I, Emma Lynette (Richardson) Conover, was born October 31, 1841, in Granville, Washington County, New York. I am the daughter of Edmund and Mary (Darrow) Richardson. My ancestor, Samuel Richardson came to America in 1636 and settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts with his two brothers, Ezekiel and Thomas. In 1641, they helped settle Woburn, Massachusetts. It is supposed that they came from England and that he was born there about 1610.

My father was born in Mt. Holly, Vermont, and lived in Mt. Holly and Hebron, New York until I was seven years old. My eldest brother, George Alvin, was also born in Mt. Holly. My brothers Charles Edmund and Sullivan Calvin, were born in Manti, Sanpete County, Utah.

When I was seven years old, my parents turned their faces westward. We came by canal boat to Buffalo County, New York, then by steamer across Lake Erie to Cleveland, Ohio, and again by canal to Portsmouth, Ohio, where we stayed six months. Then we travelled down the Ohio river by steamboat to Cannalton, Perry County, Indiana, where we lived about five years. My father, mother, and myself worked in a cotton factory a good deal of the time.

While there, my father and a Reverend Whitworth, a Presbyterian minister, (father was a Presbyterian deacon) decided to form a colony and go to Oregon, as there was much talk of the great possibilities in the far away, new country. My father, being a wheelwright as well as carpenter, and in fact, being a master at most all trades, made our wagon to cross the plains, and shipped it in sections to St. Joseph, Missouri, that being the place chosen to start from.

Mother wove the cloth for the wagon cover in the factory, then my father oiled it to make it waterproof and shipped it with the wagon. One little incident which occurred on the boat going to St. Joseph is recalled to mind. One evening my mother, George and I were enjoying the moonlight on the front of the canal boat, when George said, “Ma, I’m going to knock the moon down.” Up went the stick of wood, and down went George, while the moon went sailing on.

We had to wait six weeks in St. Jo for the rest of the company, my grandmother, Harriet (Burbank) Darrow, my Aunt Emma (Darrow) Carson, and her husband, John Carson, with baby Frank Carson. Uncle John made his wagon, and mother wove the cover. We started out on the first of April 1853, with eleven other wagons. It took us three months to cross the plains. We all walked a good part of the way, as our team was rather weak for our load.

In crossing the North fork of the Platte River, our wagon tipped over and I was taken out for dead. My father was frightened, thinking I was dead, dropped the Camphor bottle, and the strong stuff running into my mouth and nose, found a spark of life, and I was saved.

We saw lots of buffalo, prairie dogs, and Indians. Our company shot three buffalo so we had lots of meat. Once while traveling up the Platte, we had to stop for over one hour for a herd of buffalo to pass us. They travel in single file and would fight before breaking file. Some of the company estimated them at five hundred.

We saw many graves where the emigrants the year before had lost loved ones. The wolves had dug into lots of the graves and you could see bones, hair and bits of clothing that the dead were buried in scattered around. As they could not get coffins, many of the dead had been wrapped in quilts, or anything that the emigrants could spare. Some took parts of their wagon boxes and made rude coffins of them. How different now in 1908!

When we got to the Big Sandy River our best ox died, and we did not know what to do. Finally, Reverend Whitworth advised Father to come into Utah for the winter, then get another ox and come to Oregon the next spring. He said he thought we could get along with the Mormons for one winter if we were careful. We knew nothing about the Mormons, except the vile stories told by their enemies, but as there seemed no other recourse, Father and Mother decided to do the best they could. We bade farewell to friends and dear ones at Sublett’s cutoff. My grandmother, aunt and uncle and little cousin, all went on and we started out alone through hostile Indian country. But the Lord protected us and we never saw an Indian in the three long weeks we spent before reaching Salt Lake City 3 August 1853. We had spent three weeks going one hundred sixty miles.

We went out to Gaunt’s carding mill on West Jordan, ten miles south of Salt Lake City, where Mother got work. Father worked a mile above Gardner’s saw mill. While living there, my Fathter and Mother were converted to Mormonism by Ralph Thompson, father-in-law of Willliam S. Godbe.

The winter of 1853-4, Chief Walker and his braves were very hostile as were the Sandpitches. They were a grade lower and came under Walker. They were so bad that the settlers in all the small towns, Mt. Pleasant, Moroni, Spring City, and Ephraim had to come together at Manti to protect themselves, and still they did not feel strong enough to cope with them as they were stealing stock and killing people all the time. So the people made a call for help to Brigham Young, and he sent word to the Bishops of different places, to call a number of men to go and help settle that country. My father was one of those called. He had just traded some of his stock for a lot in Salt Lake City, but he sacrificed that and started in the dead of winter, with a very poor team, and very little else, for Sanpete County. That broke me all up again, as I had never wanted to stay in Utah, and my father had promised repeatedly before he was converted that he would take George and me to Oregon in the spring. My mother was converted first, and did not want to leave the Mormons.

As I said, we started in the dead of winter for Sanpete. Snow four feet deep and still snowing in Salt Creek canyon and cold! Scant clothes and scant everything else. Mone man by the name of Michaelson froze his feet so badly that he lost part of them tramping snow and breaking road so the teams could get through at all. We were about two weeks going from West Jordan to Manti. We camped in Ephraim one night and got into Manti the next night after dark. Seven miles! A family of Blacks took us in. We all lived in a room in the old Log fort. During that winter, the flour we had was ground on an old coffee mill we had. We ate lots of boiled whole wheat. We also fried some of it after it was boiled. It tasted pretty good those hard times. The next spring and winter we lived with John Crawford and his wife and the next year moved in to John Warner’s house (he had been killed by Indians). It was big for those times, big enough to dance in.

Then my father got a lot just southwest of the meeting house block, and built a little adobe house, which we moved into as soon as it was built.

One day while we were living with Mrs. Crawford, she said to me, Lynette, let’s go get baptized tomorrow.” This was the winter of 1854-5. I think that my parents put her on. I said, “All right, anything for fun.” You would not think there was much fun in it, for it was January and they had to cut through thick ice to baptize, and our clothes were frozen on our backs when we got home.

My, but the summer and winter of 1856, the settlements had a big drain on them! Governor Young’s policy had always been to feed the Indians rather than fight them. They were not long in taking advantage of this counsel, for they came by the hundreds to be fed. They came in squads of from five to eight, and would sing and dance in the dooryard until you gave them something to eat or wear, and in five minutes another crowd would come in, day in and day our, right along.

When we went to Manti, they had no grist mill as the Indians had burned theirs down, and the nearest one was at Salt Creek, 40 miles distant, now called Nephi. Once four men thought, as the Indians had been quiet for some time, they would go alone. But shortly after coming over the divide, the Indians ambushed them, and shot three of the four. Old Father Turkelson was a cripple, and they shot him in the wagon, then, wanting the sacks the wheat was in, emptied it all over the old man and set fire to the wagon. Only the trunk of that man was left. Erickson, the man that got away, ran nearly thirty miles, broke his wind, and suffered a thousand deaths before he died a few years later. There many others killed during the war, but none of our family.

During the Grasshopper war my mother had all our provisions weighed and made calculations of how much we could use each day and have it last until harvest. I think it was one pound of flour each per day and other things accordingly. I have gone a mile many times to get small pig weeds for greens. A little later, we all went south to the saleratus beds and gathered up several sacks of saleratus. The whitest and best we kept by itself to make bread with and the other for making soap. Well I remember an old tin reflector we got to bake break in before the fireplace. We were quite proud of it as our cooking utensils were limited. I am writing these things to show how we used to do in those early days. Father built a dutch oven beside the fireplace, and to make a door for it, he took a piece of sheet iron we had traded saleratus for.

Father made another loom and she took in weaving. I would spool and wind bobbins for her and do most of the housework while she wove. She wove jeans, flannel, linseys, kerseys, toweling, birds-eye, and later bedspreads. I know of one here in Springerville, now over 40 years old.

I will tell you how my mother made wrapping cloth for my brother Edmund. He was born in Manti, 13 October 1858. Before crossing the plains she got cotton in the factory and made her a cotton mattress. That was early in 1853. We used it until the spring of 1858 when she took it to pieces, washed the cotton, carded and spun it on a wheel father had made for her. Father had raised some flax the year before which he hetcheled and got ready and mother spun that for the warp and filled it with cotton.

About this time some old fanatics were preaching that a young man could not save a girl if he married her. That to be saved she must marry some old codger, tried and true. My parents got the disease with the rest, and when one of the “tried and true” came our way, they said I must marry him. I cried and begged, begged and cried, but to no avail. I was forced to go into his family. I would not speak of this only to show that my first children were legitimate. I loved them, no matter about the rest. Let’s forget it, as it has always been a source of great trouble to suffer through other’s mistakes. I will say that up to the time I speak of, my father has always been good to me. I can now see that it was the pressure of the times that caused him to act as he did.

The Lord saw fit to take my children to Himself, and twice after I was a mother, I was left childless. Two dear little boys sleep in one grave out in Circle Valley and one under the brow of the Manti Temple.

I will here tell of a spiritual manifestation I received after losing my two little boys, on the same day. Many will scoff at the idea, but it was real to me and has been ever since. While lying leaning against their graves one day with my eyes closed, I seemed to realize that Willie was there and I began to commune with him in the spirit. (He was four and a half years old when he died.) I asked him among other things if Dannie was there with him? He said, “Yes, and it makes us feel oh, so bad to see you mourn so.” I asked if Orrin were with them? He said, “No,” but did not tell where Orrin was. Orrin had died over four years before. Willie said, “Now we want you to go home and take care of yourself for the sake of the little brothers and sisters that come hereafter.” I thought, “There will never be any more, for I cannot live through this.” Many more things he said to me, which were a great comfort to me.

I got up and went to my home such as it was, only a big Government wagon box, set on the ground to sleep in. I did my cooking on a camp fire beside the wagon box.

I lived in Circleville, at the time of the Blackhawk War, when everybody had to go to the center of town to sleep for fear of an outbreak during the night. We used to have some stirring times in those days. I remember a posse of men came out of Sanpete and went hunting the Indians. There were about fifty men. Warren S. Snow was their leader. He was asking questions of Bishop Allred, about climatic conditions down there. Bishop Allred said, among other things, that “You could always tell an old settler by the scars on his face made by the wind blowing small rocks into his face and cutting it.” The wind did blow fierce most of the time.

Shortly after my last two children died ( they died of scarlet fever), I came down to my father’s home in Springerville. A few days after I came over the road, five persons were killed by the Indians, on the very road I had just been killed a few days before. Three men had gone up in the canyon to get a load of wood. The Indians came upon them and killed them, all three. They cut off Ben Black’s hand, and Will White’s ear and cut his tongue out.

I [went] to my father’s home in great sorrow, over the loss of my dear children. William Edmund aged four and a half years, and Daniel Wells, age two years, lacking nine days. Both died in one day.

I worked out most of the time. Worked six months for George McKenzie as his wife’s health was poor, and worked six months for Wood Wilson’s wife in Provo.

In 1866, in the spring, I met John Conover for the first time. I was coming from Salt Lake City, where I had been to nurse a sick lady. John Conover had been driving the “Overland Stage” for a company, between Salt Lake City and Butte, Montana. He was coming to see his sister, Mrs. Ben Armstrong in Provo, and his father, Peter Wilson Conover, who lived in Spanish Fork at that time. I was riding horseback when he overtook us at the point of the mountain. The lady’s husband that I went down with was well acquainted with him, and introduced us. The fall of 1867 we were married in Springerville, Utah. We lived in Springerville. The winter of 1868 we, in company with my husband’s brother Alpheus and wife, Emma (Smith) Conover, and our two little girls, ours named Daisy Dean, and theirs Hannah Eveline, took a trip to Millville, in Cash Valley to see two of their sisters and families, Sarah Elizabeth (Conover) Weaver and Kitty Ann (Conover) Hunt. We had a good time visiting John’s relatives and friends, as he had lived there with his sisters at one time. He also had a sister in Ogden, whom we visited, Eveline (Conover) Brown. In Salt Lake City, we stopped with Christine (Golden) Kimball, mother of J. Golden Kimball and a cousin of John’s mother.

In the spring of 1869 we started for White Pine County, Nevada, with Alph and family. My father and brother, George, had been out there for about two years, and John had been out there the year before. The men killed lots of rabbits on the road and they were fine fried in butter. We traveled over the Great American desert mostly at night as it was cooler for the team. John lost his coat on the Desert.

When we got to Fish Creek we saw where the mail carriers the year before had emptied out the mail sacks to get through the mud. It was surely a bad, muddy crossing. The next day at Fish Creek, John and Alph were lying under our wagon in the shade, when on looking up, John said, “Look here, Alph, this tire is gone off the wheel.” Sure enough it was gone. They got up and started back and found it two miles back. That wheel had run two miles on the felloes, and never broken one. Wasn’t that good luck?

My father and brother were coming home and we missed them, where there were two roads around and over a hill. I was very uneasy for fear we would miss them, for I did not know when I would ever see them again. John thought likely they would come over the hill, but for fear we would miss them, I wrote a note and tacked it up on the station door at the foot of the hill where the two roads rejoined. I had heard they were coming was the reason I was so uneasy about them. Sure enough, a short time after we started they came around the hill, saw my note, but did not dare stop and come after us as they were making forced marches to keep ahead of some road agents that thought they had some money. Father had some, and the agents knew it, and by pushing hard, father and George kept ahead of the agents. Later father found that the agents had been after them, but thought that father and George had not left Hamilton so soon. The agents robbed three men that left Hamilton a day or two before Father and George did. A man by the name of Spencer and William Hatfield, but missed father, through father’s diligence in getting ahead of them.

We went to Cold Creek, Nevada, where Heber Orsier kept a mail station, and stayed there a few days. Alph got a station to run a few miles above Orsier’s and we got one ten miles further up the valley at Charles Thomas’ ranch. We stayed there about a year, then bought us a place on Cold Creek, where we built a two room log house. Our second child, Mary Zerelda was born there 20 March 1870. We lived there a little over a year, hten sold out and moved down to Ten Mile Creek, about ten miles south of Elko. We rented a station from a man named Weir, who had a two room front with canvas roof, and three rooms running back, with cedar posts set in the ground, stockade fashion, and with mud roofs. We hired sixteen cows for the season from a man named Crane, whose mother was a Conover. My husband and I milked the cows and made butter, which John took to Eureka, and got fifty cents per pound for it. We did very well that summer.

John had two sisters living in Star Valley, Catherine Hunt and Zerelda Armstrong. We went over to see them, a day’s drive from our place. That fall we concluded to come back to Utah. We came back, to Dragon Hollow, above Silver City, Tintic, where my father had some mining property. He had a house ready for us to move into when we got there. This was the first of October. About the first of November we came over to Springerville to see my mother where my son, John, was born 13 November 1871. When my baby was three weeks old, I went back to Tintic, as my father and husband were both working there, and needed me to cook for them.

When my baby was two months old, I was called back to Springerville by the death of my dear mother. I never went back to Tintic to live, as my father wished me to stay and keep house for my two brothers, Edmund and Sullie and an Indian girl named Kate Aldurah. Kate stayed for a few years then went to work for Bishop William Bringhurst, where she lived for two or three years, and later worked for Mrs. Lyman S. Wood. My brother, George, had gone back to Nevada before my mother died, but Edmund and Sullie lived with us most of the time, but sometimes they would go to Tintic and stay awhile with father.

Two years after my mother died, father died. Mother died on 13 January 1872, and father died on the 27^th of March 1874. He took sick over in Tintic with the same disease that my mother died with—pneumonia. Doctor Wing doctored father, and Mrs. Wing, mother. Being in Tintic when my mother died, I did not get to see her before she died. And being in Springerville [Springville] when my father died, I did not get to see him until they brought him home dead. It was very sad for me not to have the privilege of doing one kind act for them in their last illness. They both sleep side by side in the Springerville [Springville] cemetery, down west a block from my place.

Father was over to see us a short time before he took sick. My son, Adelbert, was born on the 12th of January 1874, and father seemed very proud of my baby. When he got ready to start back to his work in Tintic he said to me, “Lynette, I want you to be very careful of that baby boy.” He died when my baby was two months and fifteen days old. Then I was tied down, as father had insisted on my staying after mother’s death. Edmund was turned fourteen and Sullie twelve when Father died. George was still in Nevada and we did not hear from him for a long time after Father’s death and then only in a roundabout way. We heard that when he heard of Father’s and Mother’s death, he grew melancholy and despondent and rather demented, and that he was sent to Stockton, California, for safe keeping, as the state of Nevada had no place to keep people in such a condition. When I heard this, I began a correspondence with the Governor of Nevada and found that my poor brother was in such a condition, and off among strangers made me study what to do. After much correspondence back and forth, the Governor agreed to send him to Ogden if I would receive him there and give a receipt to show that the state of Nevada was cleared of all responsibility in his case. My husband went to Ogden, and received him. This was in the Spring of 1879.

My son, Wilson, was born 15 February 1876, Charles was born 3 September 1878, and Sullivan was born 20 August 1880, while we were living in Springerville.

On the 22nd of October 1878, my rothers, Edmund and Sullivan, started out to Arizona with a company of their friends where they took up land and started homes for themselves. Edmund married Sarah Louisa Adams in the St. George Temple, Sullivan married Irene Curtis in the same place. Later they all moved to Mexico.

My dear little Sullivan died of membraneous croup 14 November 1881, and my brother, George, died of paralysis 15 December 1881. He sleeps beside my angel mother and my dear little Sullie lies at my father’s feet. My two brothers in Mexico came back to see us and saw George while was living with us. My brothers came back to see us occasionally at the old home. One trip, Edmund came back and wanted to take two of my children back to Mexico with him. We let May and Adelbert go back with him. May stayed six months and Adelbert eighteen months.

May was married to Amos Hatfield the 4^th of September 1899 in Springerville. It was our 21^st wedding anniversary and also my husband’s birthday. My son, Charles, was born on the 3^rd of September and his father said, “He might have waited one more day and given his father a birthday present.” We still lived in my father’s old house.