Coming to Zion

The subject of emigration to Zion was uppermost in the minds of the Saints. Charles said he felt that his children were coming faster than they could accumulate money to put in the emigration fund. They had been trying since the birth of their second son to save money, but so far had accumulated only a little over thirteen pounds for the fund.

Two missionaries from America, Brother John Brown of Battle Creek Utah {now called Pleasant Grove) and an Elder Gleason, had visited at the home of Charles and Eliza. Having heard the young couple express a desire to emigrate but knowing that they lacked sufficient funds, Brother Brown, who was staying with them, came up with a suggestion that startled them, at first. But the more they thought about the suggestion the more plausible it became. Brother Brown had said, “Why don't you send two of your children to Zion in the spring. The rest of you could go later.”

“With whom could they go? Who would take care of them? Wouldn't they get too homesick for us?” Such questions as these came to the minds of Charles and Eliza. After thinking it over and talking about ways and means, they found out that a Brother and Sister King of the Holloway Branch (of which Charles and Eliza were members) along with Brother King's mother and sister were going to Zion. They had no family and

agreed to take care of the two West daughters, Caroline Eliza and Ann Lydia, age ten and six years old, just as if they were their own.

And so it was decided that the girls accompany the Kings. But before the little girls left London, their father Charles had taken them for a trip on the River Thames. He also took them to have their picture taken with him, but best of all was their trip to the Castle Gardens. Ann West Neville on page two of her Biography writes, “I had never before seen grass grow or living flowers. As soon as I got inside the gate I looked about me for a few minutes, and then threw myself flat on the grass and spread out my arms. I wanted to

hug it and drink it in all my body, it was so good---You see in London there was no grass or flowers unless it was where the wealthy lived.”

So in the spring of 1862 the two little girls with their guardians, the Kings, left the Euston Square Railroad Station for Liverpool to embark on board the “Tapstock” a three masted sailing ship. “We had faith,” said Charles, “that they would arrive at their destination, nothing doubting. But the feelings of anguish (when our children bid us goodbye, as the train pulled out, they waving their handkerchiefs) was more than tongue could describe.”

And, added Charles, “we put our full trust in God and the feeling left us.” Charles and Eliza finally heard of the girls' safe arrival in New York and later of their arrival by train and steamboat to Florence, Nebraska (called Winter Quarters until 1854) and from there via oxen and wagon into the valley of the Great Salt Lake. While crossing the plains Brother King's wife and also his mother died and were buried on the open

prairie. "He did the best he could under the circumstances in caring for the children," said Charles.

From Caroline and Annie we have two accounts of what happened when they arrived in Salt Lake City. "Brother King was to have left us with our Mother's brother when we got to Salt Lake City," said Caroline West Larrabee, recalling the event, "but he had gone on to Silver City." (From the story "Caroline," The Unpublished Story, p. 198, December 1968, Daughters of Utah Pioneer Lessons) Ann West Neville relates the following in her Biography p. 5. “Bishop Edward Hunter, who took charge of the emigrants, came to

Brother King and asked what he was going to do with us. He told him that he could not do anything with us as he was alone in Salt Lake City and had no money. His sister was going to marry our teamster, Eli Curtis. Brother Hunter talked to President Young about us and said he would find someone to take us. So he called Bishop William Miller to him and told him about us. Brother Miller said he would take us to his home in Provo.

Brother King was willing and so were we. We went in the same wagon that took us across the plains as far as the teamster's home. We stayed there until Bishop Miller sent a team and buggy to take us to his home in Provo. One of the wives, Sarah, took me as her girl and the first wife took Caroline as her girl.” Note: The Brother William Miller mentioned in this episode is the one who saved Brigham Young in Nauvoo from being imprisoned by wearing the latter's cloak and hat and submitting to arrest. Bishop Miller was also Presiding Bishop of Provo (in charge of the Tithing Office) but he was also president of the Utah Stake of Zion.

Now let us return to London and see what Charles and Eliza were doing. When they heard of the safe arrival of their children in the Great Salt Lake Valley, they strove with all their might and strength to get the money so that they could follow their children the next year.

To get the necessary clothes their little girls, Caroline and Annie, had needed, money to have their picture taken and the final bit of sightseeing with their father before they left home, the parents had to go in debt five pounds. “But,” said Charles, “we took the council of the brethren to live within our means and we did so.

We found out that by studying economy and using wisdom in spending what means we had coming in every week, that we not only cleared the debt but was enabled to get means enough to take ourselves and four of our children the following year,” (as far as Florence, Nebraska). --Note: Charles was forced to borrow from the Emigration Fund to get his family from Florence, Nebraska to Salt Lake City. Mr. Thomas Cooper, Charles' employer, was sorry to have him leave the firm. He gave him every inducement to stay, even to promising him lifetime employment. Charles thanked Mr. Cooper for being so kind to him. But he said, “When we as Mormons or Latter-day Saints have a chance to go to a place called Zion in America, it is our duty to go

When Eliza went to pay the balance of the emigration money i.e. to Florence, Nebraska, Brother Staines, the emigration agent for the church, knowing that the couple had already sent two of their children on to Zion said, “All of your family will arrive safely in Zion and not one of you will die on the way.”

One week before leaving England Charles and Eliza decided to have a week of sightseeing. They visited such places as Kew Gardens, the London docks, the Thames tunnel, the Monument and other places. “Although we had lived in London for so many years,” wrote Charles in his journal, “I was not able to get out much to see what there was in London, so we enjoyed that week's visit.”

Eliza, Charles and four children, Thomas, Jabez, Mary Ann and baby Eliza left the London docks to board the packet ship, the Amazon, scheduled to sail June 1, 1863,under the direction of William Bramall, according to Grandfather's Journal. (A packet ship carried mail, passengers and goods. It also had a fixed sailing date). (In the D. U. P. lesson for April, 1969 "Sailing Vessels and Steamboats," p. 481, the Amazon sailed June 4th.)

In addition to their own family, this young couple had in charge two other young people, Samuel Bezzant, whom they were to leave at Battle Creek, Utah, with his grandfather, and a young woman Mary Powell, whose father was an adopted child of Charles' parents. When the West family went before the ship doctor for health inspection, the doctor refused to let their small son Jabez pass, since he was so pale and sickly looking. He was suffering with some lung trouble as a result of a previous siege of pneumonia. Some of

the church authorities present intervened, saying the child was all right and that they would stand good for him. Finally reluctant permission was given by the ship doctor and he added, “We'll throw him overboard in a few days.” But Charles and Eliza noted eventually that the sea air improved the health of their son so much that they knew Brother Staines prophecy would come true; (An incident written in Agnes A. (Dot)

West's Book of Remembrance)

Approximately 890 saints' were on board the Amazon for this particular voyage. Charles Dickens writes of this emigrant party in his story,

evening. They came from various parts of England in small parties that had never seen one another before. Yet they had not been a couple of hours on board when they established their own police, made their own regulations, and set their own watches at all hatchways. Before nine o'clock the ship was as orderly and quiet as a man-ofwar.’”

Eliza felt that the writer, Charles Dickens, had seen her family when he described this one. “A father and mother and several young children, on the main deck before me, had formed a family circle close to the foot of the crowded restless gangway, where the children made a nest for themselves in a cord of rope, and the father and mother, she suckling her youngest, discussed family affairs as peaceably as if they were in perfect

retirement.”

Eliza's mother, sister Mary Ann and Martha, and sister-in-law Martha Dangerfield, wife of Eliza's brother Charles, were there to see them off on their journey to America. Brother George Q. Cannon, President of the British Mission at the time, spoke to the Saints on the ship and blessed them.

From A Man to Remember, a story of Jabez William West by Ruby K. Smith, p. 5..” Mr. Cooper, seeing Charles' determination, gave him a present of thirty shillings for good conduct.The Uncommercial Traveler, Vol. VL p. 636-637, P. F. Collier, New York Pub. “Now I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June. And these people are so strikingly different from all other people in like circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder aloud, ‘What would a stranger suppose these emigrants to be!’ “The vigilant bright face of the weather-browned captain of the Amazon is at my shoulder and he says, ‘What indeed! The most of these came aboard yesterday