. . . I was not quite twelve years of age when on May 22, 1863 we sailed from Liverpool, England on the ship called the Cynosure. There were about 900 Saints on the ship under the direction of David M. Stuart bound for [p.11] Utah to be near the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We were eight weeks and three days in crossing the ocean. I remember the trip so well. An elderly man died on board and they buried him at sea. Thomas Cunningham and I were companions on the trip and we were watching them slide the body into the ocean when a big wave came and my daddy hollered for us to get back or we would both be in the ocean too.
We landed in New York on what was called Castle Garden sometime in July. We stayed there one night and the next day we went up the Hudson River to a place called Albany. There we boarded [p.11] a train and rode to the Mississippi River where we had to leave the train and ferry over the river. The Civil War had just ended then or at least there was nothing going on at that time although statistics say that it didn't end until 1865. After we crossed the river everything was burned up and the railroads were demolished and had been rebuilt without ties under the tracks. We rode on a combination stock and passenger train down to the Missouri River. On the train they burned candles and the train man came through and asked daddy if he would put the candles up and light them when it began to grow dark. Daddy told him he would and he asked him if it would be alright if he took the stumps out and kept them. The man said it would and also gave daddy two extra candles. These were large wax candles and they lasted us clear across the plains whenever Mother needed lights at nights.
When we came to the Missouri River we got off the train and there was a warehouse there. We stayed in this until the afternoon of the [p.12] following day and then we got on a boat headed for Omaha, Nebraska. This boat was run by steam and they burned wood for fuel and the boat crew would have to pull up to the bank for wood and one time when they did this the boat stuck in the sand. The captain ordered all able bodied men and women to walk up the bank about a mile and that when they got the boat out they would blow a whistle and then pick us up. So daddy took my older brother and myself and we walked up a roadway through the timber for about a mile. It was about nine or ten that night when we got back on the boat.
Another experience on this boat was when one of the crew lifted a trap door in the bottom of the boat and then took a bucket to draw water up from the river. He forgot to replace the door and Thomas Cunningham's smaller brother had become frightened when some mules in a stall nearby started kicking and making a lot of noise. He became excited and fell through the trap door. They stopped the boat and searched but never found a trace of his body. They thought he might have been struck by one of the large wheels on either [p.13] side of the boat.
We got off the boat at Omaha, Nebraska and all I can remember was one little store being there. The Mormons from Utah fetched oxen and wagons to pick up the emigrants so we had to wait for them to get us. We were there for one week before they came to pick us up. During that time daddy purchased a shovel and some ammunition and other supplies at this store. One day he and my older brother and myself went out a little ways to see if we could shoot a rabbit and we came to a place where a little girl about eight years of age had been buried. The grave was so shallow that the coyotes had uncovered the body and eaten the flesh from her face and arms. Daddy told me to run back to where we were staying at the time and get the shovel so we could bury the body deeper so the coyotes couldn't get at it again.
On the tenth day of August we were loaded up and started for Utah under the direction of Captain Thomas E. Ricks. There were seventy covered wagons in our train and some of the teamsters driving the ox-teams were John E. Bitton, Miles Jones, Hammond Green, Bill Shafer, Caleb Parry and others. . . [p.14]
. . . At Ft. Bridger about ten soldiers came up on horseback and asked at every one of our seventy wagons if we had any powder. I don't know if they got any or not but we didn't have any extra. Continuing on we came to Coalville, Utah where we camped over night. My brother and I always slept under the wagon at night and this night we had a snow storm and Mother hollered to us to cover up our heads. In the morning daddy got some sage brush to brush the snow off our bed with. There were about four inches of snow on it. We went on down Emigration Canyon into Salt Lake City and we arrived there on the fourth day of October. . . . [p.16]
BIB: Hadley, Lorenzo Pioneer Personal History (Mss B-289) bx 4 pp. 11-14, 16, (Utah State Historical Society.)
(source abbreviations)