A Short History of My Parents by Susan Adeline Holman

A Short History of My Parents by Susan Adeline Holman

Contributed By SmithJeanine1 · 3 April 2014

                                                           

James Sawyer & Naomi Roxanna LeBaron Holman

Written by Susan Adeline Holman Johnson (pictured below)

My parents, Mr. and Mrs. James Holman, were among the first Latter-Day Saints to join the Church in the days of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

They lived in Illinois when the Prophet was martyred.  Were driven from place to place by the mob.  Got as far as Mount Pisgah where we had the privilege of staying long enough for my father to throw a log house together.  There he left my mother and six children in the summer of 1847.  He started out with a herd of sheep for the Rocky Mountains, the first that crossed the Desert.

I think I heard him say he walked the entire way.  He had a young boy with him to help drive the sheep.  The boy had a horse to ride.  I don’t know that I ever heard my father say what the boy’s name was.

During the summer, my mother and some of us children were sick with chills and fever.

In the summer of 1848 my mother with the help of the good brethren and sisters prepared to start with the saints to cross the plains with my eldest brother, James A Holman to drive three yoke of cattle.  I can’t say oxen but oxen and cows.  At that time he was only thirteen.  My father came back to meet us and we landed in Salt Lake in October of that same year safe and well.  But we had hardships and trials fighting crickets and moving around to keep out of the way of the Indians.

I was only seven years old the fall we arrived in Salt Lake and how well I do remember as we came over the mts. what a barren looking place it was with the little Fort down in the valley and perhaps a few little houses.  And when I look back and see the vast difference and nice houses all around on the side of the hills where myself and young brother herded my father’s sheep running over rocks and thorns with our bare feet, glad to have bucket of segoes for our supper.

Many times my father would take a drink of milk in the morning and go off to work and be gone all day with nothing to eat till he came home at night.  I can see my mother trudging up and down her spinning wheel all day and would often see the tears streaming down her cheeks.

(Copied by her granddaughter, Virginia Guthrie Pew, Feb. 2, 1957)