Down to Missouri

Now I was fixing to take my family with me on to Missouri to make a fit-out; President said I might because I let him have my wagon and team at Pisgah. Who did I see come walking up but Samuel Clark (who kept a tan yard in Provo several years after he came to the mountains). He said, “I am the man that you saved the life of himself and family.” In the early settlement of Nauvoo he came a total stranger and got into a house near the river in Nauvoo where it was very sickly. His family all took sick; one died and another was near dying and the rest not able to take care of each other. My daughter went down to the river to wash, and heard of the conditions of the family of strangers that lived there. She found it no less miserable than it was represented. The girl was so near dead she brought her home with her. She said they were all sick and had little or nothing to eat. I went straight way to the place and took two baskets of provisions with me, a little of most everything. I took medicine also, and all that I could I did for them and soon had them out of danger. The little girl went home to her father.
I charged them nothing for all that I had done. Soon as he got able he moved off. I never heard from him any more until I saw him come walking up to me at the Bluffs. Two of his boys went into the Battalion, Joseph and Riley. When he came to my wagon at the Bluffs he said to me, “If you have no objections I want to put my wagons by the side of yours.” He had three good wagons and teams but no horses. So he came with his wagons and put them by my wagons. I told him I was going down to Missouri to winter with my family by permission from President Young. Says he, “If you will go too, for I intend to stay along with you.” So we both went down in Missouri and wintered there.
We stopped in the upper edge of Missouri at the Bluffs, six miles from the river, a most beautiful country, at a man’s place called Wilkinson. It was a smooth prairie country; excellent water and a set of hewed house logs that we might put up to winter in. The Bluffs here were lined with any amount of Chickasaw plums which were just getting ripe, and a large amount of elder berries in right order for making wine; and we turned in and made eighty gallons of wine. We put a hundred and fifty pounds of sugar in it which made it splendid, and it proved the means of making a fit-out in the spring. There was a Gentile named William Slusher who lived square in on the river from where we were. He came to see us and told us to move down to the river to his place. Every facility would be greatly in our favor if we would, so we fixed up and moved down.
It was not getting late in the season. “Now gentlemen,” said he, “my corn is not all gathered yet; there is some quite good roasting ears among it and there are cucumbers in it. You are welcome to all you want.” So we honored the invitation by helping ourselves. Close by was a grove of slim cottonwood timber just suitable for house logs. We would haul a whole tree at a time and we soon had house logs enough to put up each of us a room within a few rods of his dwelling. There was an island in the river close by which was full of rushes and but a little ways to swim the cattle in; and they come out fat in the Spring.
I had the care of Orson Adams’ family and all his stock. John Henderson, a lad which I had raised from a child, whose parents were dead, was a good boy, both truthful and honest. I do not know how I could have gotten along without him. He caught all the fish we could use. Here brother Clark and myself lived as one family keeping no accounts between us whatever. Here we lived all winter although mixed up with as rough a set of people as I ever lived among. Slusher’s house was ever open for gambling, drinking, horse racing, card playing, frolicking and gossipping which opened a good sale for our wine, which brought the money; although they were just as kind to us as they could be. They would trust us for anything we would name. They seemed to venerate us, than otherwise, but we kept on our watch, knowing what we were about. We did not mix in with them in their wickedness but were friendly with them. Finally springtime came and I took my wife and went away down into Missouri and traded off our feather beds and such things as we could, and got corn and came by a grist mill and got it ground. It being a very sickly season I helped to get a fit-out by doctering.
My oldest son, Lovin Meeks, was living in Missouri at the time but we could not find exactly where he was at the first trip, he having no family. So after we returned home with our fit-out we went the second trip in search of him. When found he agreed to go with us up to the Bluffs to see the rest of the family. He having no idea of crossing the plains with us, left his business unsettled. He finally concluded to cross the plains with us, but the next spring returned to Missouri and died.