Representative Women of Deseret: A Book of Biographical SketchesCrocheron, Augusta Joyce
Religion
Representative Women of Deseret: A Book of Biographical Sketches
Crocheron, Augusta Joyce
Latter Day Saint churches; Latter Day Saint women; Utah -- Biography; Women -- Biography
"Those were trying days, when one meal was eaten we knew not where
we were to get the next, but we neither wanted for food nor raiment.
We had not heard from the pioneers since they left till they were
returning, and the news was that they were short of teams and without
breadstuff, and a long way from home. Our feelings can better be
imagined than described, for we had little enough ourselves, but
we lifted our hearts to God, and I can call it nothing less than
miraculous, a supply was soon furnished and men and teams started
to meet them. The next spring all were preparing to move, and as I
was helping to put on my wagon cover I came near fainting and was
prostrated on my bed from that time. I had a baby boy born on the 17th
of August, but he was buried on the 22nd, my twentieth birthday. This
was the worst part of our journey, the roads being rough and rocky. I
mourned incessantly, and that with my intense bodily sufferings soon
brought me to death's door, but it was shorn of its sting. I was cold,
but oh, how peaceful, as I lay there painless and my breath passing so
gently away; I felt as though I was wafting on the air and happy in the
thought of meeting so soon with my babes where no more pain or sorrow
could come. I had talked with my husband and father who were weeping
as I took a parting kiss from all but my poor mother, who was the last
one called and had sunk upon her knees before me. This distressed me,
but I bade her not mourn for she would not be long behind me. My words
struck father like a sudden thunderbolt, and he spoke with a mighty
voice and said--'Vilate, Helen _is not dying!_" but my breath which by
this time had nearly gone, stopped that very instant, and I felt his
faith and knew that he was holding me; and I begged him to let me go as
I thought it very cruel to keep me, and believed it impossible for me
to live and ever recover. The destroyer was then stirred up in anger at
being cheated out of his victim and he seemed determined to wreak his
vengeance upon us all. No one but God and the angels to whom I owe my
life and all I have, could know the tenth part of what I suffered. I
never told anybody and I never could. A keener taste of misery and woe,
no mortal, I think, could endure. For three months I lay a portion of
the time like one dead, they told me; but that did not last long. I was
alive to my spiritual condition and dead to the world. I tasted of the
punishment which is prepared for those who reject any of the principles
of this Gospel. Then I learned that plural marriage was a celestial
principle, and saw the difference between the power of God's priesthood
and that of Satan's and the necessity of obedience to those who hold
the priesthood, and the danger of rebelling against or speaking lightly
of the Lord's annointed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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