Family History Chronicles of the Ogden Family in Richfield

More Collaboration and More Boxes

While conversing with some newly introduced extended cousins, I learned of an even bigger box. This one is in the Pioneer Museum of my old hometown Richfield, Utah.

The museum is a restored log cabin on first East just next to the library. Many a time I have driven past the quaint old structure, but never have I dared enter. Well... here is the story of the box that became a trunk:

TRUNK

“The outside of this trunk is 36 inches long, 21 inches wide and 23 inches high. It weighs forty pounds. It has a wooden frame. The outside is covered with heavy canvas, wooden braces, metal corners, and metal reinforcement strips. It has four tiny wheels at the bottom. It has leather straps metal clasps, and a lock. The inside has cloth glued to the wood frame, something like wallpaper. There is a place for a box to sit in the upper half of the trunk, but the box is missing. A black stamped number is on the bottom possibly put there by the manufacturer: 34NO.282. Handwritten painted letters are also on the bottom: GEE.
A paper sticker is on the side with printed letters. Part of these letters are torn and missing. The remaining letters say:

...NION PASSENGER ST...

CHICAGO

The trunk belonged to William Ogden, Sr. and his wife Mary Vickers Ogden. They were converts to the church, baptized in 1848 and 1849 in Bolton, England. The trunk left Bolton with them and their seven children in 1868 when they immigrated to Utah to be with the saints. They took the trunk from Bolton to the docks at Liverpool Harbor. There they boarded the old, tall-masted, full-rigged, three decked sailing ship Emerald Isle. It was a difficult voyage with the harshest treatment from officers and crew of any emigrant company. They docked in New York Harbor and traveled 1,900 miles west by train through Chicago to the end of the tracks at Benton Wyoming, somewhere near present-day Rawlings. They traveled with a down-and-back wagon train 300 miles to Salt Lake City and then on to Santaquin. Their wagon train was the last to cross the plains before the completion of the railroad, except for a contingent of the sick. They moved to Richfield in 1872.

This trunk was kept by the William Ogden, Jr. family and then by the Owen Ogden family in Richfield until 2005, when they presented it to the Daughters of Utah Pioneers.”

Bruce Ogden, descendant

Thanks Bruce for the story and the trunk!