Notes
Note N522
Index
May 12th. We landed in St. Louis with many sick on board. My wife was very sick two or three days before we landed in St. Louis my mother-in-law was attacked with the cholera very severely, that we where oblige to send her to the hospital. I took her and my wife to the hospital. They would not take my wife into the same hospital as her mother for she had not got the cholera. I left my mother-in-law in the Charity Hospital with her youngest daughter (Rachel). My mother-in-law was unconscious when she was put in. After leaving her there, I took my wife to the City Hospital about three miles further. I left her there with lot of strangers that she never seen before and went back to the boat where my children was and my father-in-law and his family was. There I had to nurse my little babe, eight months old all night without her mother. We had a very miserable night of it. The next morning the 13th and also Sunday I started for the Charity Hospital to see how my mother-in-law was getting along. When I arrived there to my astonishment she was dead and buried before I got there. I did not see her at all and her little girl Rachel was there like a little stranger. I then went to the other hospital where my wife was. There I found her very weak and feeble. She said that she had nothing to take while she in there, but water, and she begged on me to take her out from such a miserable place. I complied with her desire. I took her out. I had to carry her on my back most of the way from the hospital to the boat through the City of St. Louis, for we had not yet move from the boat. It was on Sunday. By the time I and my wife reach the boat it was near dark and there was two of my sister-in-law attacked by the cholera. Ann & Rachel was very bad. I spend another miserable night with the sick and with my own children, but Monday morning came. [p. 21]
May 14th. Monday morning came and my father-in-law went out to the country to seek for a place to live at. He got to a place called Dry Hill six miles from St. Louis where there was some coal mines, and a branch of the church of the Latter day Saints. Among whom was John Gibbs the presiding Elder, also Brothers Thomas Green and William Stone, and good many others. They treated him friendly. Green and Stone brought a team with them to move us out to Dry Hill. We got out to the place before dark and went in to Green's house that night. We where nine in number and three of them very sick, The owner of the land by the name of a Mr. Garsaide give orders to Mr. Green to drive us away from the premiss because that he was afraid that we would bring the cholera to the diggings. However, Green did not obey his orders and there we stayed. Next day we bought a little log cabin for fifteen dollar to live in, and all the family got well except my wife. She was getting weaker and weaker every day. Father-in-law and I commence working in the coal pits. On the 18th a great fire broke out in one of the boats at St. Louis and burnt 36 of the boats and one third of the city to ashes. I went to St. Louis next morning and such a sight I never before saw. The handsomest part of the city all to ashes. The streets full of ruins, a man could only walk through. My wife was getting worse and worse until the night of the 22nd. When she seemed to be a little better.
23rd. With day light this morning she was very bad and about 4 o'clock she set on the box and leaned her head back on the wall, she died in an instant without uttering a word. Thus she departed this life on the twenty-third day of May, 1849 at 4 o'clock in the morning or with the break of day. She was 24 years, 3 months and 23 day old when she died on the Dry Hill. She was buried in the county grave yard near Blue Ridge in the state of Missouri, about six miles west of the city of St. Louis. She left behind her two small children, a boy and a girl. IN a few days I left the Dry Hill and went to work in a brick yard in St. Louis with one Mr. Williams for 20 dollars per month and find myself, however, I did not stay there only two weeks. Went to work to Blue Ridge to another Mr. William Williams, a Welshman. As soon as my wife died my little daughter was taken sick. She got worse and worse until the 20 of June when she died in the same house as her mother and was buried in the same grave. I stayed on the Blue Ridge with Mr. Williams until fall when I moved to Gravois to coal diggings. I left my son Morgan with his grandfather at Dry Hill, but after a while he moved to the Gravois. . . . [p.22] [NO SALT LAKE CITY ARRIVAL ACCOUNT PROVIDED.]
Notes
Note N523
Index
Left Liverpool aboard the Hartley. Arrived in New Orleans on 28 Apr 1849
Notes
Note N524
Index
http://www.welshmormonhistory.org/index.php?/immigrants/view/427
Gender: Female
Birth date: 24 Jan 1825
Birthplace: Llanelly, Carmarthenshire, South Wales
Death date: 21 May 1849
Deathplace: St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri
Departure: Left Liverpool on 5 Mar 1849 aboard the Hartley
Arrival: Arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana on 28 Apr 1849
Marriage(s): Married to Bowen, David D. on 25 Dec 1845 at Llanelli, Carmarthenshire
Sources: Ancestral File
Resources:
David Sisters
David Sisters
Comments: Mary David is not included in the photograph of the other David sisters as she died at St. Louis on 21 May 1849. See the journal for her husband, David D. Bowen, for a poignant description of her death and the death of her mother.