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.