March 9th. Our ship the Hartley was hauled out of the dock on to the river, and that afternoon the Saint was organize by appointing Elder William Hume from Manchester to be the President over the whole Saints, and John Shields and Joseph Stringer for his counselors, and John McClough Clark and Elder John Hughes to preside after the Welch Saint and myself was appointed cook for all the emigrants or passengers, because I was a sailor. All the passengers doing their last business in Liverpool.

10th. We were towed out this morning by a steam boat to the open sea and set sail a little after dinner with the wind from the east and fair for us. Very few of the passengers cared anything about their dinners today, for they all with very few exceptions commence to get a little seasick, and by supper time, for indeed it was nothing but the time, everyone seem to be satisfied since their last supper. Instead of making their suppers they all went to their beds. Our ship was running all night with a stuff breeze of fair wind and rocking very much as al vessels are when running before the wind much as all vessels are when running before the wind with a strong breeze. All the passengers was very sick all night. No one could take care of themself. I had to be up all night attending and taking care of the sick. We were running down St. George or Irish Channel and sailed along for many days with fair winds, passing by the Cape Clear the southern extremity of Ireland and the Scilly [POSSIBLY Scilla] Isle, with our faces towards the great Atlantic Ocean. In a few days most of the Saints was getting over their seasickness and begin to call for something to eat. The weather was clear and the pleasant. The ladies commence washing and cleaning themself and walking about the decks. My calling now become brisk and lively for everybody was calling for their breakfast, dinners, and suppers. I soon found that I had a very disagreeable situation. We sailed along, sometime the wind was fair and sometime foul, and on the 29th of April we landed in the New Orleans after a passage of seven weeks and three days. We had one death and 2 births at sea, no accident. When we arrived at New Orleans I was expecting my pay for my hard labor which was promise to me when Orson Pratt appointed me as a cook for the Saints. I was promise one shilling from every passenger, but suffice it to say, that I never had a single shilling with no one, but seventy five cents with Cidwalinder, [CADWALLADER IS LAST NAME] Owens [Owins] and twenty five cents with D. Peters. That was all the remuneration I had for my hard labor across the sea, when I could when I was in Liverpool ship on board a vessel and getting two pound ten shilling per month and a good deal better situation, but listen to the counsel of Orson Pratt and Dan Jones I had to work hard for nothing, for Dan Jones told Pratt about me before he left. William Hume the President of the Saints was put in jail in New Orleans for trying to smuggle some goods belonging to T.D. Brown, [p.20] which he had charge of, and John Hughes President of the Welsh on board was drunk while we stayed in New Orleans. In this way the Saints was left to themselves, and my pay neglected. I never seen Hume no more. Our passengers English, Scotch, and seventy-one Welsh and a few Irish. We had some of the meanest people I ever seen. We tarried at New Orleans two days, and on the first of May, we went on board the steamer "Mameluck" under the Presidency of Elder L [Lucus] N. Scovil for St. Louis, and started for St. Louis May 2nd. While on the river, the cholera broke out on board the steam boat and made a tremendous havoc among the passengers. For every day there was from three to six buried every day, and before we got to St. Louis we had buried about sixty of the passengers.

May 12th. We landed in St. Louis with many sick on board. My wife was very sick two or three days before we landed in St. Louis my mother-in-law was attacked with the cholera very severely, that we where oblige to send her to the hospital. I took her and my wife to the hospital. They would not take my wife into the same hospital as her mother for she had not got the cholera. I left my mother-in-law in the Charity Hospital with her youngest daughter (Rachel). My mother-in-law was unconscious when she was put in. After leaving her there, I took my wife to the City Hospital about three miles further. I left her there with lot of strangers that she never seen before and went back to the boat where my children was and my father-in-law and his family was. There I had to nurse my little babe, eight months old all night without her mother. We had a very miserable night of it. The next morning the 13th and also Sunday I started for the Charity Hospital to see how my mother-in-law was getting along. When I arrived there to my astonishment she was dead and buried before I got there. I did not see her at all and her little girl Rachel was there like a little stranger. I then went to the other hospital where my wife was. There I found her very weak and feeble. She said that she had nothing to take while she in there, but water, and she begged on me to take her out from such a miserable place. I complied with her desire. I took her out. I had to carry her on my back most of the way from the hospital to the boat through the City of St. Louis, for we had not yet move from the boat. It was on Sunday. By the time I and my wife reach the boat it was near dark and there was two of my sister-in-law attacked by the cholera. Ann & Rachel was very bad. I spend another miserable night with the sick and with my own children, but Monday morning came. [p. 21]

May 14th. Monday morning came and my father-in-law went out to the country to seek for a place to live at. He got to a place called Dry Hill six miles from St. Louis where there was some coal mines, and a branch of the church of the Latter day Saints. Among whom was John Gibbs the presiding Elder, also Brothers Thomas Green and William Stone, and good many others. They treated him friendly. Green and Stone brought a team with them to move us out to Dry Hill. We got out to the place before dark and went in to Green's house that night. We where nine in number and three of them very sick, The owner of the land by the name of a Mr. Garsaide give orders to Mr. Green to drive us away from the premiss because that he was afraid that we would bring the cholera to the diggings. However, Green did not obey his orders and there we stayed. Next day we bought a little log cabin for fifteen dollar to live in, and all the family got well except my wife. She was getting weaker and weaker every day. Father-in-law and I commence working in the coal pits. On the 18th a great fire broke out in one of the boats at St. Louis and burnt 36 of the boats and one third of the city to ashes. I went to St. Louis next morning and such a sight I never before saw. The handsomest part of the city all to ashes. The streets full of ruins, a man could only walk through. My wife was getting worse and worse until the night of the 22nd. When she seemed to be a little better.

23rd. With day light this morning she was very bad and about 4 o'clock she set on the box and leaned her head back on the wall, she died in an instant without uttering a word. Thus she departed this life on the twenty-third day of May, 1849 at 4 o'clock in the morning or with the break of day. She was 24 years, 3 months and 23 day old when she died on the Dry Hill. She was buried in the county grave yard near Blue Ridge in the state of Missouri, about six miles west of the city of St. Louis. She left behind her two small children, a boy and a girl. IN a few days I left the Dry Hill and went to work in a brick yard in St. Louis with one Mr. Williams for 20 dollars per month and find myself, however, I did not stay there only two weeks. Went to work to Blue Ridge to another Mr. William Williams, a Welshman. As soon as my wife died my little daughter was taken sick. She got worse and worse until the 20 of June when she died in the same house as her mother and was buried in the same grave. I stayed on the Blue Ridge with Mr. Williams until fall when I moved to Gravois to coal diggings. I left my son Morgan with his grandfather at Dry Hill, but after a while he moved to the Gravois. . . . [p.22] [NO SALT LAKE CITY ARRIVAL ACCOUNT PROVIDED.]

BIB: Bowen, David D. Autobiography and diary, pp. 20-22. (CHL)
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