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Show - 4 - Benjamin Perkins Our next stop was at Echo Canyon, a Mormon camp on the railroad . 0h hat a pleasant reunion- ! had found a number of my boy friends from ales. After giving them an account of my trip I had a handful in keeping them from making a row over the way I had been treated, and the only ay I could pacify them, was by promising to tay by them in camp, so I stayed but I had difficulty getting the bo~ s of the teams to l et me off . When the boss found out that I wanted to earn money to send for my parents and the rest of the family in Wa l es, he gave forty dollars with a "God bless you" and he promised I would soon have the 1?-ecessary money . This Laramie city company to Echo Canyon as under the direction of illiam S . Seeley. There were t hirty-nine wagons and 272 souls , though four of th~m died on the tripo It wa in the fall of the year ~hen I began to work at the Echo Camp, and by spring mysel f , my brother-in-law, John Evans and brQther Joe had nine hundred dollars in gol d . I as now ful l y decided that I wanted to get married,. so when e sent the money to my parents, I a l so sent word for them to bring Mary Ann Vi lliams with them. ~e did not discontinue our l abor and by the time our pe opl e land ed in Salt Lake we had earned e i ght hundred more, though we had only received three hundred of it, and we spent that in trying to get the other five- hundred, but never got it . After our fo l ks joined us we decided to go to Cedar City. ~e went wi th Bishop Lunt and had a jolly time ~ He insisted that we sing and sernade every l ittl e vill age we st opped in on our journey. I was marri ed on the fourth of Oct ober in the endownment house in Sal t Lake City. Father and Vother were s ealed there . Cedar was the firs t to n I lived in after my Marri age, and soon after going there went to Haml. l ton's Fort and orked for Pet er Fife for a cow . I worked for Georger Middl etons father for another cow . The next to years of my life were spent herding sheep for the Cedar Coopo In 1872 a boy arrived at our home and died that night, and it was at this time we took Caroline Cardel ia Thurston to raise . She was e l even days old and motherless. This fragmentary account i s sure t o omi t much that would be of orth to the decendents of Ben Perkins. In Ecbo Canyon,after having been treated unfairl y by the men and boys of the company who voulinteered to help, he met the Jo sephite s ~ car ryi ng with them as they a l ways do the devil s secr~ts of catching the disgrunt l ed on their nets, but ·they fai l ed to cat ch him9 The devil . framed a smooth scheme there: He had the unsus pecting ol d - cotmtry boy suffer injustice at the members hand of the church, and while the s t ing of injury was still keen he sent his imps in the persen in those apostate Josephi tes to lure the beginner away in the dark. If he had yi el ded to them +here would be no account like this for us to consider. The notes relate that he reached Salt Lake City August 29, and it is not cl ear whether he went in and returned to Echo Canyon, or hether that i s that date is the arri va l i n the city . (of his company) havtng l eft his native ~-ales with no education but that of a coal miner, and traveling into a ne ~ild countr y six thousand miles away to meet conditions new and strange , to meet and live with peopl e be had never known before, and face life in the raw 'l'lhere he had to find a way or make it, cons i der the ma nitude of the task before hi m. He did remarkabl y wello |
