Prior to their move south, those called at the previous conference met in October with President Brigham Young at his "School House" in the 18th Ward in Salt Lake. He instructed them on the practical nature of their mission and the importance of the colonization effort in that country.

For many days prior to their November departure, the family was united in making preparations. Emily and her children made crackers, mixing them and pounding them with a wooden mallet. Many other foods were dried including: corn, squash berries, and tomatoes. One of the children said: "It was as if we were going into a wilderness expecting to starve."

Many possessions had to be disposed of in order to make the long trip. It was decided that Sarah would remain in Ogden until her baby was born. Emily, though also expecting, would make the trip accompanied by her mother, Abigail Abbott. With Hector McQuarrie and family going along, it may not have seemed quite so overwhelming for Mary.

EB: [In] November [1861] with my wives, Emily and Mary, [I] moved to Dixie and spent the first year in Toquerville. My wife Sarah remained in Ogden.

During the summer of 1861 Johnston's army stationed at Camp Floyd was recalled to the east with the impending civil war. On the abandonment of the camp, $4,000,000 worth of property was sold to the church for $100,000. This included buildings, food-stuffs, harnesses, tents, mules, wagons, and all kinds of tools.

Perhaps the big double-bedded government wagon with three yoke of oxen that Edward utilized for the trip had been part of the military goods purchased. At each end of the big wagon was a bed and in the middle a stove and chair for Emily. In addition to the ox drawn wagon was one pulled by horses driven by "girls and the hired boy". Fifteen-year-old Edward, Jr. was assigned to drive the cattle and sheep. The relatives and friends gathered to see Edward and family off, all the time mourning and expressing concern at their traveling into the wilderness and perhaps never seeing many of them again.

Not since the Utah War fiasco of 1857 had Edward driven to Salt Lake with his entire world packed into a couple of wagons and headed for the unknown. He passed out of Weber County, through Davis County, through the Salt Lake valley, through Provo and Payson and on south.

When the company arrived at the town of Fillmore, Utah, they stopped to visit the King and Warner families. Edward and Emily had lived with them a short time when they were first married. The visit lasted three days and the hospitality was welcome. Then the troop pressed forward toward the south. It was late November and typically cold for late autumn in Utah.

They passed through Dog Valley and, when approaching the little town of Beaver, stopped to camp one night at Wild Oat Canyon. In the morning Agnes, the infant daughter of Hector McQuarrie, was found to have died in the night. A runner was dispatched to Beaver to make preparations, and when the wagons arrived there a funeral service was held. Little Agnes' body was then buried. A gloom fell upon the whole company as they moved slowly out of Beaver.

After passing through Ceder City the elevation began to drop very dramatically. With each mile the temperature seemed to rise a bit. About 40 miles from Cedar City they came to Toquerville where they found the climate almost like summer. There were still crops of corn and cotton in the fields and the Indians were gathering their beans and seeds in very scanty clothing.

Toquerville was a small community on Ash Creek at the base of a volcanic mountain. The mountain was of a black color and the Indian word for black was "toquer". The little band that lived in that vicinity used this area designation in referring to themselves as the Toquer Indians. They were typical of the other Indians of the Virgin River Basin and survived on a crude agricultural existence. They ate corn, grass-meal, seeds, mesquite beans, melons, and pumpkins. They gathered wild berries and pine nuts and supplemented their diet with rabbits, birds, rodents, lizards, snakes, grasshoppers, crickets, locusts, and ants.

The typical clothing for these Indians included rabbit-skin breech-clout for men, short skirt for women, and buckskin moccasins. Occasionally they wrapped themselves up in rabbit-skin robes for warmth. Their means of hunting was with bow and arrow. Their villages consisted of a series of primitive wickiups made of long sticks or poles covered with juniper bark or rabbit skins. A hole was left in the top for smoke to escape from their indoor fires.

As the flood of new settlers came south they were dispersed into various communities. Edward and family were assigned to settle that first year in Toquerville. With the help of his son, Edward, Jr., he immediately began digging a large cellar and built a one-room adobe. When Emily finally delivered a baby girl on December 12th, 1861, Edward procured the use of a small log room for her.

It wasn't long before Edward learned that Sarah had delivered a baby boy earlier on December 1st. If Emily's delivery was in rough circumstances, Sarah's wasn't much better. She was confined in a small cabin on North Main in Ogden. The roof of the cabin was so porous the rain fell into pans placed around the new mother and baby.

9th Child: James Lang Bunker
Born: December 1st, 1861, Ogden Utah,
Mother: Sarah Browning Lang [3rd Child]

10th Child: Cynthia Celestia
Born: December 12th, 1861, Toquerville, Utah,
Mother: Emily Abbott [7th Child]

The winter passed, and in the spring Edward and his children planted crops of corn, cotton and sugar cane in a field about three miles away. That summer they nurtured their little farm. In the fall Edward hitched a yoke of oxen to the tongue of a box and two wheels and Edward, Jr. took the girls out into the fields to harvest. As the girls wandered the fields they also picked wild berries which were made into preserves with some of the cane juice.

EB: The next fall [1862] I went [to Ogden] for [Sarah].

Edward hitched up a team and made the long trip to Ogden. It is difficult to know what conversations passed between Edward and Sarah prior to the "Big Move" or when Edward met her on his return to Ogden. We can only guess what this polygamist experience was like. At about this time Sir Richard Burton, an independent observer, gave an account of poly-gamy in Utah in the 1860s:

"The marriage ceremony is performed in the temple, or, that being impossible, in Mr. Brigham Young's office. When mutual consent is given, the parties are pronounced man and wife in the name of Jesus Christ, prayers follow, and there is a patriarchal feast of joy in the evening."

"The first wife, as among polygamists generally, is the wife, and assumes the husband's name and title. Her `plurality' partners are called sisters--such as Sister Anne or Sister Blanche--and are the aunts of her children. Girls rarely remain single past sixteen--in England the average marrying age is thirty--and they would be the pity of the community if they were doomed to a waste of youth so unnatural."

"Divorce is rarely obtained by the man who is ashamed to own that he can not keep his house in order; some, such as the President, would grant it only in case of adultery; wives, however, are allowed to claim it for cruelty, desertion, or neglect."

"The literalism with which the Mormons have interpreted Scripture has led them directly to polygamy. The texts promising to Abraham a progeny numerous as the stars above or the sands below, and that `in this seed [a polygamist] all the families of the earth shall be blessed,' induce them, his descendants, to seek a similar blessing. The theory announcing that `the man is not without the woman, nor the woman without the man,' is by them interpreted into an absolute command that both sexes should marry, and that a woman can not enter the heavenly kingdom without a husband to introduce her."

"The `chaste and plural marriage,' being once legalized, finds a multitude of supporters. The anti-Mormons declare that it is at once fornication and adul-tery--a sin which absorbs all others. The Mormons point triumphantly to the austere morals of their community, their superior freedom from maldive influences, and the absence of that uncleanness and licentiousness which dis-tinguish the cities of the civilized world. They boast that, if it be an evil, they have at least chosen the lesser evil; that they practice openly as a virtue what others do secretly as a sin--how full is society of these latent Mormons!--that their plurality has abolished the necessity of concubinage, cryptogamy, contugernium, celibacy, infanticide, and so forth; that they have removed their ways from those "whose end is bitter as wormwood, and warp as a two-edged sword.'"

"There are rules and regulations of Mormonism--which disprove the popular statement that such marriages are made to gratify licentiousness, and which render poly-gamy a positive necessity. All sensuality in the married state is strictly forbidden beyond the requisite for insuring progeny--the practice, in fact, of Adam and Abraham. During the gestation and nursing of children, the strictest continence on the part of the mother is required--rather for a hygienic than for a religious reason. Spartan-like, the Faith wants a race of warriors, and it adopts the best means to obtain them."

"Besides religious and physiological, there are social motives for the plurality. As the days of Abraham, the lands about New Jordan are broad and the people few. Of the three forms that unite the sexes, polygamy increases, while monogamy balances, and polyandry diminishes progeny. The anti-Mormons are fond of quoting Paley: `It is not the question of whether one man will have more children by five wives, but whether these five women would not have had more children if they had each a husband.' The Mormons reply that--setting aside the altered rule of production--their colony, unlike all others, number more female than male immigrants; consequently that, without polygamy, part of the social field would remain untilled."

"The other motive for polygamy in Utah is economy. Servants are rare and costly; it is cheaper and more comfortable to marry them. Many converts are attracted by the prospect of becoming wives, especially from places where there are sixty-four females to thirty-six males. The old maid is, as she ought to be, an unknown entity. Life in the wilds of Western America is a course of severe toil: a single woman can not perform the manifold duties of housekeeping, cooking, scrubbing, washing, darning, child-bearing, and nursing a family. A division of labor is necessary, and she finds it by acquiring a sisterhood."

"At Great Salt Lake City there is a gloom. The choice egotism of the heart called Love--that is to say, the propensity elevated by sentiment, and not undirected by reason, subsides into a calm and unimpassioned domestic attachment: romance and reverence are transferred, with the true Mormon concentration, from love and liberty to religion and the Church. The consent of the first wife to a rival is seldom refused, and a `household of three,' in the Mormon sense of the phrase, is fatal to the development of the tender tie which must be confined to two. In its stead there is household comfort, affection, circumspect friendship, and domestic discipline."

EB: In the fall of '62 I was called to preside at Santa Clara.

Sarah was left in Toquerville with her children, Edward, Emily and Mary moved on to their new home a few miles down the road to Santa Clara.