The Peters family

David Hughes Peters was born on 10 March 1810 in Llanfair, Merionethshire. Laura Jones Davis was born on 8 February 1817 in Llanfrothen. They were married in Llandecwyn on 11 April 1840. They had three children whilst living in Ffestiniog: Sarah, born 6 February 1841; Laura, born 16 March 1842; and Elisabeth, born 21 June 1845, who died on 2 October 1846 in Llanfrothen.

When they lived at Hen Felin, Rhyd y Sarn, they were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 21 June 1846. When Abel Evans, a Welsh missionary, was ready to perform their baptisms, Lowry was the first to step forward to be baptized. David, however, deciding that a man should always be first, stepped forward into the water in the clothes he was standing in. So he was the second and Laura the third person to be baptized in that part of North Wales, the first being David Roberts.

David and Laura (also known as Lowrie) emigrated to Utah three years after they were baptised. David sold everything just before going to America. He thought they wouldn’t need to take much luggage as they were going to “Zion: the land of milk and honey”. Lowry insisted that because they were going to a new, unsettled part of a country they ought to be prepared. She filled two steamer trunks with blankets, shoes and other things including a bolt of white material, not knowing for what purpose.

The blankets were later used to help others on the trek westwards across America, and the material used for making white clothes to wear in the temple. David and Lowry, with their two daughters and David’s nephew, Peter Edwards, travelled to America with five others whose passage David had paid.

They sailed from Princes Wharf, Menai Bridge, Anglesey, to Liverpool, and then on 5 March 1849 they left Liverpool aboard the sailing vessel Hartley. The company consisted of 238 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, all bound for Utah under the leadership of William Hulme.

They landed in New Orleans on 28 April 1849, having been seven weeks on the ocean, and Elder Lucius N. Scovil was there to receive them. About four o’clock in the evening, the emigrants were comfortably berthed at No. 17 on the Levee.

From New Orleans they sailed up the Mississippi River to St Louis on the ill-fated Mameluke, on which an epidemic of cholera broke out. Lowry tended to the sick and prepared the dead for burial until finally she herself was stricken with the disease.

However, she felt that she would be healed and get to Utah safely, because she believed that God wanted them to go to America at that time. She insisted that she be helped to keep standing and keep moving around, as she had seen so many others die in their sleep. She died fifty years later, on 14 December 1899. David died on 12 June the previous year.

They travelled west with the George A. Smith / Dan Jones Company wagon train, which departed from Kanesville, Iowa (Council Bluffs) on 14 July 1849, arriving in Salt Lake on 26 October. One hundred and twenty wagons were in the company when it began its journey. They combined with the Ezra T. Benson company as they travelled close together.

They had six more children after arriving in America: John David, born 10 May 1850; David Jones, born 23 October 1851, who died 26 September 1852; William, born 30 October 1853, who died 9 October 1864; Morris Rees, born 22 November 1855; Thomas Davis, born 14 December 1857; and Peter Hughes, born 27 November 1860.