CARLISLE, Richard & Jane Field
Members of the family were baptized at various times in 1849 and 1850. Richard became the Presiding Elder of their branch. In 1851, on the “Good Ship Ellen,” they emigrated to America, except for their oldest son, Thomas, who came a year later. On their way up the Mississippi River, Jane died in St. Louis on 24 June 1851. She had done the washing for a woman afflicted with the dreaded cholera, so common among emigrants on that river. Jane caught the disease and died almost immediately. It must have been very difficult for Richard to manage his large family during the years following Jane’s death. First he had to get the whole family across the Plains, then provide a home for them in a new land. The bereft father and his motherless brood stayed to work in St. Louis during the remainder of the first year. The youngest son, Richard, hired out to a Mormon family and came west with them, the first of his own family to arrive in the Valley. The oldest son, Thomas, had by then joined the rest of the family in St. Louis.