Autobiography of Clarissa Wilhelm

There was a great deal of confusion with the brethren crossing the river to the Mormon Camp on the other side.  I had a daughter born that spring May 25th.  A month later we crossed the river and camped at Jack Oak Grove.  Our company consisted of Hiram and Claudius Spencer, James Bullock, Brother Bevins, Brother Edgeston, Bateman Haight, John Carlen, and Brother Richmond.  We camped a few days, then moved on.  There was a great deal of stock to drive.  My children all had whooping cough.  There was not one of them could sit up in the wagon.  We traveled on, stopping sometimes to build bridges, then going on.  Hiram Spencer took sick and died.  We took him to Pisgy and buried him there.  We traveled on to the Bluffs to find Sister Henderson dead; also Mary Spencer.  They both died in child bed.  We moved to what was called the big camp and stopped there a few weeks.  The men went to hunt a place for winter quarters.  They found a place on the Mosuna River and we commenced to move.  There were five wagons to go first.  Ours was one of them.  The men all went up the river to get logs to build houses.  They made rafts and rafted the logs down the river.  We built quite a town.  Some lived there a year and then went on to Salt Lake.  Others stayed two years, then broke up the place.  Most of them went to Salt Lake.  Others left to go to different places.  We went to Missouri.  There was a man by the name of Parley came up the river to find me to go down to Western Missouri to work, so we went as we did not have a team to take us to the Valley.  We went to Mosquito Creek, and then to Missouri.  I had a son born at Mosquito Creek.  We named him John.  In the fall, we were in St. Joseph.  We visited my husband’s sister.  While living in Winter Quarters, I took the Black Scurvy and was a cripple for nine months.  I sometimes have to go back and write things I forgot.  

After making a visit at St. Joseph, we went to [[Weston, Missouri|Weston]], a little town on the River.  We went to keep boarding house for Ben Halliday to board men to cut cord wood for the steam boats. My husband’s health had always been bad.  Now he grew more feeble.  After a time I took in sewing for the stores and anyone who wanted work done.  My husband still grew worse.  He was just able to sit up.  We then moved to a little house about a mile from Riatto.  There my boy John, took sick and died of dropsy.  He was sixteen months old.  On June 12, I had a daughter.  We called her Elizabeth Mercy.  She only lived seven months.  We took her to the same place to bury her.  My husband' s cough still grew worse.  I began to feel that I did not have any friends.  I was hundreds of miles from my relatives, children dying, and my husband likely to die and me in a strange land among Gentiles, but I must say they were very kind to me.  I never saw people more kind.  They got it into their heads that he was a Mason.  In the month of [[March 8|March, (the 8th)]] [[1851]], my husband died.  The people were kind; they got the coffin made and everything done and never said pay to me.  Then they brought in donations from every house.  They even hauled wood and chopped it.  My husband and two children were buried in [[Weston, Missouri|Weston]].  

There was a train of goods going to Salt Lake.  Daniel Spencer wrote to Ben Halliday to bring us to Salt Lake so we began to get ready.  We left on the 18th day of April.  We crossed the Missouri River with John Brown, a Gentile.  While we were crossing the river, I felt very bad, I almost wished the boat would sink.  There was one other woman besides me in the train.  She and her husband, Largas Wilson, traveled with us.  There were five Mormon boys, the rest were Gentiles.  We camped at Fort Leavenworth a week and then went on.  I was put to cook for three men and my children, the captain, wagon master, and a servant boy.  I could have not been treated better if I had been the Queen of England.  The company was divided up in groups of twelve to cook for.  

We got to the City before sundown the 27th of June 1851.  After a few days Brother Spencer stopped and asked Mr. Halliday how much the bill was for bringing me to Utah.  Mr. Halliday said, “Nothing, because she worked hard and helped me save provisions.”  After awhile Wilson and his wife left and they hired Isaac Haight’s second wife to help me.  She stayed awhile and ran away with a Gentile.  About this time Halliday was leaving for California.  He rented me a house and I moved into the 12th Ward.  He told me to go to the store for what I wanted.  I did washing for the clerks of the store so I got along fine.  I bought me a cow and paid $28 on a step-stove.  My brother-in-law, William Nelson, lived in Provo.  He married my husband's sister.  My oldest son went to live with them for awhile.