. . . In Feb. 1853 we started from Liverpool on the ship International for Zion and had a good time except one very heavy storm lasting 3 days. [On board] we celebrated the laying of the corner stones of the Salt Lake Temple on April 6th, 1853, and landed in New Orleans before I was 15 years of age. We traveled on the River Mississippi 1200 miles to St. Louis when we had to change boats there to take us to Keokuk in Iowa.

My Father and mother having some business in St. Louis, we did not go on with the company but waited one or two days; and while they were getting some provisions to take along, the boat left and I was left with our goods and did not know a person on board. The "Kate Kearney" started at 5 in the evening and landed at Keokuk at 10 o'clock the next night. But I sawed wood for the cook, got plenty to eat, but had to stay in the depot all night as there was no one there to meet me. Next morning Uncle William & Grandfather came to move the goods up to camp 2 miles from the town, and I had not lost one solitary thing of the goods.

Mother and father came up next night with my little brother John who I had nursed across the sea. He died and was buried in the woods at this camp ground. . . . [p.182]

. . . .We had to wait some time for our fit outs for 10 Pound Co., and grandfather & father fitted out 2 yoke of cattle and wagon of their own, as in the 10 Pound Co. there was 10 to a wagon and tent. We traveled 18 miles to a small place called Little Boston on the hills 5 miles above Montrose and opposite Nauvoo. I went [p.183] with father to Montrose and saw Nauvoo on the opposite side of the river, and the temple was then standing.

My mother died at Little Boston and was buried in the woods. Her prayers to the last were for me as the only child left that I might prove faithful to the work of God, for she had an idea that father would not, for he had got very much dissatisfied with the trials we were passing through and lamented the leaving of a good home; but I wanted to go to Zion. While my mother lay dead in the wagon, a Bevy of young ladies at night sang "The Resurrection Morn." I thought I never had heard anything sound so heavenly. It was the first time I ever heard it, but I always remembered it.

As for me, crossing the plains was mostly a good time. Once when we got into the Pawnee Indian Country, the Indians stopped us and made us pay tribute. And the chiefs had a tent in our camp for the night, and I had the job of guarding their tent from 9 to 1 o'clock. That was my first guarding that I had done, and I was rather timid but it went off first rate. Another night on the Platt River close by Fort Laramie, I was on guard when it kept up incessant thunder, lightning & rain-so much lightning that we could see the cattle plain, and the thunder was fearful. But [we] got along all right, and grandmother stayed up and got us some good Buffalo Head Soup and bread. At the time 1853, you could see Buffalo by the thousand along the Platt River, also Deer and Antelope. . . . [p.184]

BIB: Reeve, Robert Warner, Jr., Journal, IN Chronicles of Courage, vol. 3 (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1992) p. 182-84. (CHL)
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