. . . On the 2nd of January 1851 we set out from my fathers for America. We went to London stayed with our relatives three days and from there we went to Liverpool 200 miles away. We got into a Mormon ship we had to wait in the Mersey River, 14 days for the wind. We left there on the 20 we was in the Irish Channel 9 days with a rough headwind. We were tossed about in a most unpleasant manner. All the people sick. I was so seasick for two days and two nights I could not eat anything. I shall never forget it. We could not sleep. We had to hold ourselves in bed. There was a awful noise with the boxes rolling about and the sounds of chains and the sailors and captain. My wife was sick all the time and could not eat during the eight weeks going form Liverpool to New Orleans. (David King Udall says that his mother became so emaciated that in washing her hands her wedding ring came off and washed into the sea.)
We stayed at New Orleans two days, being 6000 miles form Liverpool. Then we got into a steamboat and in 7 days went to Saint Louis, 1,200 miles from New Orleans. When we got to St. Louis my wife got better and I obtained work in a brickyard. I was very fortunate many of the Saints could not get work. Many of them were sick and in poverty and many of them died with cholera. I worked in the brickyard 5 months then went to work helping to build a large chimney 150 feet high, being on 14th Street and Shoothers.
My sister Ann died June 21, 1851, at Westfield, Chatauqua County, New York. She was a good woman and lived up to the light that God gave her, and I believe she will rise in the first resurrection.
August 16, 1851 I was called to the office of an elder and to preside over the First Ward in St. Louis.
On September 7, 1851 David King Udall was born, the first son of David and Elisa Udall at St. Louis Missouri, North America, near the city hospital.
April 27th, 1852, myself and family left St. Louis for the Salt Lake Valley, California [MEANING, Utah] (with an independent company of pioneers). I am thankful to God, my Father for delivering me from St. Louis. It is a sickly, wicked, hell of a place. Many of my brethren have fallen away from the faith but I have been preserved. . . . [p.6]
September 5, we arrived at Salt Lake City. . . . [p.7]
BIB: Udall, David. [Autobiographical Sketch, journal entries, and family genealogy] typescript (Ms 11297), pp. 6-7 (CHL)
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