. . . My father and Myself arrived at Liverpool on December the 9. Stayed and [p.39] visited with my sister and husband until the 12th and in the evening we went on the old ship John J. Boyd bound for New York after we had got all our baggage on board we found the ship would not sail until the next day so I said to my father and Mother that I would go back and stay all night with my sisters as we left my sister Tamar to stay with my sister Zilpha to help her to get ready to leave in July in the afternoon I left them to go down to the ship again and when I got there low and behold to my great surprise the ship was in readiness to start out the men was just taking away the last plank. There was all my folks standing on deck watching anxiously for me and shouting to the top of their voices for the Lord's sake bring my girl on the ship and don't leave her behind there was just the one plant to walk on form the deck to the ship and father and Mother was so afraid I would fall off into the water the sailors said Miss do you think you can walk this plank I told them I thought I could but they thought I may get dizzy and fall off into the water so they was very kind one man went on the plank before me and took my right hand the second man came and and [SIC] took my left hand they said if I slipped they would save me from going in the water I thank them and got on the plant with the assistance of those two brave sailors I got safe on the ship and felt very thankful to be with my father and Mother brothers and sister again. My dear good father says God help you my dear girl. We was all afraid you would be left behind. We watched for your coming so anxiously and when the man began to take away the planks your Mother began to fret and said oh what will we do. Patience has not come and the vessel is ready to start out to sea and we will have to leave her behind there was great [p.40] anxiety with them all when they see me walking on just one plank with two sailors holding my hands and there was great rejoicing when I was safe on the vessel with them all we moaned out a little way that evening Never will forget the first night on the ship. There was five hundred Danish Saints, three German and two Italians and one French family. Two Scotch families and 5 English families. Charles [R.] Savage had charge of the German and French Saints as he could talk their language and Elder Canute Peterson was president over the whole company. He was [a] very kind and fatherly man. So good and kind to all. We passed a terrible night. Not much sleep for anyone that first night and we was ordered to go below. We could not get a berth the first night so we had to lie down on the floor as best we could. I began to think we would smother to death before morning, for there was not a breath of air. I made my bed on a large box. I had a big loaf of bread in a sack, this I used for my pillow. To make sure of having bread for breakfast this was not a very nice thing to do, to sleep on my bread, but it was very little sleep I had but I rested my body for I had had a long walk before I got on the ship. I was very tired at twelve o'clock. The guard came around to see us all with his lantern. I told him I was very glad to see him came with the light for we had been in darkness up to that time. He said, "How is it miss, you are not asleep?" I asked him if he thought I could sleep in a place like this. I asked him if we would have no better accommodations than this all the way to New York. He said, "Don't feel bad. Tomorrow we will be able to give you a berth up above and I will try and give you a place where you can get more fresh air. Then you will feel better."
The guard said he was sorry for us but it would be better for us all in a few days. Old Brother [William] and Sister [Catherine] Hailey, quite an old couple, made their bed [p.41] down on the floor. They had a beautiful feather bed and pillows all in white covers to keep clean. All at once there came pouring down in their faces and all over their nice clean bed some dirty water. The old lady jumped up crying out to the guard, "Lord have mercy on us. I am going to be poisoned. Oh, dear me, what can we do in this dirty place. Have we got to stay down in this dirty place all through the voyage? We will all die before we get there and be buried in the sea." Poor old lady, I felt sorry for her and her poor old husband. The guard listened very attentively to her complaints and tried to console her by promising her that they should have a better place the next day. We was all glad when morning came so we could go on deck and breathe a little fresh air for we nearly all smothered. Not any of us felt like eating breakfast. Our family consisted of father & mother, myself and three sisters, two brothers and my brother, John & wife and two children. I will never forget that night of experience. I am glad to say we left that place in the morning and went on the deck above and we had a very good place. Our berths was about in the center of the deck just beneath the skylights and they was opened to give fresh air. My brother John had traveled on the sea many times. He, it was, that perceived us to get in this part of the ship. Going on deck we were glad to meet President Franklin D. Richards. My brother-in-law and my sister, Tilpha, [Zilpah] his wife, they had came in a small boat to bring us some nice things for Christmas. As they said, we would have to eat our Christmas dinner on board the ship and they had brought us some raisins and currents and suet already chopped and everything to make our Christmas [p.42] pudding and a sack of own made bread. Some cheese, butter and many other good things. As soon as President Richards had settled all his business with the captain of the vessel and Brother Peterson and Savage and gave all instructions necessary and all good counsel and blessings to us all. They bid us goodbye to us all and commended to the care and protection of our Heavenly Father, praying that we may have a prosperous and safe voyage across the mighty deep. Then my dear sister and husband bid us farewell and got into the boat. We all felt somewhat downhearted in parting with each other. But we did not part thinking we would never see each other again as my sister and husband and child, that dear little Flora, that was her name, and my sister Tamar, all expected to leave Liverpool about July to come to America and join us again, which they did and we met on the Iowa camping ground.
Now, I will return again to the old ship and relate some things that happened on that old ship. We had a terrible severe voyage. Much sickness and many deaths, numbering sixty two in all. We were on the sea nearly eleven weeks. After we had been out at sea two weeks we had a bad storm. The hatchways was all locked and we could not go on deck for anything. The skylights were opened and the sea washed over the deck and tons of water came down through the skylights. As it happened we was all in our berths unable to get out. We were all seasick. The whole family, with the exception of my father and brother John, and they was kept busy waiting on us. We was all sick for five weeks, after the storm was over which lasted for nearly a week. The Captain told the Mate to come down and tell us that all that were able to come up for a time, so my brother and father helped us girls to go on deck. They said we were all sick and it would do us good to have a [p.43] little fresh air.
We was all so weak that we were not able to go without help. After we were on deck, the Captain said if we would be good girls and keep very quiet and keep out of the way of the sailors we could stay on deck and see the men turn the vessel that he had sighted a ship in distress, and they was going to their assistance. This was something that none of [us] girls had ever witnessed before and we thought we would like to see.
The captain of our ship was a very rough, cross man, but this was one kind act that he did and this was once that he spoke kindly to us but he was a bad man to his sailors. When everything was ready he gave orders for the lifeboats to be lowered and the ship Mate got into the boat and went to the vessel in distress. He found the vessel was all broken to pieces and several of the men had been washed overboard. The ship was loaded with flour bound for Liverpool. The mate fetched in his boat the first time four poor sick men. Poor things, they looked so poor and worn out. Two men had two ribs broken and could not do anything. They went into the hospital. The doctor attended to them, the other two poor men said to the Captain, "Sir, we feel to thank you. God bless you for coming to help us." The brute of a captain said to them, "G.D-----you go to work. That is all I want of you. Get up that rigging. I don't want to hear no more of your talk." I thought, "Oh, what an unkind man that he was to make these poor men go to work at once without giving them anything to eat."
The boat returned again with more men. They, too, had to go to work. The third time the captain of the vessel came with the last of his men. This captain had his jaw broken. The poor man. He was a very very [SIC] different man to the captain of our vessel. So kind to his men. He had lost his only son sixteen years old, the first time he [p.44] has ever been from home. He said his boy begged so hard of his mother to let him come with me and now this has happened. " I have lost my boy, my only child. How can I go home to my wife without our poor boy." Poor man. It was very grievous to see and hear his grief. This was a very distressing scene. At the same time it was a blessing to us that the captain of our ship had not men enough to mark our vessel. He had often to call on some of the brethren for help and it was said that if these men had not come to our assistance that we would never have gotten to New York. At one time, the Captain said if we did not stop our D---- preaching and praying we would never land in New York. I told the mate that was the only thing that saved his vessel for he was such a wicked drinking man and neglected his duty it was a wonder that he was suffered to live.
One night I was lying in my berth and I saw some spark of fire come down. I watched and they came down again. I called to mother and told her there was fire coming down. We got up but we did not see anymore. The guard came around us, as usual. Then we found the captain was drunk and had kicked over his stove in his cabin. The men, smelling fire, went in and put out the fire. It had already burnt the floor and if the men had not gone into his cabin the stove would soon fell through upon someone below.
In the morning the carpenters came to repair the burnt floor. In this I acknowledge the protecting care of God, our Heavenly [Father], was over his children. Now we was on the mighty deep in the hands of a drunken captain who had command of the ship. If it had not been for some of the men he would have been burnt to death in his own cabin and probably the ship would have been burnt and with all on board. In our escape from such a death, I acknowledge the hand of God in preserving our lives.
All through such a long and hard journey crossing the sea in taking these [p.45] other men on board proved to us another blessing. These was more help to make the vessel and we had a more pleasant journey after they came to us. But through these men coming on the ship, we became short of fresh water and we was only allowed one pint of fresh water per day and that was for drinking. We had to wash in salt water and cook our potatoes in salt water. I said, "Well, one good thing, we will not have to use any salt to our potatoes and we are all willing to share our fresh water with those poor men that lost everything and have come to help us." I felt to bless those poor men.
We had a great deal of sickness on the vessel. Sixty-two deaths in all. It seemed a severe trial to have to bury our loved ones in the sea. My brother buried his little girl [Zilpha]. It did, indeed, seem very hard to roll her in a blanket and lay her in the big waves and see the little dear go floating away out of sight. There was one Danish brother and sister. Their two sons, all the children they had, both died and were buried in the sea. The eldest was eleven years old and the younger nine, I think. This was [a] very severe trial for this poor brother and sister. They were faithful, good Latter-day Saints. They was wealthy people and had then the means of several poor families coming to Utah, but the loss of their two only children seemed almost more than they could endure. I never saw them after we got to New York.
We had a very hard voyage crossing the sea but we had a very nice company of Saints. Good and kind was the Danish brothers and sisters and we enjoyed ourselves together although we could not talk their language, neither could they talk the English language, but we could make each other understand. They would make up a [p.46] dance and as many of the Danish brethren had instruments with them and could play many good dance tunes and the young men would come and invite us English sisters to their dance and we would go and enjoy ourselves for hours together and Brother Peterson, our president, would always attend the dances. He was a very kind, fatherly man and very watchful over his flock and ever ready and willing to give kind and good advice to those under his care, but the journey was so long and tedious that we all began to get tired and worn out. It really seemed, sometimes, that we would never see land again.
One night when we had a bad storm we could not sleep as we had to hold on to the berth to keep from being thrown out. We were all in the dark. My poor mother was fretting and thought we would all be lost and drown in the sea. My father had fixed some curtains in front of our berth to make it more comfortable and private for we girls. Just when the ship was tossing and rolling the worst, I opened my eyes. We were all in darkness, but in a moment the curtains opened and a beautiful lovely figure stood there. Oh such a lovely countenance I had never seen before in all my life and the light was so bright around him that I could see the color of his eyes and hair. He had brown eyes and lovely brown hair and he spoke the words to me as I looked at him. He said, "Fear not. You shall be taken there all safe." Then he left and the curtains were again closed and I called to my dear father and mother in the next berth. I told them what I had seen and for them not to think that we would never get to land again for I believe that I had seen the Savior and that he told me not to fear and that we should all be taken there safe. My father and mother believed in what I said and they all felt encouraged and felt to rely on this promise that our ship would take us all through safe to New York.
Not [p.47] very long after this one morning my brother John came to our berth and said, "Come girls. Get up and go on deck and see land!" We did not believe him at first. We told him that he only wanted to make us get up as he had been up to the galley and cooked breakfast for us and we told him that we could not eat or drink anything as we were feeling sick. "Oh," he said, "come on deck and you will feel better when you see land." So after some persuading we dressed and went on deck and to our great joy we surely could see land. I will never forget the joyful feeling and how thankful I felt to think that we had spent our last night on the old ship. John J. Boyd was the name of the poor old ship. This was the last voyage she went. I ran downstairs to tell father and mother that surely land was in site and tonight we would land in New York. This was joyful news to them for we was all tired of our long sea voyage. Although we had made some very good friends with many of our Danish brothers and sisters, and Brother Charles Savage, he was such good cheerful company. He would sing to us so many of his good old songs to try to pass the time as cheerfully as we could for he was getting tired of the long and tedious journey. At last we landed all safe in Castle Garden, New York in February, 1856 about nine o'clock in the evening.
I forgot to mention that poor old Brother William Haley [Hailey] went on deck to the cook house and the wind blew his stove pipe hat overboard and when he came and told his poor old wife that he had lost his hat, she scolded him and said, "Now you can go the rest of the way without a hat for I will not let you have your new hat or you will lose that." So she tied a red handkerchief around his head. The [p.48] poor old man felt very bad about losing [his] hat. He said it cost him 12 schillings and 6 pence. I asked him how long he had worn it, and he said twelve years. I said, "Well, if I were you, Brother, I would not grieve about that old hat for I think it has done you good service. I think that has been a very cheap hat." Oh me, how angry he was with me. He seemed to think that I had no sympathy for him in his troubles and when we arrived at Castle Garden, his wife found an old half stove pipe hat and she gave it to the poor old man. He said it was too small for him but as she was the boss, she put it on his head and said, "You will have [to] wear that or none." I will never forget how the poor old man looked with that old hat just stuck on the top of his head. I felt sorry to see the poor old man go out in the street looking such a way. They had plenty of money but his wife said she would not go and buy him another hat and she was the captain. Her word was law.
In the morning President John Taylor and Brother Miles came to visit to make inquiry and found out who had money and who had not. Those that was able to go out and rent rooms for themselves had to do so and those that needed help had a place provided for them and provisions provided for them. My father and myself went to Williamsburg and rented three rooms. We bought a second hand cook stove, a table, and two or three chairs and we was soon comfortably settled for four months. We soon all got work. My father was a first class gardener and he very soon had more work than he could attend to, making and laying out flower gardens. He got good wages. My brother was a shoemaker and he also did well. Myself and sister Maria got work in the store on Grant Street making mantillas. We worked piece work and made good wages. My sisters Jane and Sarah got work taking care [p.49] of babies. So we all got work and did well. My brother Robert was ten years old. He went to school. We were going fine in Williamsburg. We were all working and expected to stay here until the next year, then we thought we would make enough money to buy an outfit to go to Utah but we were greatly surprised.
Sometime in May we received orders from Liverpool to be ready to start on a journey to leave New York the beginning of July and to go to Iowa to join the handcart company to cross the plains by handcart. This was a terrible great surprise to us all. At first for we felt we never could undertake to pull a handcart from Iowa to Salt Lake City and my poor mother, in delicate health. She had not walked a mile for years and we girls had never been use to outdoor work.
My brother-in-law John Jaques was in in [SIC] Liverpool in the office with Franklin D. Richards. From there we received orders to be ready to go that season by handcart to Utah. My poor mother felt so bad about it that she requested me to write to my brother-in-law, John Jaques as he was in the Liverpool office with Franklin D. Richards. Mother wished me to tell him that she did not think that she and her girls could ever undertake to go that long journey and pull a handcart from Iowa to Salt Lake City and to tell him also that she would want revelation from God before she could make up her mind to go that hard way to the valley. I wrote the letter and mailed it in due time. My brother-in-law received it and it appeared he did not like the contents of the letter.
One day I went to President John Taylor's office on business and he said, "Well, Sister Patience, when are you going to Utah?" I told him that we had come to the conclusion to stay in New York until the next year as we [p.50] was all working and we thought we could make enough money to buy a good outfit by the next year. He thought that was a very good plan. Then I told him my father had orders that came from the office in Liverpool from President F. [Franklin] D. Richards to get ready at once to leave New York and get out to Iowa camping groung to meet a company of Saints that would go by handcart to Salt Lake City and that arrangements was made for my father and his family to get our handcarts at Iowa and go with that company that expected to start on their journey sometime in July.
Brother Taylor was quite surprised when I told him. He seemed to feel sorry for us. He knew that my father had only we four girls to help him as Mother was a very delicate Mormon unable to take a journey by handcart across the plains I ask Br. Taylor if he would like to have his girls pull a handcart across the plains. He said no. But Patience I cannot say anything about the matter as you are under the council of President Richards you will have to go according to councils, but at the same time I don't think you will be able to go any further than Council Bluffs this season. You will be too late starting. Council Bluffs he said it two hundred and seventy five miles from Iowa City and when you get there you will find out how you feel if you can stand the journey or not but my opinion is that you will have to stay there until next spring and that is what we should have done it would have been the saving of hundreds of lives good men and women faithful members of the Church. I return back home after this conversation with President John Taylor told my father and mother that I had been talking with Br. Taylor about us go by handcart to Utah and told them all what he said that we was under the council of [p.51] Bro. F. D. Richards. My poor mother still held in the same mine she did not feel that she could ever undertake that long journey by handcarts and we girls all felt the same as Mother and as for myself, I think I felt the worst out of all the family. I could not see it right at all to want us to do such a humiliating thing to be I said harnessed up like cattle and pull a handcart loaded up with our bedding, cooking utensils, and our food and clothing and have to go through different towns to be looked at and made fun of as I knew we would be it was very hurtful to my feelings. Yes, I will say and to my pride in my young days such away of traveling was very humiliating to my feelings and I did not think it was necessary. Make people pull a hand cart when by waiting another year we could have bought good teams and wagon but we was still waiting for further orders from Liverpool before we made any move to leave New York. One day T. B. H. Stenhouse came from the president's office. He said you know that you name is in the Millennial Star. Br. Loader, you are thought to be apostatizing from the Church. It says father Loader had brought his family out of one part of Babylon this hurts my poor dear father's feelings very much. He said to mother, I cannot stand that to be accused of apostasy. I will show them better; Mother I am going to Utah. I will pull the handcart if I die on the road. We all know if our father said he would go that we would all have to go for he would never leave any of us in New York. Neither would we have been willing to be left there after our dear father and mother had gone away. So, when father gave the word we all agreed to go with him and we commenced to make ready for the journey. We all gave notice to quit our work on such a day and got ready to leave New York. On the 3rd of July, [p.52]1856 we left New York and arrived at Dunkirk. The next morning at four o'clock the forth of July, on inquiring we were told that the boat would not leave until sometime in the afternoon the next day for Cleveland. So we had all that time to wait we to the restaurant to get breakfast then we went back to the depot. One of the guards was very kind. He told my father that there was a large room upstairs and he could take his family into that room and all his baggage and we could occupy that room as long as we had to stay at the depot. He said it will be more private for your girls than being in the public waiting room. He said, you can make you beds down and rest yourselves and if you want to cook I will show you can make a fire to make your folks a cup of tea. We was treated very kind and respectful at that place. Father and mother remained there all the day but we young folks took a stroll around the place. There was not much to be seen. The place seemed very quiet. Sister Lucy Ward and myself thought we would go for a walk as we got tired laying around and as I had to write some letter. We took a walk out in the fields to be quiet and came to a nice shady place. We sat down under some beautiful trees and I wrote my promised letter to my friend Alexander Ott whom I became acquainted with in New York. Here I will say and was engaged to be married to him the next year as he expected to return to Utah and I promised to become his wife when he came home that I would wait for him to return home as soon as he was released from his mission but he proved false to me and married a widow woman. When I received this news from President John Taylor, I considered myself free from all promises. I will now return to my walk with Sister Lucey Ward Afton. [p.53] I wrote my letters. We thought we would extend our walk a little further on it was such a lovely day and the fields was looking so green and beautiful and everything so calm and quiet we was enjoying ourselves so much but we had not gone far before we saw someone lying by the roadside. At first sight we did not know what to do, whether to proceed father or go back. We did not know if the man was sleeping or not but we thought he may be sick but to our greatest surprise we found the man was dead. So we retraced our steps and hurried back to town and not tell anyone that we had seen a dead man lying by the road side. We came back and sat down to rest on the bank of the lake Erie washed our pocket handcuffs and then took a good bathe ourselves as it was a nice retired place. Then we went back to the railroad depot where father and Mother was anxiously waiting our return for they did not like us to go far away from them. We stayed here the remain of the day. [They stayed all night in the railroad depot.] After my brother, John and Father gathered wood and water, they made a fire and we cooked dinner. Then we enjoyed ourselves all the afternoon reading and singing the songs of Zion. We got supper in the evening. After we made our beds and retired for the night. Through the kindness of the guard at the depot, we was very quiet and comfortable and in the morning we arose early, got breakfast and packed up our bedding and cooking utensils and got ready to start on our journey again. When the boat was ready the time seemed long that day for we did not leave Dunkirk until three o'clock in the afternoon.
When we arrived at Cleveland, we took the train for Chicago. We arrived there quite late at night and we went to the hotel for the night, had supper, went to bed, got up early in the morning, had breakfast and took [p.54] the train for Rock Island. Arriving there, we found that we had to cross the river on the steamboat as the railroad bridge had been destroyed. We landed at Davenport sometime in the morning. A great crowd gathered around us casting slurs at us and asking father if he was going to take his fine girls to Utah and give them to Brigham Young for wives. They said that old fellow already got plenty of wives. They told father that he had better stay at that place with his girls, for girls were scarce in the neighborhood and there were lots of men who wanted wives. This was the roughest place we came to in our journey from New York.
My father let them talk and we girls would not speak or notice them at all and that seemed to enrage them. They said we was [some] lot of girls not to speak to a fellow. The boys told these men to stop their insults to a quiet respectable family as he believed. He told them to leave the place but they did not go until they got ready. The boss called Father to his room and told him that we would have [to] stay there until the next morning before we could leave for Iowa and he advised Father to take us to a nice retired place a short distance from the depot and camp for the day and for us to return in the evening and that he would see that we was protected throughout the night. So we did as he requested us to do. We spent a nice comfortable day unmolested. One or two men came to our camping place but were very quiet and treated us with respect, asking us if we were Mormons and if we were going to Utah to make our home. We told them, yes, that we were intending to go to Utah. They said we had a long journey before us. We told them this we already knew, but at that time we did not know what hardships we would have to pass through before we came to the end of [p.55] our journey. If we had known, we may have backed out and stayed in Iowa which I think would have been better for us and would have been the means of saving my dear Father's life. To have stayed in Iowa that winter and starting out our journey the next spring, well, as I said, the gentlemen at the depot told my Father to return with his family in the evening ..... and he would see that we had a comfortable place the we should be protected through the night so as the evening came on we got supper after which we returned to the depot. This gentleman came to Father and ask him if we had been molested at all. Father told him we had not. That we had spent a very quiet day and thanked him for his kindness.
He said "That is all right! Mister, now come with me and bring your family and here is a car I have had emptied and cleaned out in readiness for you to sleep for the night. You can make your beds and have a good nights rest and you will be safe here until morning. Then the train leaves for Iowa." He said he was going home and that there would be a guard at the depot all night. After he was gone, two big men came in our car. My brother John and Father asked them what they wanted or what their business was and they said they had come to stay all night with us as they was going on the train to Iowa in the morning. My brother told them that they could not stay in the car with us for there was no room for them and that this car had been allowed us for our own use for the night to sleep.
At this they became quite enraged and said they would stay in the car. "You cannot help yourselves." My brother said once more to them, "Will you leave this car or not?" They swore and said they had as much right to the use of the car as we had and they were not going out. My brother, being an a stout young [p.56] man, pushed them both out of the car and closed the doors. Those fellows were taken by surprise. They went out of the car quicker than they came in. For a time they stayed around swearing and using vile language but the guard told them they had better leave. So after a little time they went away and everything was quiet for the night. We made our beds and we girls and mother and my brother's wife, we all went to bed and slept until morning, for we was all tired out and needed rest. My father and brother John kept guard all night so we could have a good sleep.
The next morning the boss came to see Father and asked if we had a good nights rest. Father told him about these men and he said they were some that came from a little town. They had no right to come in the car at all and said my brother did the right thing to put them out. We got breakfast and then started on our journey for Iowa City. When we arrived there we was told that the Mormon Company was camped two miles out of town. We girls all walked out. My father and brother had to look after our baggage and get some one to take it to camp for us. When we arrived in camp we was furnished a tent for our family the weather was dreadfully hot. No shade whatever here we stayed for three weeks before the company was ready to start. . . . [p.57] [NO ARRIVAL DATE IS GIVEN IN THIS DIARY. HOWEVER, PATIENCE LOADER NOTED THAT SHE WAS IN THE EDWARD MARTIN COMPANY. THE 1997-1998 CHURCH ALMANAC, P.172, NOTES THAT THIS COMPANY ARRIVED IN SALT LAKE CITY ON NOVEMBER 30, 1856.]
BIB: Archer, Patience Loader. Reminiscences (Ms 6218), pp. 39-57. (CHL)
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