. . . On the 24 of August 1882 just 11 days after my birthday we left for America. We had shipped our trunks 2 or 3 days before. Mother came with us to the city Thun. This was about 4 hours walk & we felt happy, but Mother, she felt good in one and down hearted too.

We got on the train but we had to leave our good Mother behind us and when the train started I thought my heart would burst. We had a very nice trip after we left [p.3] Switzerland, we went up the Rhine from Manheim to Frauenheim on a steamer. This was a wonderful country and there was a very nice company.

In Rotterdam we got on the steamer, we got on about 10 o'clock at night. The ship started to leave the dock and the passengers were singing and laughing but at once a big storm came and I believe everyone got seasick but me. One of the sisters said now we can sing and warble but oh!!!

When we arrived in Liverpool and there we got on the steamer Victoria, but we had to go third class which was very dirty. The beds or our berth was a box about 6 feet long and two feet wide and Elder Harlee, the president of the company, and two or three of us went to a store room and ordered some ticks filled with straw and each of us had one or two blankets with us.

The meals were very poor and not clean but there was an elderly brother with us, his name was John Fuller and he was a very good friend of mine. He went right in the beginning to the kitchen and peeled potatoes. They gave him a very good meal, the best they had and then he came to me and said, "David, come with me and I will get you a good meal." We went to the kitchen and peeled potatoes and sure enough we got a good dinner and from then on we ate all our meals in the kitchen.

The worst of all was that we all got lousey all of us that were in the 3rd class. There is a great difference between then and now. It took us nine days to cross the ocean. The trip went very good until we arrived in Granger, Wyoming, where my sister Rose and I had to get off the train, leave the others to go on to Salt Lake City and we took a train to Idaho. We could neither speak nor understand English.

This was just a new road, no passenger trains just loads of ties and rails on flat cars with a caboose behind all only four of us in that. The conductor, brakeman, Rose and I.

The train went so slow that I was sometimes tempted to get off and walk a while and sometimes we thought it would tip over.

At last we came to Cokeville, Wyoming, there the train stopped and a big man with big high topped boots came in the caboose and asks us in Swiss is we were Sister Susanna Katerina's Hirchis children and we said yes, and then he shook hands with us and said, "I am John Kunz and we've got to go about 15 miles then get off the train."

Rose and I had been wondering the last 2 days how the people made a living as we had seen nothing but hills and hallows covered with rocks and brush.

All at once the train stopped. It was about 10 o'clock at night and very dark in the month of September. No light to be seen nor any houses.

Brother Kunz said we had to walk over this meadow to the Bear River. . . . [p.4]

BIB: Hirschi, David. Autobiography (Ms 12357), pp. 3-4. (CHL)
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