. . . I was seven years old, when my parents decided to emigrate to Utah, and remember very well going on board the ship Ellen, as she lay at the dock, not far from our home, and we set sail the next morning, January 7th, 1851. Many of our relatives and a lot of our friends came to see us off. We had not been on our way but a few days when our ship met with an accident. I think another ship ran into us, but we were near the Coast of Wales, and our captain turned around [p.19] and went into Cardigan Bay, and I well remember my dear father being put over the side of the ship, on a plank with ropes and working on the damaged part of the ship. In a few days the repairs were completed and we started on our journey again. There were many passengers on the ship with us all going to Utah and our company was in charge of James D. Cummings and Elder Dunn. I forgot to mention that I had two sisters younger than me, Margaret and Annette, Annette was the baby. After many days at sea, the measles broke out among the children, and my baby sister Annette, took it and died. They sewed her up in canvass, with some heavy weights at her feet and dropped her in the sea. I remember seeing her floating in the water a long time before she sank and I ran down to the cabin where my parents were and told them of it and how angry my father was at me. After eleven long weeks on the ocean we arrived in New Orleans and went on board a river steamer. We were many days going up the Mississippi River. A new dress that my mother had made me was blown over board into the river and was lost. I was broken hearted over loss of it. We finally arrived in St. Louis where my father bought his wagons, and we took steamer for Kanesville, the outfitting point at that time for the Saints, and now called Council Bluffs. We remained here several days ready for the long journey across the plains; my father's sister, Mrs. Margaret Davis, and her two children, also his aged mother Grandma Grace, were with us all the [p.20] way from Liverpool. I was very young and do not remember much of the details of the journey across the plains. My father had two yoke of cattle, one yoke were cows and they were milking, and one evening we stopped at a camp and before father got the cattle unhitched from the wagon I crept in between them, and was milking one of the cows. My father was very angry and said I might have been kicked to death. I did not try it again. My mother made me a large apron and I used to walk ahead of the wagons and gather buffalo chips, for our fire. Buffalos were very plentiful, the prairies were black with them, must have been millions. We arrived in Salt Lake Valley, soon after the October Conference and camped in what was known as the Big Field . . . [p.21]
BIB: McCune, Elizabeth Grace, [Autobiographical Sketch], IN Autobiography and diaries of Frederick Henry McCune, pp.19-21. (CHL)
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