Priddy & Brigham

In a few days we struck Brigham Young’s company on their way from Garden Grove to Pisgah and followed them into Pisgah. Here was a providence of God again to hit the time right to get with President Young again. At Pisgah I met Daniel Allen whose wife had died on the road and left him with some little children. He was shoemaking in his wagon bed to get sustenance for himself and family. I was truly sorry for him; I turned in and helped him shoe-make; I do not know how long, but charged him nothing.
I said to him one day, “You ought to get you a step-mother for your children; you cannot live this way.” He replied, “I do not know who would come into such a family as I have.” Instantly an idea struck me, and I said: “I know who you can get; she will make a good step-mother too and she is right here in Pisgah.” “Who is it?” says he. “It is Eliza Berry, John Berry’s sister.” “Oh!” said he, “she would not have me.” I asked him if he would be willing for me to tell her if she would be willing for him to come and see her on the subject. “Yes,” he said. So I went and she said she had no objections and so he did get her for a wife and step-mother too and I believe she made a genuine good step-mother too. At any rate he made a good living with her help and had quite a posterity by her too.
It was then thought that we would have to winter at Pisgah. So I with Christian Houtz found a good place of rich land, and fenced and put in four or five acres of corn, beans and squash, and built each one of us a very snug little winter house and covered it nice and tight with elm bark. Pisgah was a very sickly place.
President Young then made a powerful appeal to the Saints for help to furnish the pioneers with wagons and teams to go West to find a resting place for the Saints to go to. He portrayed our situation in a very impressive manner showing the necessity of going immediately to find a place where the Saints could all gather to. Moses Daley, a man in the congregation who had three good strong wagons and teams, and no one seemed to respond to President Young’s call, he looked at brother Daley and said, “Brother Daley, have you not got three wagons?” He hummed and hawed and at last drew out the word, “Yes, but they are heavy loaded and I have no place to empty them,” and I believe he scratched his head and twisted and screwed in his seat in an evasive manner.
I was so chagrined at this that I arose up in the congregation and said, “I have but one wagon and team and you shall have them; for it is better for me to stop back five years than to stop the Saints from going West as fast as possible.” After meeting was dismissed Uncle John Smith, George A. Smith’s father, came and laid his hand on my head and I received a blessing. Said he, “You shall get ready and cross the plains before Brother Daley.” So when I presented my wagon and team to President Young, on examination he said the wagon was not stout enough to go on the trip, but he took the two yoke of cattle. Said he, “Now, how do you want to let me have them; do you want a receipt for them and give them back to you again, or for me to pay you for them when we get to our stopping place or how?” “No,” I said, “do as you think best with the oxen and make no account to me, hereafter; I let them go freely.” “Now,” said he, “Brother Meeks, you may take your family down to Missouri and make fit-out by next Spring;” although it was strictly forbidden for men to take their families down in Missouri. He also said, “Keep your eye skinned down there and if it gets too hot, bring your family back to the Bluffs.”