A story for Christmas

My Great Great Grandfather William Smith wrote about arriving in Utah Territory in 1862:

"We camped in Parley's Park. I have a half-brother, his name is John Dale. I had not seen him for twenty years. He said he had come to meet us and wanted us to go with him and he could find me work, and put me in a way to do well, so we agreed to go with him and my mother, that was in the same train. We traveled down Parley's Canyon and through Salt Lake City, north to Bountiful. We got to his place at night on the fifth of October 1862.
When we got to his house and found things as they were, he had not got work for himself, and all we had got was a few pounds of flour and a little bacon. I was not there long before he ordered me out of his house. Here we found we had no friends for all turned against us. He (my brother) had told it that we were very rich and his mother had got lots of money. He soon found that we had none. All the money that I had was a bit. That was 12 ½ cents, so I had to leave.
While we were there we buried our babe as was stated above."

He had to bury the baby in October of that year, 1862.

Somehow they were blessed in finding a little something to live in.
"I was told where there was a log house empty, so I went and rented it. All the furniture we had to go to house-keeping with was a frying pan and baking kettle. I went and begged some straw and put it in one corner of the house, and put our bed on to it. There was no window in, so we put a piece of factory over the hole. My next was to get work. I soon got work and something to eat. For firewood I went up in what was called the Bench, and cut oak brush and packed it on my back. We got along through the winter. We had plenty of something to eat."

Here is grandfather, at the time, 38 years old, with 2 children, age 9 and 4. They had lost a baby just recently.  He and his wife get through this first winter in Utah Territory in a tiny dwelling.

It just makes me feel grateful for all that I am blessed with. Things are so comfortable in comparison to those times. I thought I would share this with you this Christmas season.

Pete