In 1861, Father and Mother sold our lovely home and came to Utah. Mother put some bedding, quilts, blankets and sheets, in a big sheet and tied the four corners into a knot. We also had a wooden chest bound with metal bands to stand rough handling and with a lock. This was about three feet high, three feet wide and four or five feet long. In this Mother put our clothing, some dishes, knives, forks, spoons, frying pan and one cooking kettle, things that she thought we would need on our journey across the Plains.

We embarked on a small boat from Copenhagen to Liverpool. The North Sea is very rough and oh, how sick I was! At Liverpool we embarked on The Monarch of the Sea, a very old and rickety ship and entirely unseaworthy. The sea was so rough and stormy that the waves washed over the top of the deck. When the people were frightened the captain said, "We'll land in New York all right. We've got Mormons on board and we always get through when we have Mormons." On its return voyage The Monarch of the Sea, loaded with cargo, sank, but the captain and the crew were saved.

We were on the ocean six weeks. All of the Mormon families traveled in the steerage. The voyage was very rough. I can remember the chest sliding and banging from side to side across the wooden floor and all the other chests and trunks with it. I can also remember my mother sitting and clasping her hands, praying that we would get to America in safety. She was a very devout and courageous woman. We slept in bunks on the sides of the boat. In the center we children played during the daytime and ate our meals. Our food consisted of hard tack and a little bacon and coffee. We used our chests and trunks as tables when we ate our food. Sometimes the captain would be kinder than usual and send down a little soup.

There were a lot of sailors on the boat and they were so good to me. A Negro cook who did the cooking for the sailors and captain and who had his kitchen on the upper deck was very kindhearted and generous. He used to give me prunes, dried apples, raisins and sometimes cookies, and often a little bowl of soup. I was on deck frequently and knew all the sailors and the cook. Sometimes he used to sneak some [p.196] soup down to the emigrants in the steerage because he felt so sorry for them. The captain caught him at this and he was put in jail. The jail was on the upper deck and I can remember that I used to see his black fingers over the bars through the high opening of the door. One day he died. They told me that the captain had starved him to death. The body of my friend, the Negro cook, was brought into the kitchen where it was sewed up in a sheet. Then they put him on a long board, carried him to the side of the boat and slid him into the ocean. I was the chief mourner because he had been so good to me.

One day my sister was on deck and one of the sailors who was up in the mast dropped one of the iron spikes on my sister's head and the blood was streaming onto the deck. The poor boy did not mean to do it, but some of the officers started to beat him. My mother came up on deck, elbowed her way through the crowd and said, "You leave him alone; he never meant to hurt my child!" Although she could not speak the English language, she made herself understood in Swedish by her actions. They all let him alone and he was very grateful to my mother.

The emigrants washed their clothes on the ship as best they could in the sea water and they had their lines for drying on the top deck. I can remember seeing the shirts blowing in the wind with the shirt sleeves puffing out full in the breezes.

We finally landed in New York, all safe and sound, and went to a place called Castle Garden, where all the emigrants landed, and where all the freight unloaded for the vessels was brought for storage temporarily. Castle Garden was located at the Battery, just across from the Goddess of Liberty. It was right on the waterfront.

Castle Garden was the dumping ground for all kinds of cargo and it was also crowded with emigrants. The floor was greasy and dirty. Here we had to make our beds on the floor, as did all the other emigrants. Mother spread out the quilts and bedding and we all lay down in a row, the children and Mother and Father. There were sacks of brown sugar at our heads. My little brother was sleeping next to me and in the night he awoke and whispered, "Alma, there is a hole in the corner of this sack and I am going to have some of the brown sugar." We had not had any sugar or candy all the way over, so we got a spoon out of the box and had all the brown sugar we could eat. In the morning we were so sick! We got up, went to the bay and threw it all up and did not care for brown sugar after that. [p.197]

From New York City, we traveled by boat up the Hudson and took the trains at Albany to travel to Omaha, the outfitting place for our trip across the Plains. All of us were forced to travel on sheep cars so filthy with sheep beans on the floor that we could not sit down and had to stand al the way. We traveled this distance without a change of cars.

My sister and her husband, who was a butcher, had left Sweden the previous year and had stopped in Omaha to await our coming. How happy we were to see them! They had rented a house in Omaha and we stayed with them and rested until the teams came from Salt Lake City for us. Then my sister, her husband and our family all traveled together across the Plains.

The train which came to get us was made up of independent teams, under the direction of Captain Murdock. We started on our long journey from Omaha with eighty wagons in our train. . . . [p.198]

. . . After three and one-half months walking over a hot desert, up the rugged hills and down the hills and canyons, we finally came out of Emigration Canyon, dirty and ragged. When I saw our mother looking over this valley with tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she made this remark, "Is this Zion, and are we at an end of this long weary journey?" Of course to me, as a child, this had been a delightful pleasure jaunt and I remember it only as fun. We children would run along as happy as could be. My older sisters used to make rag dolls as they walked along, for us little children to play with. But to my mother, this long, hot journey with all of us ragged and footsore at the end, and the arrival in the valley of desert and sagebrush must have been a heartbreaking contrast to the beautiful home she had left in Sweden. In the years that followed we were to love in forts, cellars and dugouts, among hostile Indians, so that we did not know wether we were ever safe. But to me and to my mother, the gospel had been worth all it had cost.

We came down into the village where there were only a very few little adobe and log houses and our entire train camped in the Eighth Ward Square. It was a dirty old place. There was a constant succession of emigrant trains camping there. Some had come in front of us a day or two; other trains were two or three days behind. While we camped with our wagons in the square, the oxen were taken into the tithing yard at South Temple and Main Street, where they were fed ad cared for in preparation for leaving for the east again to bring another company of emigrants. . . . [p.200]

BIB: Felt, Alma Elizabeth Mineer, Journal, An Enduring Legacy, vol. 7 (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1984) pp. 196-198, 200. (CHL)
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