Autobiography 1858 Deseret News
——We started upon our journey. My
child was in the first stages of the hooping-
cough. Our company consisted of fifty three
persons; we had ten wagons, with a pair of
horses to each. We had before us, at this
late period, a gloomy laid journey of two
thousand miles, from Maine to Missouri. We
continued to travel through rain, mud, cold,
frost and snow, until we arrived in Rochester,
Sangamon county, Illinois, Dec. 19, where I
stopped and settled my family and company
for the winter, being unable to proceed further.
My wife had passed through a severe course
of the brain fever while upon the journey; her
sufferings had been very great. Her spirit had
left her body twice to all human appearance,
and only been called back through the prayer
of faith and the power of God. Our child
had also been very sick, and I had become so
thoroughly chilled through my whole system,
in crossing the bleak prairies, that it was two
months after I stopped before I got sufficiently
warmed to feel natural.
Br. Thomas buried one child, and nearly all
the company had been sick through exposure;
some of them had stopped by the way.
I spent the winter laboring with my hands
for the support of my family.
(To be continued.)
