Autobiography of Clarissa Wilhelm

My grandfather died somewhere in the state of New York.  My Grandmother Harden died in Cattaraugus County, the town of Perrysburg.  

My Grandfather and Grandmother Tabor died in the county of Cayuga in the town of Scipio.  My Uncle Archibald Harden died in the state of Ohio, and so did my uncles Daniel and James Harden.  My Aunt Amy Bowken and her husband died in the county of Cayuga in the town of Loch.  My Aunt Mahitable and Aunt Mary moved to Canada and I do not know what became of them.  My Uncle Wing and his wife died in the town of Moriva, Cayuga County, New York.  My Aunt Clarissa died in the town of Ledge, Cayuga County.  My Aunt Silence died at G_____, Cayuga County.  My Uncle George died in the town of Scipio.  My mother and father died in Indiana.

I was born in the town of Perrysburg, Cattaraugus County, New York, in the year 1820, February 26.  The first seven years of my life were spent where I was born which is more familiar than what took place yesterday.  The Cattaraugus Indian village was seven miles from my father's.  There were ten children of us.  (14 all together)  Henry, Silence, Mary, Clarissa, William, Abram, Philura, Sarah, Lucretia, and Lovina.  In 1827 my father moved to the county of Chautauqua, the town of Ellery.  My mother had two children born there, Lucretia and Lovina.  My mother lost four children in the town of Perrysburg making her number fourteen.  

We lived in Ellery about seven years.  Then we moved to the eastern part of the state of New York in 1834.  We stopped in the town of Loch for about one year.  I commenced then to work from home to earn my own clothes.  We moved from Loch to Summerhill, a town about four miles from Loch.  We did not live in Summerhill or Summerville more than two years.  While in Summerville I joined the Methodists.  It was there my two sisters Mary and Silence left to go to the state of Ohio.  The next place we moved was to the town of Venice.  

Twas there I got acquainted with a young man by the name of John B. Williams.  He was the son of John Francis Williams and Mercy Williams.  He had two sisters and three brothers.  The names of his sisters were Betsy and Sarah.  The names of his brothers were Silvester, Daniel, and Martin.  I was married in the year 1838 to John and we settled in Venice about a mile from his brothers and about the same distance from my brothers.  I had a son born in 1840 and we named him James Return.  

In l842 I had a daughter born April 20th.  About this time my husband’s father died.  He had been sick about seven years.  He had the asthma.  About this time Mormonism cane along.  An elder by the name of Paltine Brown preached on the other side of Wasco Lake.  It was about eleven miles from where we lived.  We went around the lake to visit some friends one Sunday and went to meeting to hear the Mormon preach.  It was when my second child was six weeks old.  We went to meeting and believed the gospel but did not obey it as my husband’s sister, Sarah did.  We went home but did not feel that we had done right.  Our baby took sick and lay thus until we made up our minds to obey the Gospel, then she got better.  Then we went again to meeting and was baptized by Brother Shearron and his son, Norman.  July 4, 1842.  We went home feeling that the spirit of the Lord went with us.  Then we began to have the spirit of gathering.  Before the Gospel came we felt that we would live and die on the little place we had, when we went to keeping house.  If anybody had told me that I should leave that place I would have felt bad.  But now we began to lay our plans to go to Nauvoo.  We had to spin and weave all our own clothes for the summer and winter including table linen, towels, and grain sacks.  We dried our own fruit and had enough surplus butter from our cow to buy some store goods.  In those days children went barefoot from the time they were born until they were grown.  I remember going places, carrying my shoes.  When I would get almost there I would put my shoes on. We lived on coarse foods and lots of sunshine.  I do not remember any epidemic of whooping cough or measles when I was a young woman.  

Well we still kept making preparations to go to Nauvoo.  My husband and his brother Martin, were in partnership with two farms and there was no sale for land then, so we had to stay awhile longer.  In 1843 we had another son, Nov, 14; we named him after Bateman Haight.  Still we couldn’t sell our farm so we gathered up what money we could to take us to Nauvoo, and left our farm, horses, cattle, and sheep, and hogs.  We went leaving all behind.  Daniel and Martin took the freight and Aunt Sarah to the canal.  We followed in a buggy to Gettysburg, to the Erie Canal.  From Buffalo we went to Cleveland, Ohio, thence to Portsmouth, where we took a steamer on the Ohio River.  The river was so low we were on the sandbar half the time.  My daughter Susan took sick with a bowel complaint and come near dying.  We came to St. Louis and took a steamer out to the Mississippi River getting to Nauvoo the first of October, after Joseph's and Hiram’s deaths.  On the road before we got into town we were often stopped and ask why we wanted to go to Nauvoo -- that Joseph Smith was dead.  When we got to Nauvoo we stayed first at Isaac Haight’s.  The next morning we went to Bateman Haight’s.  My little girl was no better.  I did not know what to do.  She wanted to drink all the time.  I took some cottonwood coals and put them in a bowl of water for her to drink during the night.  On the morning I tasted it and it tasted like lye.  I thought I had killed her, but she began to get better.  

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, 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, (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.  

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.  

In April 1876, I went back to Orderville with Brother Hoyt.  That spring, Brother Heaton, Susan, Alvin, Bateman, Grace, and Haight all went to the City.  Brother Heaton went to the doctor.  His health was failing.  Amelia went to see her half sisters in Panguitch.  While they were gone Clarissa, Francis, and Marion stayed with me.  My health was poor.  I had [[collerymorbus]] all the time.  Brother Spencer asked me to oversee the making of some more butter at the ranch.  Anthony Blackburn, Chris Heaton, Maggy, Tena, and Ann McConnel went.  I returned to Orderville early because Brother Heaton died.  I returned to the dairy after his burial.  We made about six hundred pounds of butter.  That fall Bateman went to Arizona.  He liked it very much.  

Brother Snow came through that winter.  I decided to go to Arizona to a farm Bateman was to have.  William Maxfield, Brother Lundquist, and Brother Johnson went.  We started December 11, stopping the first night at Glendale.  Five miles out of Glendale the next day, Brother Maxwell broke down and had to go back to Glendale.  We did not make very good progress.  We spent Christmas Eve on the road in six inches of snow.  One of our horses was stolen.  I did most of the cooking.  We lost part of our cows.  They wandered away or were stolen.  We had to kill one for food.  We camped many times before we reached our destination near Concho.  We arrived on my birthday, 26th of February 1850.  After getting settled, I went to Round Valley to Brother Maxwell's.  His wife was about to be confined.  A Gentile woman was living in part of the house.  She wanted me to take care of her too.  Their confinements were ten days apart.  They both came through fine.  Charlie Riggs’ wife had a baby about this time.  Also Grace.  I helped Bateman put in his garden but I took sick and had to go to bed.  I was administered to and recovered.  I went with Bateman to Snowflake to get a load of lumber, stopping off in Woodruff to take care of Sister Greer.  I stayed about six weeks.  Then Jacob Hamblin came along on his way to Utah.  I went with him and the Everett and Shumway families went along.  We got to Johnson.  It was very cold.  There was a man there going to Glendale so I asked him to take me.  I walked part of the way to get to Orderville.

I had a good visit.  I waited on Sister Esplin.  She named the baby after me, Clarissa.  I spent the winter in Orderville.  In the spring I went to Rockville.  Here the sister of Bateman's first wife Lydia took sick and both she and her little girl died.  Soon after, Haight came for his mother, Lydia.  We had to wait till quite late In the summer because of high water.  We got as far as Kanab and I had to leave part of my things with Jacob Hamblin because the load was too heavy.  We stayed for Conference.  Susan came from Orderville to attend Conference.   

After I settled in Concho, Bateman wanted me to make cheese in the mountains near Malipies.  We bought the equipment and started for the ranch which he was going to homestead.  We found some Mexicans there.  They made trouble for us and the matter went to court.  We won the suit.  After Bateman got lumber for buildings he moved Lydia up.  We soon went to making cheese but the rainy season set in and the Indians got so bad we decided to move back.  We had an awful time.  It rained solid sheets.  We got stuck and drenched.  I decided to walk to the Malipies.  I was as near dead as alive.  Haight went for help but it was several days before we reached Concho.

The next two years were not eventful.  I was counselor in Relief Society, then I decided to go to the Temple and do some work.  I got Haight to take me.  We started on the 12th of November in company with Joseph Rogers and his wife.  We stopped in Orderville to visit Susan.  She decided to go with us.  Rogers decided to go to Dixie.  We had a stormy time going North.  The divide was not bad but the roads near Ephriam were awful.  We went to the Salt Lake Temple and the St. George Temple that winter.  We spent New Years at James Terry's near Clear Creek, on the way to St. George.

Early in February my health was so poor I decided to sell my possessions in Arizona and move to Orderville.  I arrived at my Arizona home the 22nd of February.  The store was getting along fine.  I stayed until Haight harvested his summer crops, then I prepared to leave.  The day before I left the townspeople turned out and gave me a farewell party.  We left for Utah November 6th.  We went to Woodruff, where we stopped with Eddy Webs.  Then we went to Winslow.  Near Winslow we saw several trains go by.  We bought a barrel of water and some nose sacks and proceeded through the San Francisco and Moencopi Washes then to Willow Springs and Bitter Springs.  We had our first storm at Soap Creek.  We slipped off the road at Kanab and broke the wagon.  Haight had to go for help.  Near Mt. Carmel, we met Charley and Amelia with a wagon.  They had Fred Carroll with them.  They turned back with us.  I went to their place.  They had to carry me to the house.  I had a bad night.  Next day Charley and Haight went back to the dugway where the wagon had tipped and gathered up things.  Charley got back about noon.  There wasn't so much broke, just the stove.  I soon got better and went to Conference.  On the 21st day of March Haight went to Arizona.