Sunday, May 31, 2020

Alfred Boaz (continued)
Marriage and the Trek to Winter Quarters

She attended singing school; I, too became interested in music, and begged the privilege of attending her to the music class.  I visited her very often at Sister Bathsheba’s home...It was not until the following year, 25 October 1845, that Melissa and I were married.  She had been very sick with the ague and arose from her bed to be married to me...

It was not until June, after the battle began, that my wife and I left Nauvoo.  After crossing the Mississippi, I set my tools up under an oak tree on the bluff and ironed three more wagons.  Then we took our course over the road used by the saints who preceded us.

When we reached Winter Quarters the first thing to do was to put up hay.  Most of the men went to work at that immediately.  I would not strike a lick at haying until I had built a shelter for Melissa, for she was in a delicate condition.  I dug a cave in the side of a hill and pegged down a large ox hide to answer on the floor as a carpet.  The hair on the hide was long and warm and soft to the foot.  A bedstead I made iron bass wood poles with cane brake slats; upon this was a hay bed, then a feather bed, poles over the top with sod to keep out the wet and cold; in one end a fire place and a door at the other, and I had the coziest place you ever saw.  In this nest of a home, on the 13th of November, our first child, Melissa Jane, was born, and she was but ten months old when we landed in Salt Lake Valley...but to go back to the haying at Winter Quarters: I attended to the tools, sharpening the scythes, and doing the blacksmith work.  I had a good set of blacksmith tools, garden tools and pitchfork, pick, ax, etc. 

There was a great deal of suffering in Winter’s Quarters, due largely to the lack of flour in our camp.  Many of the young men had been enlisted in the Mormon Battalion under the United States government, to march to Mexico.  They had been gathering volunteers all the way from the Missouri River to Winter Quarter’s, taking our teamsters, house builders, and hunters and leaving mostly old men and helpless, except in a few cases.  Through this many were forced to live in their wagon beds, and through the winter the exposure resulted disastrously.  There were many graves made in Winter Quarters.

My wife was ill, and I had to lift her as if she were a babe.  Her sister Bathsheba was distressingly sick and my wife’s mother, Susanna Ogden Bigler, who lived with us, and was afflicted with consumption, died.  Neither Melissa nor Bathsheba were able to attend the funeral.  I kept a hired girl and part of the time had two to help. I was well fixed, better than most of them at that time.  At one time I was able to give Parley P. Pratt’s family two barrels of biscuits to keep them from starving.

Next : Preparations and the Trek West

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