Pioneer Story 23, Mary Barton (Martin Company)

I was born in Southport, Lancashire, England, January 13, 1842. My mother died when I was a year old. At the age of six, I went to school, but had to stop when I reached my tenth birthday. At twelve I went out to work for my living.

When 14 years old I left England to come to Utah for the Gospel's sake. That was on May 22, 1856.

One day while on the ship, I was in the cooking room getting our dinner. It was so crowded there was hardly standing room. All were cooking their meal. One man was boiling soup in a milk pan. When he took the soup from the stove, he lifted it over my head in order to carry it through the crowd. While doing so, someone knocked against him, and it fell out of his hand on my back. My father stood outside waiting for me to come with the dinner. I ran out to him and said, "I am burned." He said, "Come downstairs and lets get some oil". So we ran down and got one of the Mormon elders to administer to me. My pain had gone, and I never felt any more of it. Some of the soup went on the hands of the man who spilled it on me. He put his hands in a bucket of cold water and wasn't administered to. He not being a convert, he wouldn't hear of having the elders pray for him. His hands were blistered and didn't get well for two weeks.

We had been five weeks on the sea when we landed in Boston. We were very glad to walk on land agin. We left Boston for Iowa and were eight days on the train. When we arrived in Iowa, we had three miles to walk to the camp grounds. It rained all the way, and we were soaking wet when we reached camp that night at twelve o'clock.

We had to stay on the camp grounds five weeks waiting for the handcarts to be made. When everything was ready we started. Traveling through Ohio and Council Bluffs (Nebraska), we had to cross the Missouri River which was about a mile from Florence. At that time so many of our company took sick that we had to camp at Florence for two weeks. Then we started on a journey of thirteen hundred miles across the plains. The people began to get sick and died from drinking muddy water. We had to drink pools of rain water most of the time. While traveling, one of the wagons split and let flour out. The Indians who were nearly starved to death came along behind picking it up and eating it, dirt and all.

One day while we were camped an Indian came to me and asked me to give him my shawl which I had on my shoulders. I told him it was all I had to keep me from freezing to death. He turned and walked away.

The soldiers came and guarded us past Chimney Rock. They stayed with us until we reached Fort Bridger. There they stopped and we had to go on alone. When we got on one side of Devils Gate, we had to rest about a week, and our cattle died. We roasted the feet and the hides. Then we ate them.

Joseph Young came on a donkey to meet us. He told us to come on about three miles further. Then we would meet the Mormons who were coming to meet us with wagons of provisions. They could only carry a small amount because the snow was so deep, and they had to carry grain for their horses.

We started that morning and traveled all day. We got to the Mormon camp about five o'clock. The next morning we started with the Mormons and camped at South Pass that night. After pitching our tents we lay down on the ground to get some sleep and rest. In the night the tents all blew over. It was all ice and snow where I was laying, and when the tents blew off I didn't wake up I was so tired. One man came and looked at me. He called some more men over saying, "I wonder if she is dead?" He patted me on the head and just then I opened my eyes. He jumped back. I tried to raise my head but found that my hair was frozen to the ground. They chopped the ice all around my hair, and I got up and went over to the fire and melted the large pieces of ice that were clinging to my hair. The men laughed to think that I could lie there all night with my hair frozen in the ice, but were very glad that I wasn't dead. This same night the handcarts all blew away, and some of us had to walk until we met some other wagons.

Mrs. Unthanks got her feet frozen and had to have them taken off, but when we met more wagons we could all ride. There were four men in our tent, and all of them died, father dying first. ...

We reached Salt Lake City the last of November, 1856. We were waiting on the streets for people to ask us home with them.