Merriman, Priscilla - Memories

About this time, Thomas D. Evans, a young Mormon Elder, was sent up from Merthyr Tydfil, in Glamorganshire, Wales, as a missionary to Pembrokeshire. He was fine speaker, and had a fine tenor voice, and I used to like to go around with the missionaries and help with the singing. Elder Evans and I seemed to be congenial from our first meeting, and we were soon engaged. He was traveling and preaching the restored Gospel, without purse or scrip, and I was keeping house for my father and five little brothers.

Perhaps his mission will be better understood if I give a little account of his work here. Thomas David Evans is the son of David Evans and Jane Morris Evans. He was born Feb. 14, 1833, in Troedyrhiw, three miles from Merthyr in Glamoganshire, Wales. His father, David Evans, died and left his mother a widow with eight children, Thomas D. being four years old, and the youngest. He was placed in a large forge of 2000 men at the age of seven years to learn the profession of Iron Roller. At nine years of age, he had the misfortune to lose his left leg at the knee. He went through the courses and graduated as an Iron Roller.

When set apart for his mission to Pembrokeshire, it was predicted that the days of his life spent in that country should be spent in expounding the Gospel Scriptures, and that he never should be confounded by the enemy, so long as he kept the commandments of God, which promise has been verified. In the spring of 1852, he left his home in Glamorganshire to go to Pembrokeshire, South Wales, to travel as he had been traveling, and preaching the Gospel on foot without purse or scrip. After he came to Pembrokeshire as a missionary, we met in one of his meetings.

There were about 10 young girls in our branch, and we used to meet with the Elders and help them with the singing, and we girls would often meet together and sing the beautiful songs of Zion. It seems to me now, when I think of that time, that we had put the world aside, and were not thinking of our worldly pleasures, and what our next dress would be. We had no dancing in those days, but we were happy in the enjoyment of the spirit of the

Gospel.

My people belonged to the Baptist Church, and I attended their meeting and Sabbath Schools before joining our Church. As previously stated, the Bible was taught in the National School of Tenby where I attended until in my 12th year, so that I was familiar with the bible doctrine and when I heard the Elders explain it, it seemed as though I had always known it, and it sounded like music in my ears. We had the spirit of gathering and were busy making preparations to emigrate.

About that time the Principle of Plurality of Wives was preached to the world, and it caused quite a commotion in our branch. One of the girls came to me with tears in her eyes and said, "Is it true that Brigham Young has ninety wives? I can't stand that, Oh, I can't stand it." I asked her how long it had been since I had heard her testify that she knew the Church was true, and I said if it was, then it is true now. I told her I did not see anything for her to cry about. After I talked to her awhile, she dried her eyes and completed her arrangements to get married and emigrate. She came with us. My promised husband, Elder Thomas D. Evans, was president of the Pembrokeshire Conference for the last two years; so he was released from his missionary labors. We went to Merthyr to visit his mother, brothers, sisters, and friends, preparatory to

emigrating to the Valley. His family did all in their power to persuade him to remain with them. They were all well off, and his brothers said they would send him to school, support his wife, and pay all of his expenses, but all to no avail. He bade them all goodbye, and returned to Tenby.

I think I would have had a harder time getting away, had it not been that my father was also going to be married again, and I do not suppose the lady cared to have in the home, the grown daughter who had taken the place of the mother for so many years. Pres.

Evans and I walked 10 miles from Tenby to Pembrokeshire, secured our license, and were married on the 3rd of April, 1856. On our return from Pembrokeshire, we found a few friends and relatives awaiting with a nice supper, which was very much appreciated. After visiting with our friends and relatives for a few days, we took a Tug from Pembroke to Liverpool, where we set sail on the 17th of April, 1856, on the sailing vessel "Sam Curling." Captain Curling said he always felt safe when he had Saints on board. We heard that his ship went down later with all on board, but there were no Saints that trip. We were on the ship five weeks, and lived on the ship's rations. I was seasick all the way, and had a miserable time. We landed in Boston on the 23rd of May, then went by rail 300 miles to Iowa City, where we waited three weeks for the handcarts to be made.

When the carts were ready, we started in the Bunker Company. The weather was fine, the roads good, and although I was sick and weak and we were all tired out at night, still we thought it a glorious way to come to Zion. We began our journey of one thousand miles, pulling our handcarts. Some families consisted of just the husband and wife, and some had a number of children. Each cart had 100 pounds of flour to be divided, and get more from the wagons as needed. At first we had a little coffee and bacon, but that was soon gone, and we had no use for any cooking utensils but a frying pan. The flour was self-rising mixed with water, and cooked in the frying pan over the fire. That was all we had to eat. After months of traveling we were put on half rations, and at one time before

help came, we were out of flour for two days. We shook the flour sacks in the water to make gravy, but had no grease of any kind. Our company was 300 Welsh Saints. There were about a dozen in our tent, six of whom could not speak the Welsh language, myself among the number. Don't you think I had a pleasant journey traveling for months with 300 people of whose language I could not understand a word? My husband could talk Welsh; so he could join in their festivities when he felt like it. There were in our tent my husband with one leg, two blind men, Thomas Giles being one of them, a man with one arm, and a widow with five children. The widow, her children, and myself were the only ones who could not talk Welsh. My husband was commissary for our tent, and he cut his

own rations short many times to help little children who had to walk and did not have enough to eat to keep up their strength. There were five mule teams to haul the tents and flour. We were allowed to bring but 17 pounds; the remainder to make up the amount was in an oil cloth sack. Just our commonest clothing, which would stand the hard wear of traveling as we did. The tent was our covering, and the overcoat spread on the bare ground with the shawl over us was our bed. My feather bed, and bedding, pillows, all our good clothing, my husband's church books, which he had collected through six years of missionary work, with some genealogy he had collected, all had to be left in a storehouse. We were promised that they would come to us with the next emigration in the spring, but we never did receive them. It was reported that the storehouse burned down so that was a

dreadful loss to us. Edward Bunker was the Captain of our Company. His orders of the day were, "If any are sick among you, and are not able to walk, you must help them along, or pull them on your carts." No one rode in the wagons. Strong men would help the weaker ones, until they themselves were worn out, and some died from the struggle and want of food, and were buried by the wayside. It was heart rending for parents to move on and leave their loved ones to such a fate, as they were so helpless, and had no material for coffins. Children and young folks, too, had to move on and leave father and mother or both.

Sometimes a bunch of buffaloes would come and the carts would stop until they passed. Had we been prepared with guns and ammunition like people who came in wagons, we might have had meat, and would not have come to near starving. Pres. Young ordered

extra cattle sent along to be killed to help the sick and weak, but they were never used for that purpose. One incident happened which came near being serious. Some Indians came to our camp and my husband told an Indian who admired me that he could have me for a pony. He was always getting off jokes. He thought no more about it, but in a day or two, here came the Indian with the pony, and wanted his pretty little squaw. It was no joke with him. I never was so frightened in all my life. There was no place to hide, and we did not know what to do. The captain was called, and they had some difficulty in settling with the Indian without trouble.

In crossing rivers, the weak women and the children were carried over the deep places, and they waded the others. We were much more fortunate than those who came later, as they had snow and freezing weather. Many lost limbs, and many froze to death. President Young advised them to start earlier but they got started too late. My husband had the misfortune to lose his left leg at the knee when nine years of age. In walking from 20 to 25 miles per day, where the knee rested on the pad the friction caused it to gather and break and was most painful, but he had to endure it, or remain behind, as he was never

asked to ride in a wagon. One incident shows how we were fixed for grease. My husband and John Thayne, a butcher, in some way killed an old lame buffalo. They sat up all night and boiled it to get some grease to grease the carts, but he was so old and poor, there was not a drop of grease in him. We had no grease for the squeaking carts or to make gravy for the children and old people. We reached Salt Lake City, October 2, 1856.

William R. Jones, took us to his humble home in Spanish Fork, where we landed among the rocks, sagebrush, and dugouts. We were tired, weary, with bleeding feet, our clothing worn out, and so weak we were nearly starved, but thankful to our Heavenly Father for bringing us to Zion. I think we were over three days coming from Salt Lake City to Spanish Fork by ox team, but what a change to ride in a wagon after walking 1330 miles from Iowa City to Salt Lake City. We stayed in the home of Mr. Jones a month, then we were taken into the home of ex-bishop Stephen Markham. Him home was a dugout. It was a very large room built half underground. His family consisted of three wives, and seven children. The wives were Aunt Mary, Aunt Annie, and Aunt Lydia. There was a large fireplace in one end with bars, hooks, frying pans, and bake ovens where they did the cooking of the large family, and boiled, fried, baked, heated their water for washing. There was a long table in one corner, and pole bedsteads fastened to the wall in the three other corners. They were laced back and forth with rawhide cut in strips, and made a nice springy bed. There were three trundle beds, made like shallow boxes, with wooden wheels, which rolled under the mother's bed in the daytime to utilize space. There was a dirt roof, and the dirt floor was kept hard and smooth by sprinkling and sweeping. The bed ticks were filled with straw raised in Palmyra before the famine. Aunt Mary put her two children, Orvil and Lucy, in the foot of her bed and gave us the trundle bed. I do not remember whether her baby in arms was Don or Sarah. Oh, how delightful to sleep on a bed again after sleeping on the ground so many months with our clothes on. We had not slept in a bed since we left the ship, Sam Curling.

Can you imagine the hospitality of the dear, big-hearted, generous Stephen Markham, who took us into his large family, and made us feel like one of them? Mr. Markham had been one of the Prophet's bodyguards, and then was a Colonel in the Nauvoo legion. He went all through the driving and persecution of the Saints, and his great heart was ever open to the wants and suffering of those less fortunate than himself. And Aunt Mary, the first wife, what a grand, lovely woman she was. My second mother, for she surely was a mother to me. She had one son, by a former marriage, Edgar Houghton, and Mr. Markham also had a son by a former marriage, Stephen. Palmyra, a little place on the river between the present location of Spanish Fork and the Utah Lake, was settled about 1856. After the famine, the people of Palmyra, about 50 families, moved to Spanish Fork. They nearly all lived in dugouts that season and winter, as they had no time to build houses. Spanish Fork derived its name from the fact that the Spanish priest, Escalante, and his companions camped on the forks of the river--hence the name Spanish Fork.

On the 31st of Dec. 1856, our first daughter was born. My baby's wardrobe was a rather meagre one. I made one gown from her father's white shirt, and one from the lining of the old oilcloth sack we brought with us. Aunt Mary Markham gave me a square of homespun linsey for a shoulder blanket, a neighbor gave me a roll of old underwear, and I never wasted an inch. A man at the adobe yard told me that I could have a pair of gray wool pants he was through with. The backs were good, and I had brought the shawl with

me. The pants were made into petticoats. I walked down to the Indian Farm and traded a gold pen to an officer for four yards of calico, which made her some dresses. Could we have brought the bedding, clothing, and so many things we had to leave, we would have been quite comfortable.

I don't think I was any happier in after years when my babies were born in a good home, surrounded by everything to make one comfortable, than I was to find a resting place in that dugout after walking 1330 miles and pulling a handcart. One day my husband went down in the field to cut some willows to burn. The ax slipped and cut his good knee-cap. It was with difficulty that he crawled to the house. He was very weak from the loss of blood. My baby was but a few days old, and the three of us had to occupy the trundle bed for awhile.

Wood and timber were about 30 miles up in the canyon, and when the men went after timber to burn, they went in crowds, armed, for they never knew when they would be attacked by the Indians. Adobe houses were cheaper than log or frame, as timber was so far away. Many of the people who had lived in the dugouts after coming form Palmyra got into houses before the next winter. They exchanged work with each other, and in that way got along fine. Mr. Markham had an upright saw, run by water. The next spring they got timber form the canyon, and my husband helped Mr. Markham put up a three-roomed house and worked at farming. He worked for Wm. Markham a year for which besides the land, we got our board and keep. The next spring we went to work for ourselves. We saved our two acres of wheat, and made adobes for a two roomed house, and paid a man in adobes for laying it up. It had a dirt roof. He got timber from Mr. Markham to finish the doors, windows, floors, shelves, and to make furniture. My husband made me a good big bedstead and lace it with rawhides. There were benches and the frames of chairs with the rawhide seat, with the hair left on, a table, shelves in the wall on either side of the fireplace, which was fitted with iron bars and hooks to hang kettles on to boil, frying pans and bake oven. A tick for the bed had to be pieced out of all kinds of scraps, as there were no stores, and everything was on a trade basis.

If one neighbor had something they could get along without, they would exchange it for something they could use. We were lucky to get factory, or sheeting to put up to the windows instead of glass. We raised good crop of wheat that fall, for which we traded one bushel for two bushels of potatoes. We also exchanged for molasses and vegetables. We had no tea, coffee, meat, or grease of any kind for seasoning. No sugar, milk, or

butter. In 1855-56 the grasshoppers and crickets took the crops and the cattle nearly all died. They were dragged down in the field west of our place on the other side of a slough, they called it, and a mud wall between the settlement and the field. Before my second baby, Jennie, was born, I heard that a neighbor was going to kill a beef. I asked her to save me enough tallow for one candle. But the beef was like the buffalo we killed crossing the plains, there was no tallow in it.

By this time I had two children, with no soap to wash our clothes. Grease of all kinds was out of the question. I took an ax and gunny sack and went into the field where the dead cattle had been dragged, and I broke up all the bones I could carry home. I boiled them in saleratus and lime, and it made a little jelly-like soap. The saleratus was gathered on top of the ground. My husband had traveled and preached the six years previous to coming to Utah, and he knew nothing about any kind of work but his profession of iron roller. His

hands were soft, and white, but he soon wore blisters on his hands in learning to make adobes, digging ditches, making roads, driving oxen, and doing what was required of pioneers in a new country. The large bedstead came in good, for when my third child was born, two had to go to the foot of the bed, but it did not work. Jennie had to go to the foot alone. Caroline Louisa, or Carrie as we called her, was the third child, and although Emma was the oldest and just a baby herself, she could not be tempted to go to the foot of the bed, but was determined to sleep on her father's bosom, which she had done since the birth of Jennie.

We went down to the marshy land and gathered a load of cattails, which I stripped and made me a good bed and pillows. The were as soft as feathers. Our first fence around our lot was made of willows. Slender stakes were put in a certain distance apart, and the willows woven in back and forth. There was a board gate with rawhide hinges and flat rocks were laid on the walks, as we were located down under a long hill, and when it rained it was very muddy. There were many mud walks in the early days of Spanish Fork, as the material in them cost nothing. The mud was mixed stiff enough with straw in it so it would not run, and a layer was put on, then allowed to dry. Then another layer was put on, until high enough. Rock fences were also used, and were very durable. There were

no stores. Sometimes someone would come around with their basket of needles, pins, buttons, thread, and notions, but I had no money to buy with. Men who had no teams worked two days for the use of a team one day. Shovels were so scarce that when men were working in the roads and ditches, they had to take turns using the shovels. My husband worked at Camp Floyd and got money enough to get him a good yoke of oxen. One day, while working in the canyon, a man above him (Mr. Beck) let a log roll down and broke the leg of one of the oxen. That was a calamity.

I traded for a hen with Mrs. Robert McKell, and got a setting of eggs somewhere else, and I have never been without chickens in all of my married life since. I could not get thread to sew so I raveled a trip of hickory shirting for dark sewing and factory for white sewing when I could get it. When we could get grease for light, we put a button in a rag, and braided the top setting the button in the grease, after dipping the braided part in the grease.