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MEMOIRS OF MY GREAT-GREAT GRANDMOTHER,
ELEANOR HOWARD (THOMAS) BRITTAIN KNOWLTON
November 1834 – August 1908

Crossing the desert. Almost out of water. Child burned by fall into hot springs. Eleanor fears her husband is dying. Uses whiskey to treat the sick. Ellen pushes others not to give up. Finally reach the Truckee River.

We have now reached Lawson’s Meadows and will stay here until noon tomorrow as the grass and water are good. The day was Saturday some time in October. We never kept much track of the days of the week or month, but this time we were just going to cross the desert where so many emigrants had perished in the year ’49. We cut grass, filled our water kegs, made coffee to drink cold and prepared other cooked foods.

We started across the desert at one o’clock Saturday and traveled until Twelve o’clock that night. Then we stopped and watered the work cattle and ate what we had, thinking that we would be over that morning. We would have been, too, as we were at the sink in the Humboldt River, but Dr. Wolf was detained by some of his fine cattle, also a fine jack. My husband was very sick with mountain fever and the rest of the train did not pay any attention to where they were going, in fact, none of us knew where we were going or which way to go. On Sunday morning we arrived at the hot springs and stopped to see them as we had heard how the emigrants had thrown their guns, long chains, and cooking utensils in it and it kept right on boiling. Some of the women had made tea and coffee out of the water and were made sick with bloody flux.

When we were camped at Lawson’s Meadows there were two men came to our camp and I gave them dinner. They had a fine dog and I wanted him so I bought him with an old rifle. They had whiskey and my little girl had diarrhea so they gave me the whiskey for her and it helped her. I took what was left of that whiskey to doctor the women and men who had drunk from the hot spring. My husband was very sick the morning we got there and I was standing by the spring with Mr. and Mrs. Westfall. Their little girl came up at the same time and took hold of her father’s arm; he turned around quickly and that poor child slipped and fell into the boiling spring. He got her out immediately but she was badly burned and every one was frantic. I tore up a quilt which was very thick with cotton, put all the oil I could on it and wrapped it around the little girl.

I then asked who would take water and go back for Dr. Wolf for I thought my husband was dying and I did not know what to do for him. There was only one man offered. He was a big Dutchman called Dutch Ed. We never knew any other name for him. Mr. Brittain had picked him up on the plains. He said to me, “I will go for you and will bring the doctor back dead or alive.” He got on my husband’s riding mule and led a horse for the doctor. I gave him tow or three canteens of water and told him not to lose any time. He found the doctor stretched full length on the sand completely given out. His stock were almost past traveling. Ed told the doctor about my husband and the child. He got on the horse I had sent him telling Ed to do the best he could with the stock. Ed divided the water with the doctor. Luckily I had hidden it away in my wago

The doctor was not so far behind us as we had expected him to be and got to camp just before nightfall. He took my husband out of the wagon and stretched a tent and put him in it. He had a very high fever and the doctor said that a sponge bath was all he could do for him. The doctor held my husband in his arms and I sponged him off the best I could with the little water there was left. Then we put him back in the wagon and I was told to watch him closely and report any change in his condition at once. Then the doctor took a look at the little girl. He said that I had done all that could be done for her and for us to keep her well oiled. That night my husband broke out in large red splotches. The doctor said that was all for the best.

I was still walking. The oxen were almost given out and the drivers as well. I passed one team and the driver was riding on the tongue of the wagon and the poor oxen had their tongues hanging out. I told the driver to get off and walk. He was just as able to walk as I was carrying my baby. I soon came to another driver whose name was Steers. His team had stopped and he was lying in the road completely given out. He was a large man. I thought he was dead as he never moved when I spoke to him. I gave him a kick and he groaned and then I told him to get up and drive on and never give up the ship. He afterwards said that if I had not passed by and roused him he would never have gotten up. Soon after that my brother Samuel Thomas came riding by me and said “Goodbye, I am riding after Berilla , don’t you hear her bell? She is going after water and if she finds any I will bring you some sure enough.” Berilla had gone to the river but my brother found the cattle all scattered and he did not come back, as he said he knew we too soon would get there.

We arrived at the Truckee River at about daylight on Monday. I must say that it was one of the prettiest streams of water I ever looked at. The water was crystal clear and numerous little fish that were swimming in it made it more attractive. Most of the folk in our train are asleep but Mrs. Westfall and myself are compelled to be up, she to take care of her little girl and I to attend to my husband. They were both of them resting better than we expected. Dr. had a sleep, got up and went fishing and came back with lots of those little fish from the river. He wanted one of the women from his train to cook them for him but they refused. Said they were too small to dress and he said that they did not need anything but washing and then asked me if I would prepare them. I put the fish in a pan as large as a milk pan with the grease piping hot, then sprinkled corn meal over them, let them get good and brown and then Dr. and I ate them all as none of the rest would eat them. I’ll never forget how good they were.

To be continued….

Footnotes

Note: A guide published by the National Park Service mentions Lawson’s Meadows.
“West of present-day Imlay, about 210 miles downstream from the Humboldt headwaters at Wells, the river swung south in a great bend and then fingered out across a wide plain. Today the area is drowned by Rye Patch Reservoir, but then it was the welcome grazing-ground, thick with wild rye, that became known as Lassen’s (now Lassens) or Lawson’s Meadows. John Bidwell saw Northern Paiute people encamped here when his party passed through in 1841.”

Note: …However, as cholera decreased as the immigrants moved west, another mysterious illness took its place. An illness termed “mountain fever” was reported as having been encountered by various immigrant groups in the area from the Platte region to the Sacramento River. The illness was characterized by nausea, severe headaches, and a form of dysentery. The Mormon pioneers first encountered it when they reached South Pass in 1847. The disease was seldom fatal and usually was limited to a couple of days in duration. It has often been speculated that the disease was Rocky Mountain spotted fever, transmitted by the bite of ticks infected with the rickettsia spirochete. However, it is more likely that the “mountain fever” encountered by the Mormons was Colorado tick fever, which is also transmitted by the bite of a tick infected by a virus. Symptoms are similar with severe headaches, muscle and joint pains, and fever. The acute febrile stage of the diseases starts suddenly, with a brief remission of the fever followed by a second period of relapse, each of which lasts two to three days.41 The victim usually recovers completely without any lasting side effects. … (Source: Shane Baker, “Illness and Mortality in Mormon Migration,” posted at www.mormonhistoricsitesfoundation.org

Note: See the Wikepedia entry describing the route taken by the wagon trains, “California Trail.”
“At the end of the Humboldt River, where it disappeared into the alkaline Humboldt Sink, travelers had to cross the deadly Forty Mile Desert before finding either the Truckee River or Carson River in the Carson Range and Sierra Nevada that were the last major obstacles before entering Northern California.”

Previous

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