We was 22 hours between Glasgow and Liverpool. It was Sunday morning and we had to go & look for a place to stop till the vessel would sail. It was to sail on the 14th but when the government inspectors went on board, it was too heavily loaded so they had to unload three hundred tons and that kept us to the 18th before we sailed. But we was on board of the vessel on the 14 when we got on board of the Caravan, that was the name of the vessel. Our berth was a back top one & that did not suit us for Ann could not get out & in so when Marten came down out the office to see how we was all placed so when he seen where ours was he said that it would not do so he went back to the office & got another berth for us. We got a low front berth close by one of the gangways where there was plenty of fresh air here. There was over five hundred Mormons on board. When we started on the 18th we had good weather till the 24 then we was wakened in the night with the boxes loose & slipping all around & it was so bad that there was nothing cooked that day. So it was not so rough the next day then we had it better till the 1 of March then we had it very bad & one of the sailors fell off the rigging & was killed. It was rough all day & the hatchways all did so there was nothing cooked that day [p. 18]. When night came for prayers the Elders rebuked the winds & the waves & in the morning it was calm. We never had it so bad after that. There was one night we was afraid for icebergs & they had to keep on the lookout all night there was only one in sight all the time. We had good weather the most of the way after that. Ann was sick all the way. She was on deck two times all the way. The captain was very good to those that was sick he give them fresh soup from his table every day & by the time that the pilot came on board she was a good deal better & by the time we landed she was able to walk around a little. We landed in New York on the 27 of March. The time that we was in Castle Garden we went out once & got some oyster soup & she felt a good deal better. That we was two days there & started for Pittston, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania on the York & Erie by. There was about 50 families all together. There was Scotch, English & Welsh. When we landed at Great Bend it was Sunday afternoon & we could not a train till the next morning. We got stopping in the cars all night & there was a baker's store there & we got some bread & we got something to eat. We started for Scranton early in the morning & got there before noon so we got something to eat & then started for Pittston which was 9 miles from Scranton so some of the Scotch sisters was going to get in a [p. 19] wagon but it would not start till after dinner so we started to travel. I had to carry William & help his mother too. We got about 4 miles on the road when they catched up to us so she thought that she could ride a little bit & got on the wagon & she did not stay on it mile till she had to got off & then she was worse then if she had never been on the wagon. Then Brother [Matthew] Sinclair came along. We had to almost carry her along. We was on the road from 12 to 8 o'clock at night when we got in to Pittston. So there we was in a strange land not much money in our pocket & sick so we was told to go in to a grocery where there was some Scotch went into some times & it chanced to be a Odd Fellows meeting night & there was a house full of Scotch & English & all the emigrants had to & get there supper there & there was 6 men there from Rutherglen & had all been acquainted with me from a boy. So after Ann got some supper & rested a while we went home with one, the name of James Gilnauer & his wife fixed a good father back to lie down upon. She felt better in the morning. We rested that day & the next day James Gilmour went & rented a house & three of us went & lived together & took us to a store for us to get what we wanted. We did not get any furniture but a bedstead, for Ann did not want to have (his/her) bed to lie on the floor when she was sick & we got all that we wanted to eat. [p. 20] John was born on the 13 of April '56 just 13 days in the country. I was not there long until I got started to work with the Pennsylvania Company so at the end of the month we got a house of our own & about the middle of May I went to work for James Gilmour for more pay. When we was there about a month Matthew Sinclair went away & he never said where he was going to. After he was away a while he wrote to his wife that he was at Pottsville, Schuykill County & for her to come to him, so she went away to him. It was bout 60 miles from Pittston to Pottsville so in July Angus M. Cannon came up from Philadelphia & organized the Pittston Branch. That was the day that John Thornton Richardson was blessed by Angus M. Cannon & we was all rebaptized in the Susquehanna River. During the summer James Gilmour told me about James Watson living at Jessup for he was there the winter before & he got work there most all the winter & that I should go there for there was very little work in Pittston in the winter. I wanted to get all the work that I could get for we to go to Salt Lake as soon as we could. . . .[p. 21]
. . .On the 4 of October [1863] we got into the city [Salt Lake City]. . .[p.36]
BIB: Richardson, William. Diary (Ms 1783), fd. 1, pp. 18-21, 36. (CHL)
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