Well, I went and while I was gone there was two Indians came in with eleven head of cattle, and they brought two of my cows and a yearling and wanted two blankets for bringing in the cows, so my wife traded off the yearling for two blankets and was very glad to get the cows, but they were dry and we only had one cow that gave milk; and she did not give much, and it did not go far among so many. There was thirteen in family and they did not have anything to live on only bread. They used to get buttermilk from Brother Markham's folks and they thought that was a blessing.

When I got out to Green River there was a family there that I was acquainted with keeping the Ferry there, so I stayed there, and she done for me and charged me three dollars per day for my board. I thought that was pretty well. I went to work and fitted up a shop and built a forge and went to work. I made any amount of money there. The woman that I lived with bought several feather beds, and she got one that weighed forty pounds for three dollars, and I asked her to sell me one and she wanted one dollar per pound for the feathers and she would not take a cent less. I thought that was a pretty good speculation for none of them cost her two bits a pound and she would not let me have one without I paid her one dollar per pound. So I did not get one. I made fifteen head of stock while I was out there; they were poor when I bought them and they could not go any farther their being worn out. I turned them out on good feed, soon recruited up their strength and began to look well. I then would trade them off for some more that were poor and I served them the same and bought them myself, fifteen in number. I came in home in the fall and James Hicks helped me to drive them in for me and I hauled his luggage for him.

I found all my family pretty well. The cow that I had kept, they had been feeding her and she had got fat and they turned her out that winter and the Indians took a fancy to her and killed her and ate her, so there was an end to her. It liked to have broke up the folks, the Indians running off the cattle. They took many of the brethren's last yoke of cattle, and for some of them, the last head, and it took them a long time to get anymore.

Just after I returned home, my son, Taylor, and my daughter, Phebe, were married. They were married on the second of January eighteen hundred and fifty four. Taylor married a young woman by the name of Olive Derfy, daughter of Royal and Lidia Derfy; they lived in Palmyra. My daughter, Phebe, was married to a young man by the name of George W Sevey, son of George and Hannah Sevey. He was here alone, he left all his folks back in the States.

Early the next spring we moved up and built a fort between Palmyra and the Upper settlement. There was about twenty families of us; there was Briant M. Jolley, James Young, Cyrus Snell, Mrs. Mackenley, Joseph E. Hawks, John W. Mott, William Pace, Harvey A Pace, Wilson D. Pace, Amos Stiles, John Redd, Matthew Caldwell, George W. Sevey, Isaac Broackbank, Zebedee Coltrin and myself. The outside wall was two feet thick and twenty feet high, it was one hundred feet long running north and south and sixty feet wide east and west. There was only one entrance and that was a large gate, large enough to admit a wagon. The gate was made of two inch plank made cross ways double, and put together with large stud nails and two folding doors swung on the inside, and a large cross piece at the top. This gate faced the south, it was built this way for a protection against Indians. Our correl was on the outside about sixty feet from the fort. We drove our cattle on the bench [p.45] and bottom to feed and corralled them at night. There were some few that commenced to build out the next spring. Philo Allen was the first, he built a house about fifty yards from the Fort on the went side; William Holt built on the east side then Snell went to work and built him a house on the north east corner; Hawks built him a house on the east of Smell and fenced in their lots. It was to become a city some day. I knew. It was a beautiful situation but the Canyon wind was tiresome, and it was very gravely and the dust flew about so when the wind blew. I went over to Hobble Creek with John W. Mott to help him build a threshing machine. I made all the iron work and he got the wood work and it was a separator, and when I had finished over there, I came home and went to work making ready to go out to Bridger.

I hired a hand, his name was John Long and as soon as we got ready, which was in April, we left for Bridger. I took my wife Sarah and my daughters Charity and Keziah with me and left the rest at home. I had taken up a farm in two places, one over the Creek and one on the County Road on the west side and they were going to farm it that summer. I did not meet with so much success that summer as I did the summer before. I hired another hand to help me, his name was Callen Ramsay. I did not have much for him to do out there so I sent him in and the girls with him.

Now, the Saints had lost all their crops that summer, their grain had come up splendid and some of it was in the ear, and one day the sun was darkened and there was kind of a mist before the sun, and every one thought it was going to storm, but on observing closely you could see that the air was thick with small objects, or specks about the size of the point of a needle; it was about eleven o'clock in the morning. As the day advanced the objects became plainer and you could see insects flying in all directions. There was so many and so thick that you could not distinguish what they were, whether they were gnats, flies or what, but about the middle of the afternoon they began to fly lower and lower till they lit, and come to look they were grasshoppers and there was not a blade of wheat or oats, barley, corn or anything that was green that was not literally covered. I have been into a field of grain and counted as many as twenty seven grasshoppers on one blade of wheat, and there was not a blade in the whole field that did not have, or was not covered with the vermin. They could mow a field of grain in a day so close to the ground that the field would look as if it had just been sown. On any piece where they went they would destroy it and there was no help for it nor any way to save it in the world.

Sometimes the whole settlement would turn out men, women and children and try to drive them in the creeks or rivers and they would drive them in till the water would be right thick with them and then it would seem as if there would be ten times as many come in their place. You could not stir for them. If you went into a field you could not walk without stepping upon twenty or thirty at every step. There was nothing ever seen to equal it, the plagues of Egypt and [ahay], the vermin being piled up in heaps, it was nothing [p.46] to be compared with these grasshoppers for they were all through the Territory the same; and the folks dug ditches for them to jump into and had them half full of water and they would jump and jump and jump into the ditches till the ditch would be full, and they would crawl over on the others that were in the ditch then. I have been trying to give a description of how many there were, but I have fell far short of the mark for no one could begin to tell it nor no one begin to imagine how they poured down like rain. However, they eat every blade of grain and every spear of grass, and the cattle like to have starved to death, but they all flew up one morning and darkened the skies and all lit in the Salt Lake; there the strength of the salt killed them.

Fresh water will not drown them; they might be in the water for twelve hours and if they came alongside of a twig they would get out and in an hour they would be as well as ever. When they were gone the wheat and grain spring up, and the folks watered it, and cut it for hay, if they had not some of their cattle would have starved to death that winter for the feed was all destroyed by the grasshoppers.

Now folks had but little grain on hand, not near enough to do them till the next harvest, so they did not know what to do, but they began to ration out to themselves first a pound of flour per day, and then half a pound and so on to make it last till harvest. I came in from Bridger in the fall and found things in this fix. It was a hard winter and I had not made anything out there, and it was going to be hard with us I could see before the next harvest. Wheat was up to four and five dollars per bushel, and then you could not get it hardly with begging and praying for it.

On the second of January eighteen hundred and fifty six my daughter Keziah was married to a young man by the name of Lemuel H. Redd, son of John and Elizabeth Redd; they were married in the Fort and lived in the Fort till he was called to go down to Las Vegas on a mission which was some time in the spring. His father was to go down in the fall. There was lead mines down there and Brigham wanted a place made down there so that the mines could be opened and carried on to supply the Territory with the article.

Brother William Pace had been put in Bishop after Stephen Markham and at April conference he was called up to go to England on a mission. I was then put in his place by the people of Spanish Fork, and after a while I went down to the [Salt Lake] City and Brigham asked me if I had been ordained to the office of Bishop, I told him that I had not neither did I want to be. But he said, I want you to be ordained to the office of Bishop and to go work to build a city at Spanish Fork, and go right ahead building up the kingdom of God. And he ordained me and blessed me and said, "Brother, John [Butler], the Lord be with you and comfort you in all your undertakings and give you His Holy Spirit to enable you to govern the people all right that you are placed over." He also told me that the people of Palmyra was to leave their places and come and build in Spanish Fork. I returned home and asked the Lord to bless me and enable me to build up His Kingdom.

I told [p.47] the folks at Palmyra that they had to move to Spanish Fork City. Some of them did not like it; there were some that always had a bitter feeling against the folks of the Upper Settlement and they did not like the idea of having to move up and live with them. However, they were willing to obey the counsel given to them from Brigham.

I had the [Spanish Fork] City surveyed and laid off in blocks and city lots and had a water section brought down from the river up above the upper settlement. We had to put in a dam to get the water on the lowest bench. When the city was laid off it took several weeks to accomplish this object.

I then went and made a field company and got them to get up a community and go to work and put a wall from the river west of the Country road and being it north and then put down to the river. Well, they went to work and put up the wall although some of the men at the time lived on nothing in the world but bran and weeds. It was a great undertaking for them but the Lord was with them and helped them, and then the folks built a bridge across Spanish Fork River; they got timber out of the mountains and went to work and put it right up. Well, the folks put in their crops and folks put in their early vegetables so that they could have something to eat. I put in considerable grain myself but I did not have much time to attend to it and the cattle got into it and destroyed a great deal of it, but the most of the folks done pretty well and raised good crops; the land had had a rest.

The folks all moved up from Palmyra and began to build; they had to make shanties out of lumber and willows and anything that they could get; and Brother Captain Davis had made a shanty of willows and he had stacked his grain close by and one day the wind was blowing pretty hard and caught the shanty on fire and that blew and caught the stacks and burnt nearly every thing that they had, and all the grain was destroyed entirely. I was down there and helped to save what things we could, but the fire raged so that there was not much chance of saving anything. The willows had all got dry and burnt like powder almost and there was no putting it out when it once got started. Well, they watched the fire till night and thought it was out, but the fire broke out again in the night and they had to get up and watch it again; they watched it till it went out. Well, I knew it was pretty hard to lose all they had almost and so I thought that I would get up a subscription for them. I did so, and raised over a hundred bushels of wheat for him, and the women folks went to work and got them some clothes, and so they did not feel the loss like they would if it had not been done for them.

I went to work and fixed up John W. Mott's house up for a tithing office and got Brother Raymond for a clerk. I hired two men then to build a tithing corral, which was used for a stray pen, public corral and stock yard for tithing hay and cane. I had it built out on the southeast corner of the Fort. I had no corral of my own yet I had corral room, but there were no poles there and so I stacked my grain in the tithing stack yard, but it got nearly all destroyed for I had bought some goats of Rueben Allred [p.48] and they were in among the sheep and they would jump any place no matter what kind of a fence it was, they used to jump over the wall and get at the grain. Well, I had a stake and rider on the top of the wall. Well, these goats would jump and walk right on the pole that was for a rider and they would run on the top of it as good as they would on the ground and the sheep learned to follow them so that there was nothing to stay them, and I had to send them off.

Well, just before conference, there was some of the Elders came down from Great Salt Lake City, Brother John Young and some more and they held a conference. The folks went to work and built a bowery on the public square, and we held conference under that; they preached to us good doctrine and said that Brother Brigham said that the folks wanted a reformation among them, and they told us that we had to go to work and be baptized again and live our religion more than we had done, and they told me that I had to go to the city and get my instructions as to what I should do.

I went down to the City and went to Brother Brigham and he asked how I felt and how I was getting along. I told him. He then gave me instructions what to do and how to do and told me that I had to be baptized there and then go back and baptize the folks and ordain Teachers to go round and visit the Saints. Well, I returned home and set my counselors to work which were Albert K. Thurber and George Wilkins and I told them what they were to do, so Brother John Young came down and preached to us and we went to work and rebaptized all the folks and reordained them members of the Church of Jesus Christ. We then appointed meeting and began to feel the blessings of God poured out upon us.