In fact the combination of drugs and his mental disturbance had carried him over into a state of insanity. His therapy consisted of a mixture of cocaine and herbs which did nothing for his illness. When he started seeing grass fires that did not exist, my mother sought the help of a Brethren Doctor also heading to Utah. He kept telling my mother the western sky was too big and was afraid it would crush him. Now it seems my birth father had experienced some sort of nervous breakdown episode along the way to Missouri and afterward took to staring only downward, even when speaking to others. I relinquished all rights to it and gave her ownership of whatever was left to me. She said I was entitled to a portion of the profits they made from it. In her letter, Aunt Greta said she and Uncle Joshua had planted the acreage all those years hoping I would eventually be found. Apparently she did not trust my father to care for her or myself and purchased a forty acre section without his knowledge. I returned a letter to her thanking her for the information, declined her wish that I move to Utah and even turned down the property my mother had purchased sight unseen even before leaving Ohio. To me, the entire affair just made for an interesting story. I couldn’t have loved my adopted parents more even if they were my birth parents. Unlike some, I wasn’t at all bothered that I was abandoned or adopted. I had no idea who she was and honestly didn’t care. She figured out where the original ferry crossing was where he dumped me off near it and from there her hired detective figured out the rest.Īfter verifying my identity through some obscure birth records the Brethren felt obligated to keep at their Ohio temple, she wrote me. To make a long story short, my father admitted his cruel deed to her during a rare lucid spell in his illness.
I was told all this after being reunited with my Aunt Greta some years later before she passed from natural causes or old age, whichever you want her to die from. Actually, I don’t remember anything of the trip at all. I don’t remember my Mom, I was too young. Finally, according to my Aunt, on a sweltering summer day we all headed off. Once there we waited for the Wagon Master to assemble a number of other Mormon Brethren and their wagons for the trip to Salt Lake in Utah. My mother gave birth to me two years before my father announced we were joining others from the Temple in Northern Ohio and relocating to Utah.Īt the age of two and a half, Mother and I were put in the back of the covered wagon and along with the others in the congregation and made our way to Independence Missouri. If it weren’t for Ma I’d probably have followed in his footsteps or died early trying to rob a bank. He only looked after his own welfare and left any child raising to my mother. She described him even as child growing up as a spineless, self absorbed spoiled brat, always ready to point the finger of wrong doing on others whether true or not. My Aunt correctly painted my father as a follower, not a leader. He always was looking out for number one and damn the rest to their own fate.
My father feared that if savage Indians attacked the wagon train that being positioned in the rear, he could turn around and escape when others couldn’t. My Aunt Greta and her husband Joshua had ridden in the wagon ahead of my fathers for the entire 1,300 mile trip.
Pa figured he could get one to wait on him while the other took to work keeping the household in money… not to mention he’d have two women warming his bed, or so he believed. The only reason he joined up with those Mormon brethren as he called ‘em, was because they each had more than one wife. He didn’t have an original thought in his balding skull. I was always told he was a follower type of man. It wasn’t about farming raising sheep or even the weather. The only reason I bring this up is because you need to understand my Pa and his reason for leaving Ohio. I’m told a man named Brigham Young, a Mormon leader, who after his Church leader Joseph Smith was murdered while in jail, gathered a group of followers together in Ohio and moved west to Utah to form a separatist society. She told me our entire family left Bainbridge Ohio in 1858 to settle along with hundreds of other brethren in Salt Lake City a town founded by Mormons a decade earlier. I could hate him but how do you truly hate someone you never even knew? Maybe I could hate what he did but the man himself? No, not really. What she said about him wasn’t very good. I don’t remember him but only know what my Aunt, my Pa’s Sister Greta has told me much later in life in a letter. First off, I have no real feelings good or bad about my Pa.
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