. . . About the year 1854, my parents joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which, as might be expected, brought down upon their heads the ridicule and scorn of their very religious parents, and were looked upon as being a disgrace to their families.

At that time my father was engaged in the mercantile business for a livelihood and had been very successful, but as soon as it became known that he had joined that hated and despised people known as the Mormons, a great change was soon apparent. His old patrons [p.1] withdrew their patronage and did all they could to injure his business. As a result, he closed down at a great loss, which left him very much reduced in circumstances.

In the spring of 1856, we emigrated to America. We crossed the ocean in a sailing vessel named the Horizon. After about six weeks, we landed in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It had been the intention of my parents to go right through to Utah, but upon our arrival in Boston, their funds were exhausted and they could go no further. We moved into a large tenement house several stories in height right in the heart of the city. The house was occupied principally by families of Irish laborers and a rough set they were. Our family, I think, consisted of seven: mother, father, and five of us children and here we had troubles galore. It was in the heat of summer, we were in the depths of poverty and father out of employment. We were strangers in a strange land without the bare [p.2] necessities of life. Sickness came upon us and within the space of two months, the three youngest children had died. Father was unable to pay the expenses of burial and they were buried by the Municipality of Boston. Mother had the heart-rending experience of seeing strange men enter the house, take the bodies of her dear ones away to where, she never knew. That was the last she saw of them in this life. No funeral sermon, no sympathetic relatives or friends, no flowers, how different with you mothers of today.

In the fall of that year, father was offered employment in a small town called Ashland, twenty four miles from Boston. There we moved and there is where my first recollections commence. What I have written so far is what I learned from my parents. At that time my family consisted of father, mother, and my sister Elizabeth, three years older than myself, and myself.

Father worked in a paper mill and although we were Mormons we were well treated by [p.3] the people of Ashland and I shall always have a warm place in my heart for the Down East Yankees. . . .

. . . We lived in Ashland until the spring of 1859, when we made another start for Utah. We got as far as Florence, Nebraska. This was the place where all the emigrants for the west outfitted for crossing the plains. There could be seen the frontiersman of every type and the Pawnee Indian in all his native glory. It was there we began to get the scent of the wild and woolly west. The place was full of Indians, all armed with the tomahawk and bows and arrows. And they [p.4] surely could shoot true with the latter. I have seen the white man try the Indians skill by putting a dime in a split stick, sticking it in the ground and at a distance of twenty steps Mr. Indian would seldom fail to chip it off the end of the stick and of course the dime would be his reward for his skill.

Father obtained employment with Mr. William Piper, a merchant of that place, as salesman in his store.

In the latter part of the summer a way was opened for us to continue our journey to Utah. Ebenezer R. Young of Salt Lake City was loading and ox train of ten wagons with merchandise for Salt Lake and offered father and mother our passage across the plains . . .[p.5]

. . . After a long tedious journey of one thousand miles we reached Salt Lake City in the latter part of October [1859]. . . .[p.6]

BIB: Crouch, Ebenezer. Autobiography, typescript, pp.1-6. (CHL).
(source abbreviations)