While Father was yet a young man, he was thrown from a horse and hurt internally. He was bedfast for months, and never did entirely recover. Because of this accident and the fact that we had the largest family in town, we were rather poor. I wore clogs longer than the other girls, and grew to feel ashamed of the fact. I planned to arrive early at school and remain in at recess so the other children wouldn’t notice them so much.

Our education was very meager. I didn’t begin school until I was eight years old, then attended two sessions of three months each. I also had two winter sessions at a one-teacher school, studying the three R’s and spelling. I have so missed an education that I always made every effort to give it to my children.

The alkali began rising around Bear River, killing our crops and orchards, and the church released the people whom they had called to settle there. Father had read of Arizona’s tropical fruit-raising land around Phoenix, and being a horticulturist, decided to move there. We were two months making preparations for the trip.

Mother, having been apprenticed as a dairymaid in her girlhood, used the knowledge she gained at that time to can milk, make cheese and pack butter in brine. We girls helped in this as well as in baking quantities of bread, cookies, and in other food preparation. Also, we made soap enough to last throughout our trip.

We left Bear River City the first part of October 1884. I thought it was the saddest day of my life, leaving all the scenes of my childhood. I stood in my wagon and looked back as long as I could see a glimpse of anything, then sat down and cried. For years I longed to go back.

At Johnson, Utah we met and traveled with Brother John Reidhead from Woodruff, Arizona, who had been over the road several times and knew the watering places. This was our salvation, as Father was unfamiliar with the country. It also resulted in our going to northern Arizona instead of the Phoenix area.

While ferrying over the Colorado River, Father unhitched the team after the wagons were on the flatboat. Eliza and I went over with the first wagon and she enjoyed it so much that she went back to make the second trip, but I was too frightened to attempt it again. After crossing, we immediately began climbing Lee’s Backbone—that most rocky of all roads. Even by hitching both teams to one wagon we sometimes had to remove part of the load. One wheel broke and we camped while Father ferried back across the River to get another wheel at Johnson.

We reached the Arizona desert of sand. The children who were old enough walked much of the way to lighten the load. The water barrels were fastened onto the side of the wagon above the brake blocks. One day I attempted to climb up on the barrel to steal a ride and my foot slipped under the wheel and broke my toe. How it pained! But I had to suffer in silence because the mishap was brought on through disobedience. It was a long, weary trek over that desert with the same scenery day after day and not nearly enough water for ourselves or the animals. We sometimes dipped rainwater out of small basins in the rocks. I remember it all so well, even the smell of the bushes.

Our weary company traveled through the desert for maybe two weeks longer, then reached the old fort called Brigham City, Arizona, where some of the first settlers had lived during the United Order. Little did I dream that my future husband and his first wife had been among them.

When we attended Sunday School or a dance at Snowflake camp later on, I felt very shabbily dressed. I had only the maroon dress, which I had worn in Bear River City, and it was now much too short. Mother lengthened it with a black calico ruffle, but it still was not long enough to cover my badly worn black pernell shoes. Every time I wore those shoes I had to re-sew and black them.

In 1887, when I was fifteen years old, we moved to Heber—a town of seven families, about forty miles west of Snowflake. On the way we picked up Eliza who had been working at Snowflake for some time. We attended conference at Wilford, seven miles above Heber, and that was where I first saw the man I afterward married—Charles Edmund Richardson. He had just returned from Mexico where he had been on a trip as an interpreter for Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., who was arranging for Mormon colonization there. He wore a large Mexican hat, which made him conspicuous and attracted my attention, but I little dreamed at that time that he would ever be my husband.

However, I was to become better acquainted when he hired me the following summer to help his wife, Sadie. I was so bashful I tried to avoid his presence, and if he was in the house when I carried water from the spring I took a round-about way so he couldn’t see me from the door. He said afterward that was what first aroused his interest in me! My wage consisted of one dollar a week, which I saved to buy clothes. Aunt Sade made my stay profitable in other ways: she taught me to crochet five-stitch lace, and to use the sewing machine.

She seemed to grow to love me and eventually asked her husband to take me as his third wife. Accordingly, Edmund proposed marriage one day while I was down by the creek, but I refused him, saying that I did not care to tie myself to him, since he would be leaving again for a mission. I almost immediately began to regret this answer.

Edmund left his second wife, Aunt Sarah, with her people in Snowflake until he could get things prepared, and took Aunt Sade into Mexico to make a home. There he stayed six weeks to build corrals and a three-room adobe house where Sadie could run a little butter and cheese factory to help care for herself while he filled another mission to the Indians.

Before long the town of Wilford was evacuated, and as a result, Father was discontented in the little town of Heber, so he decided to follow the others into Old Mexico. Upon arrival at the international boundary on January 11, 1887, we were issued papers with instructions to report at La Ascencion, where the officials pronounced the papers incorrect, confiscated our outfits and fined us $400. What a hardship this was! We were penniless in a strange country, without a home, and a large fine hanging over our heads. Some of the brethren helped us raise the fine to recover our outfits and Edmund let us pitch our tents on his land where we lived from January to July.

Soon Father got hold of a city lot through the church grant, and fenced it with Moses rod (ocotillo) and planted some rose bushes for Mother in the yard of the home they planned to build. She had brought these plants all the way from Utah. Then he rented a piece of land south of town, somewhere near Holden’s place, and planted corn. When the corn was growing well, Father took two teams and went freighting at Via Mada (about one hundred miles away) in order to pay off the debt caused by the fine.

Mother was left to watch the crops. One day in the terrible summer heat, she chased cattle out of the field of corn and suffered a sunstroke. She became so ill she couldn’t stand the heat of our hot tent, so Aunt Verona Whiting took her into her house and helped us nurse her. When Father came home Mother was too weak to talk much, and was suffering a great deal. Father was grief-stricken and the first day of July he called a family prayer circle around her bed. Oldest by oldest, each took a turn leading in prayer, and Father dedicated her to the Lord, praying that His will be done. At the close of the prayer, she opened he eyes and tears rolled down her cheeks as she gazed at us and breathed her last. She had been sick ten days, and was only 51 years of age. For years afterward, I longed to have her cook something for me. I even prayed that she might return to me sometime.

My eleven-year-old sister Serepta, felt Mother’s loss very keenly. She took sick the day Mother died and kept pining away. She continued to fade and waste away and couldn’t eat, although she was hungry all the time. It was pitiful to hear her as she lay in bed. My poor father watched over the little girls like a mother, never resting day or night. We had no lamp or candles, but lighted torches of pine faggots to minister drinks and care during the night. After a while Aunt Fan Merrill brought over two candles. Father lost so much rest and grieved until he, too, became bedfast. As he watched Serepta he often shook his head and said, “She looks just like her mother.” About that time Rass came home sick with quinsy so there were four patients for Eliza and me to care for. Serepta lingered on until November, then she went to join Mother.