Eastman women

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Mother Clarissa Eastman (1793-1883), age 55 on the journey.

The educated, New Englander Eastman family left Vermont with high hopes as they headed west to Illinois. There they joined the body of the LDS faithful who had gathered to build the city of Nauvoo. However, persecutions led to the death of leader Joseph Smith and drove his followers to camp on the prairie in miserable weather for months on end. Clarissa's husband (and Sylvia's father) James died there in Nebraska. Rather than returning home, these two women kept the faith and continued to move westward. Clarissa insisted on bringing along a rocking chair which her husband had fashioned, and the two arrived in Salt Lake in 1848. Once in newly-settled Utah, the two women helped to "turn adobe" to make their first house, using wagon boxes for beds, a buffalo robe for the door, and a small piece of glass sewn into cloth as a window.  

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Daughter Sylvia Eastman (1826-1904), age 22 on the journey.

Sylvia earned her living as a seamstress in Utah. She married Lorenzo Hill Hatch, and moved with him to Idaho where she raised five children. Her husband was frequently gone, serving as both a mayor and a church leader, and Sylvia competently ran the farm and boarding house in his absence. Clarissa moved in with the Hatch family and helped raise her grandchildren, living for several decades as a widow.

Daughter-led voyages
Eastman women