. . . The year before we came to this country Ma had a pig killed that weighed 738 pounds, and for four or five years we gleaned our own bread. That made mother able to save her money to come to Zion

We got ready. Ma had twenty and thirty pounds [p.26] for our passage.

We left home on the 15th of March in 1854. My oldest brother brought us to Grantham Station, twelve miles. The ship was not safe, so we had to stay in Liverpool a month until they could charter another ship. While there, I got sick again, but was able to go to meetings. Once, I fainted. Brother Samuel W. Richards administered to me and I was better. The name of the ship chartered was the Marshfield Bath and when we passed, the doctor said I could not go. They consulted together again and he said that perhaps the sea air would set me alright.

Ma was a hard working woman, and in three years she had saved enough money for our emigration -- hers, mine, and my little brother's. We crossed the Atlantic -- taking seven weeks and two days. In the middle of the ocean, we saw a very big whale. It rolled over and swam away. We got to New Orleans, then went on the Mississippi River. People got sick and died with the cholera, so they quarantined us on an island below St. Louis. There were too many on the steamboat, so they had to hide some of us. They took us out to St. Louis, across the river, and landed us at Illinois, leaving us to get to St. Louis as best we could. We crossed to St. Louis on a flat boat and stayed there for two nights. Then we walked back down the river. A man ferried us across to the quarantined island, to stay there until they could take us up to Kansas, to get ready for the plains.

It was very hot and bad for the sick, but they soon got better after we moved to West Port. Then we started on the way. There were Indians and, one day, some Indians of the Sioux tribe -- one of them asked my mother if she would give me to him. He said that he would give her seven ponies and heaps and heaps of money. But, of course, they could not buy me. I was afraid. Then we traveled on to the Platte River. Oh, the herds of buffaloes! There were hundreds of them. When we got to Laramie, the soldiers and Indians had been fighting. The Indians had killed thirteen soldiers.

Once, when the wagon train stopped, I went to picking up beads. The wagon train went on and left me quite far behind. To catch up, I took a short cut an saw the hole that they had buried the soldiers in . There were pieces of bed ticking and soldiers' hickory shirts and stockings. That was the year 1854 -- the grasshopper year. In crossing the plains, the grasshoppers flew over us and shaded the sun. They flew to Salt Lake Valley and laid their eggs. The summer after, when they hatched out, we could hardly step. They even flew in our faces.

We got to Salt Lake City and camped on Arsenal Hill. [p.27]

BIB: Eyre, Sarah Ann Gillins, "History of Sarah Ann Gillins Eyre," In Family of Samuel Richard Wilcock and Francettie Eyre: An History of Their Children, Grandchildren and Great Grandchildren, comp. by Vern Acton Wilcock and Elizabeth Wilcock Tippets (Provo, Utah: Stevenson's Genealogical Center, 1980) pp. 26-27. (CHL)
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