one had his thigh broken. We were driven back for two days and two nights. Two nights after this my sister Rachel Hancey gave birth to a baby boy (James S. Hancey), March 24th. My husband and myself were very seasick at this time, as was also my sister. The hatch always was closed down and we had but little to eat. What little we had my sisters husband had to cook and prepare for us.
We arrived at New York March 27, and were landed at Castle Garden. Here I gave birth to a baby girl on March 28th. We remained there a sort time and then moved over to Williamsburg where my husband found work at one place and I at another. While there my baby took very sick and my sister and I walked several blocks in the middle of the night to get two elders to come and administer to my baby. But with all I could and did do, it died July 31, 1856. We were too poor to buy a burial place for it in the churchyard, so we had to report it to the city officers. The sent a man with a rough coffin, several sizes too big for it and took it. However, they would not allow us to go and see where they took her to. It was reported to us later that they buried the bodies in quick lime, which soon ate the bodies up, and that some were sold to doctors to dissect and experiment with. So we never knew what became of our first born. I have always felt that the Lord's hand was over us and guiding our destinations and that all would be well in the end.
After leaving Williamsburg we moved over to New Jersey where we stayed nearly two years. While there my husband took very sick and as we could not afford to hire a doctor he suffered a great deal with some kind of fever. At times he would moan and say "I wish that Brothers Robert Javiett and John Bloomfield could come and administer to me and that I could get well." These men lived some miles away from us and we could not send for them, but one day they came to our home unaware and when my husband say them he said, "You are the very men I have been wanting to see. I want you to administer to me." They did so and he immediately began to get well. The visiting brethren stated that they did not know why they had come to see us unless it was for the purpose stated above.
We went by rail and steamboat from New Jersey to Omaha, Nebraska, where we stayed for about one year and then we started for Utah. We began our journey across the plains with ox teams under the direction of Captain Franklin Brown. . . . [p. 2]
. . . We arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Tuesday, September 1, 1860. We remained there a day and a half and then came on the Hyde Park, Cache County, Utah where I have resided ever since". [p. 3]
BIB: [Collected information on the Seamons and related families, ca. 1980] (Ms 7571). pp.2-3 (CHL)
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