(Like many Utahns, Gov. Mike Leavitt traces his family lines back to early Utah pioneers. One of these ancestors, Sarah Sturtevant Leavitt, recorded her story late in life. Among her recollections are the difficulties encountered at Mount Pisgah, one of the temporary Iowa settlements where the pioneers prepared for the trip west. She also told of the disastrous Santa Clara flood that temporarily hampered settlement efforts in southern Utah. This chronicle picks up during the summer of 1846. Her husband, Jeremiah, had left her at Mount Pisgah while he went to find provisions for the winter ahead.)
When my husband had been gone about two weeks I was taken sick with chills and fever, confined to the bed. I was an entire stranger, except for the acquaintance I had with the sisters Snow. Soon after I was taken down, the children all took sick and I got a little girl that could cook to make porridge for us. However, our neighbors were all kind and helped us all they could. They would come and get my dirty clothes and wash them and if there were any holes, mend them. This they continued to do until they were all taken sick, insomuch that there were none well enough to take care of the sick.I was the first one to take sick there and three hundred took sick and died after I was and I was spared alive. The bishop visited me often and told me if I needed something to call on him and I should have it. I soon heard that he was dead.
We had watchers every night 'til Mary's fever left her. One morning, after the watchers had left, I looked around the room to see if all was right. Right under the chair where one of the girls had sat all night I saw something that didn't look as if it belonged in the house. I called to Thomas to come and see what that was. We found that it was a monstrous big rattlesnake coiled up on a bench and had lain there all night as harmless as a lamb. It had eight rattles. I told the boys not to kill it; it had not come as an enemy, but on a friendly visit to help the girls watch. He didn't help much, only as their companion, but they would have been just as well off without his company, not knowing of his presence. I told them to throw it off the bank and not hurt it, which they did.
But the time had come for us to look for my husband. With the greatest anxiety we watched and looked day and night until at last there came a man just before daylight with a letter containing the news of his death. . . . My husband died the 20th of August 1846 (at Bonaparte, Van Buren County, Iowa.) He sang "Come, let us anew, our journey persue (sic), roll round with the year and never stand still till the Master appear." He sang that hymn as long as he had the strength to sing it and then wanted Eliza (his daughter-in-law) to sing it. He died without a struggle or a groan. Blessed are the dead that died in the Lord. . . .
We soon arrived at the Bluffs (Council Bluffs, the departure point for the West.) I soon took the chills and fever again. The boys made a camp of hay and I crawled into it, glad to get any place of shelter. I had to live there while they built a house, and suffered very much for want of proper food and with the cold, as we could have no fire in a hay camp. . . . (At this time, Sarah recorded, she had a recurring severe pain in her head. She began smoking a pipe of tobacco to allay the pain and continued to use the pipe throughout her life.)
In December, I moved into a house the boys had built at Trade Point on the Missouri River. I got able to do my work and went to washing up our dirty clothes. After working nearly a week, I got them done and hung them up at night. I got up in the morning and every article of clothing was stolen and some new cloth that was not made (into clothing yet.) This left us almost without any clothes. Well, I did not complain, but it learned me a lesson not to leave clothes out over night. I was not discouraged, although it seemed hard after I had worked when I had little strength to wash clothes that had lain dirty for months for want of strength to wash them.
(While waiting to go west, she recorded many trials, including a serious illness of one of her daughters, the shooting of a man in front of her house over a land dispute and the fatal clubbing of one Indian by another.) But my whole mind was engaged in preparing for our journey to the valley. I did everything in my power to accomplish that great work. I made 11 fine linen shirts for the merchants. I baked pies and bread and cakes for the grocery the boys kept, as there were lots of gold diggers on the way to California, stopping there waiting for the grass to grow. We had market for everything.
(The Leavitts eventually arrived in Utah Territory and were part of the Dixie Mission to settle southern Utah. Her history, now changed to third person, continues.) On Christmas Day 1861, it began to rain, and for thirty days it is reported they never saw the sun and most of the time it was raining. The Creek kept rising until it was a mad torrent of floating logs, debris and muddy water. As the creek rose, the settlers were forced to leave their homes and move up the `Black Ridge.' Here, with little food and no shelter except a few over-hanging rocks, they stayed until it stopped raining and the sun began to shine again. . . .
Clothes and bedding were wet and could not be dried. Food molded. Fires were hard to keep going and harder to start if they went out. It was a month of misery and suffering for all. Most of the good land had been washed away. The families gathered what little they were able to salvage and moved back downstream to Santa Clara, where they remained for a time. The orchards of fruit trees, tree by tree, slowly gave way to the relentless power of the nagging water. The men had been frantically trying to move the wheat from the store room in the fort. They went until one corner and part of the wall had caved in. But with all their efforts, much of their bread supply was lost. By nightfall, the whole little colony was washed away and the people stood shivering and shelterless on the top of the hill, their few household effects piled in confusion about them. The flood receded, but somewhere away down the stream, buried in mud, were the grist mill, the molasses mill and the homemade cotton gin.
Left now to start all over, they decided to locate the town up round the point of the hill from where the fort had been. They lost no time in marking off lots, the men drawing cuts for their locations. Shelters were erected, most of them dugouts against the hill with the fronts held up by poles and thatched with willows and earth to protect them against the cold weather.
The Indians were another source of trouble for the early settlers. The settlers were losing their stock and although the Indians had been warned against this offense, the stealing continued. (The Indians were coming down the Santa Clara River, driving the cattle back to their camps and using them for food.)
These troubles with the Indians increased with the coming of more settlers. Forced by these changing conditions, the various families moved to Panaca (a settlement in present-day Nevada. Over time, the Leavitt descendants spread out, making their homes in settlements over much of southern Utah and Nevada. Sarah died April 5, 1878, while living with her son, Jeremiah, at Hebron. Her tombstone in the Gunlock Cemetery records that date, as well as her birth date, Sept. 5, 1798.)