We left Running Water about the first of April as soon as the grass began to come up. We went down to Winter Quarters and went and fenced a piece of land, grubbed it and put in about six acres of corn and raised a crop this summer. Now there were a great many Mormons and they despised us and threw out insinuations about us, and said, oh, they are not worth our notice, they belong to Emmett's Company and they are thieves, they drove off cattle that did not belong to them.

Well, Brother Brigham got to hear about it, and he said and told them from the stand that he wanted them to quit their talk for there was good and honest souls in Emmett's Company and as for John L. Butler, he had sent him himself from Nauvoo to Emmetts's Company, and told him that he wanted him to go and try to bring them back for if they still went on as they were going they would all go to destruction and there was good and honest folks in that company. "Now," said he, "I have used John L. Butler for a cane in my hand to bring those people in subjection to the laws and commandments of God, and," said he, "Brother John L. [Butler], I bless you in the name of the Lord and may you always obey the councils that are given to you from time to time. Now, brethern and sisters, I want to here no more of this from this time. Love one another and strive to help one another and do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Union is strength and is from the Lord. Now may God bless you and enable you to love Him and keep His commandments, and to do the things that is right at all times is my prayer in the name of Jesus, Amen." The saints had a great deal better feelings towards us and we did not have the slander that we had been hearing.

Emmett did not come to Winter Quarters but kept on till he dame to Cub Creek there he stayed with his family. He did not come where the Church was at all, but stayed away. He did not come to see any, nor come near us.

We got in our corn, but all of it did not ripen. It was put in late. We stayed in Winter [p.39] Quarters that winter and the folks were going to start to the Great Salt Lake; they had all been driven out of Nauvoo, on the point of the bayonet; they had murdered and robbed them and burnt their houses and had driven them right across the river; they were not satisfied with their blood thirstiness in murdering the Prophets of God, but they must drive His children out of the country in the dead of winter; and they had to leave their homes and comfortable firesides and to turn out in the cold and travel on foot, old men and women and young children. Women with their infants on their bosoms turned out of their homes and their houses set fire to right before their eyes and they had to leave the [Nauvoo] City at the point of the bayonet, and if they faltered or lagged behind they were shot down or killed with the bayonet; thus they were served. No one can tell, or any one have any idea of what they had to suffer and pass through; they could not have begun to stand it if the Lord had not been with them to have blessed and comforted them.

They crossed over the river to Montrose and stayed there till spring opened and they moved on to Winter Quarters, and the nest spring we moved down there and put in our crops and stayed there the next winter eighteen hundred and forty seven and eight. In the spring the folks all got ready to start. I was going too, but I had no provisions and scarcely any clothes, and Brother Brigham said to me, "I would not try to go this year, John L. [Butler], but go over the river to Pottawattamie and make something to bring your family comfortable." We then moved over and several families moved over with us. I got a farm there and worked some at my trade, blacksmithing.

The first winter my wife Charity's brother came for her to go and pay a visit home with him and when he got her home he took her to Tennessee and then left her. This was while we were at Winter Quarters. My wife, Sarah, after we moved over the river became dissatisfied of the way we were living so I took her and went down to Weston in Missouri. There I worked with my team and in the coldest of the weather I worked at the cooper trade. I left my first wife in Pottawattamie. I started home and got there about the first of April.

While I was away, my wife bore me a daughter on the twenty third of February eighteen hundred and forty nine, and we called her Lucy Ann. While I was home which was two or three weeks I was taken down with the congestive chills which like to have killed me. I was brought so low that they did not expect me to live or ever to get over it. However, I got well again, and I went back to Sarah and went to work again, and my wife, Caroline and son Taylor farmed it that summer and raised a good crop of corn. I remained where I was till the next January and took my Sarah and went home.

That same spring my brother Edmund Ross was taken very sick and he could not get up to us and he sent for me to fetch him up. I hitched up my horses and went down after him, and he said that if he died there that he would have to be buried among the Gentiles and he did not want to be left there all alone. He died in two or three days and [p.40] I had a coffin made and put him in and then I had another one made that was larger than the other, and then I put the small one into the large one and put charcoal in between the two and then took him up to the Saints burying ground and had him interred there with the Saints according to his wish. He was in the Church, was baptized when he was ten years of age and was a young man when he died. He was a good Mormon.

While I was there in Pottawattamie, Emmett came there. Brother Hyde and some more of the brethren came there to preach and Emmett was there. He came to me and asked me to go to California with him. He was going. I told him, "No, I would not go for I was going to Great Salt Lake." "Oh," said he, "you need not be afraid of your religion for the Priesthood was taken from the earth when Joseph was murdered and that Brigham had no authority to govern and control this people, and that we could do a great deal better in California, and he begged me to go. I told him that I would not renounce my religion for gold and that he would have to get someone else to go with him, if he wanted any one to go with him. He started but no one went with him only his daughter and he took her along with him to do his cooking and to wait on him. His wife, Mrs. Emmett, would not go with him. So he left her behind him in Pottawattamie. She did not want to leave the Church of Jesus Christ, but wanted to hold on to the faith, and go to the valleys of the mountains with the Saints of God and to dwell there where no mob could cone and drive them out. So, the Saints were going out of their reach. I still kept on farming and stayed there till the spring eighteen hundred and fifty two [1852].

My wife bore me another son; he was born May the ninth day eighteen hundred and fifty one. We called him Thomas. He was about one year old when we started for Great Salt Lake [1852]. We got all ready and started to the river; there were folks crossing here, there and every where, and we crossed over and Erastus put me in Eli B. Kelsey's train for a blacksmith. I did not care about going in that train, but they had counciled me to go in it so I went. There were two or three hundred head of young stock and three or four hundred head of sheep; there were fifty families; there were ten wagons of Danes, the Captain of them was Brother Ravin; he was captain for a while, but none of them had ever drove an ox team before and they could not get along at all, so they put me in captain over them, and Taylor and myself had a fine job to fix them, they had yoked up their cattle some one way and some another, some of their bows were too large, some too small, and so they had it. We went to work and fixed up the yokes and bows and then paired the cattle as well as we could, and then they got along a great deal better but they were still green about driving. If they had a good ox that would pull they would make him pull the whole load and if they came to a tight place the poor critter would get the whip more than any other ox in the team. I told them that they must not do so, or they would lose, have half their team dead before they got half way. I told them to make their cattle all pull at once, as much as they could, and [p.41] to whip the ones that would not pull and not the ones that were pulling the whole load. Well they learned how to drive a little better after a while, but it was hard work to get them into it.

The Cholera raged fearfully that season. There were lots that were laid low on the account of it, but we did not have it in our Company so much as they did in others. There was only two died of the dreadful disease, and one old lady died with only old age, but in other companies there scores and scores died, the scene was fearful to look upon. The folks were laying here and there, some dead, some dying, some very sick, and some not knowing when it would be their turn. There were sometimes as many as six and seven buried in one grave, and feather beds and sheets, blankets, pillows and clothes were left laying every direction, all along the road. There was considerable California emigration that season, and they died of it by the hundreds. Their teams were very heavily ladened and their cattle got very poor by the time that they got into the mountains; they had to sell off their cattle and wagons and tools and provisions and get mules and pack through to California.

We went up on the north side of the Platt; feed was better on that side, and it was more healthy on that side some how or other the folks on that side were not troubled with the Cholera half so bad as they were on the south side. We traveled on pretty comfortable, but our provisions began to run kind of slack, then we did not feel so good. We stopped six days on the west side of Laramie. I had to fix up four wagons.

One day we were driving along and there was a storm coming up and there was a flash of lightning struck the ground. The man said just ahead of his oxen, and they turned out and started to run with that frightening the other team behind him and it started and that started some more. So they stampeded and broke four wagons down, some spokes broke out, ferrules broke off the axle trees, tongues and reaches broke and there it was, all smashed up together, and I had the job to fix them all up and two of them belonged to Eli B. Kelsey. They were his good wagons. I fixed them all up and of course, I thought that he would pay me for fixing his two wagons; but he said that I was put in the company on purpose to fix up wagons and shoe cattle. I told him I was put into the company to fix up the wagons and shoe cattle but not without pay. I counted up the iron work I done on his wagons and it come to thirty three dollars exactly, and I only charged him the same price that I should have charged any one in the States. Well, I never got a cent for what I done for him and he had any amount of goods, and he would not even let my son, Taylor, have a pair of shoes.

Now, I never done a thing for any of the rest, setting tires, shoeing cattle, or anything but what they were glad to pay me for my labor and I always got my pay from them when the work was done. Well, we got along without it, and done very well.

When we got to Green River we had got out of food and Kelsey was going to send his young stock on ahead into the Valley. Him and Erastus Snow had three hundred two and three year [p.42] old Heifers, and my son Taylor engaged with him to help drive them in. Now there was a young fellow by the name of Joseph Toronto; he came down with Kelsey and Snow, and he said that he mostly stayed at Brigham's when he was in the Valley, and he said to my wife that he would go on into the Valley and tell Brigham to send out some food to them that had none. Now he was a Frenchman and had been brought up pretty well. I guess, however, he did not know much about hardships and the trials of hunger. He thought that the folks would all die if they did not have any bread, so he said that he would go in and bring some out. Taylor was to start that morning with the young stock. Now, Kelsey had had several taking care of his stock, but they had lost some and he knew that Taylor was good at hunting cattle, or taking care of them, so that is the reason that he hired him. Kelsey killed a beef that morning and was going to start the boys off with bread and beef and nothing else. So his son went to him and asked him if he was not going to let them have anything else; and Kelsey said that it was good enough for hired hands. "Well, but see how lean the beef is and every bit of the tallow has been taken out. "How are we to cook it?" "Boil it," said Kelsey. "What, that tough stuff?" said the boy; and the hands could hear every word. So he said I am going to have something better than that, so he went to the wagon and Kelsey never said anything and the boy went up and got about ten pounds of tallow, ten pounds of sugar and twenty pounds of coffee, a lot of dried apples and some other things, and they started off for the Valley.

Well, Joseph Toronto went in and told Brother Brigham that the folks were there starving to death and that he must send them out some food. So Brigham went round to every house and told them that he wanted some bread for the Company and he went to the bakers and got all the crackers that were in the shop and got some flour and loaded up a wagon and started it back to meet us. The women had gone on ahead one morning at the mouth of Echo Canyon and there they met Joseph Toronto, and he said to my wife, "Sister Butler, I have brought you some things to eat."

Now there was some smiling faces and some jumping for joy, I can assure you, when they heard this news. My wife asked him where it was. He said that it would be here directly, and he told her all about how he and Brother Brigham went and got loaves of bread from the folks in the city. When the wagon came and we had camped Brother Kelsey came to me and said, "John L. you divide out the provisions, but," said he,"Keep the crackers for ourselves and give them the bread and flour." I told him that I would serve them out and he said all right. When I went to serve out the provisions I served out the crackers first and gave all alike, and it pleased me to see the children, how delighted they were to have bread once more, and their little faces brightened up, and it was a pleasure to see them, By and by Kelsey came along and he was as mad as a wet hen and he said that if he had known that I had been going to serve out the crackers that I should not have served them out at all. He said that he told me to keep the crackers for ourselves. "Yes" I said, "I know you did, but I gave them to the women and [p.43] children, and I liked crackers as well as he did, and so does them dear children." He went off mad.

Well, we went into the [Salt Lake] City and went down in company with George Wilson to Spanish Fork. He thought that he could build a mill here, but he did not. I bought my wife, Sarah, down with me, and left Caroline and the children in the City. They started down here in December but the snow was so deep and one of the oxen died, and a cow died that they had to stop at the Warm Springs for four weeks before they could get down here, and well, we lived on the creek till July. We had turned all our cows over the river under the mountain and the Indians began to be very hostile, so that the Upper settlement folk had to leave their houses and go down to Palmyra which was about four miles down the Creek to the west. Well, two or three days afterward the Indians took off all our cattle, some three or four hundred head, and leaving us with only one cow, drove them up Spanish Fork Canyon. The men were called out to go and fetch them back, but they had been gone two days when the boys started and when they got up the Canyon there were a great many shot down, some had been shot with arrows; they found plenty dead, and where the Indians had killed them but they got none alive.

Well, the next spring, my wife bore me another daughter. She was born on the twenty sixth of March eighteen hundred and fifty-four. We named her Alvaretta Farezine. Soon after I sold my last yoke of cattle for bread stuff and I did not know hardly what to go at that summer. At last I bethought me that I would go out to Fort Bridger and take me my blacksmith tools and work at my trade, and I made a bargain with John W. Mott that I would give him the first fifty dollars that I earned if he would take the wagon and my tools out there for me, He said he would do it, so I got ready to start and Brother Stephen Markham came to me and asked me if I was going back on the road. I told him I was and he said that if I did that I would be disfellowshipped and that I ought to be disfellowshipped for thinking of such a thing. I asked him what I should do, there was my family naked almost and only bread enough to last them till harvest, and I had sold the last yoke of oxen to buy that for them, and I was going out there to get something to help to make my family comfortable. And I told him that he might disfellowship me if he pleased. I should go straight to Brigham and ask him if I can go and if he says go, I am going, and if he says stay, I shall stay. So John put the tools in the wagon and let us be off. I went to Brigham when I got into the [Salt Lake] City, and Brother Brigham said you go, Brother John and may God bless you, and said he, don't stay at Bridger, but go on to Green River and you shall be blessed and prospered.