Crossing the Mississippi River

When Calvin and Mary Reed started from Nauvoo, they had two yoke of partially broke steers for a team.  At the crossing of the Mississippi River, he drove on the ferry boat but neglected to unhitch from the wagon. 

Someone spit tobacco joice into the eyes of one steer, making it almost crazy with pain.  In the excited threshing around, a plank in the bottom was torn loose, the boat began to sink.  It quickly went down till the steers were floundering in the water--some clear outside of the boat--when someone pulled the pin from the wagon tongue, turning them loose and they swam ashore.

Mary Reed was sitting in the wagon seat, and when the water came up to her armpits, raised her babe as high as she could reach, to keep it from getting wet.  The babe, their daughter, Mahala, after wards married to Wilford Crocket, had thirteen children.  The last two were born in Pima Arizona.

Why the wagon did not go on down was always a mystery.  Some thought it rested on a sheet of ice that had frozen over the river and, somewhere above, the water had broken through and was running over it. However the oxen leaving the wagon took weight from the water and soaked boat and all were saved.


Written by Samuel B. Curtis