T H E R E M I N I S C E N C E S O F JAMES H O L T A N A R R A T I V E OF T H E E M M E T T
COMPANY
EDITED BY D A L E L. MORGAN
P A R T II INTRODUCTION
I
N PART I of James Holt's reminiscences the focus of interest was the period 1844-46, during which he was a member of the company James Emmett led into the Iowa wilderness. This party made its way up the Iowa River and across country to the Missouri River, which was reached at last near the mouth of the Vermillion, in what is now South Dakota. Emmett's company was never entirely out of contact with the church back in Nauvoo, and it got back into the main stream of Mormon history when, in the spring of 1846, it came down die Missouri to rendezvous at Council Bluffs with the migration Brigham Young was conducting across Iowa. With its absorption into Bishop George Miller's detachment of the Mormon immigration, Emmett's company largely lost its identity. But it was the fate of its members to share at once in the experiences of another remarkably interesting party, and before we pick up the thread of James Holt's narrative again, it is desirable to review briefly the history of Bishop Miller and his company. George Miller joined the Mormon Church in the spring of 1839. Born in Virginia in 1794, he removed with his family to Kentucky in 1806, and learned the trade of carpenter and joiner. 1 He was living in McDonough County, Illinois, when the Mormons a See a fragmentary autobiography by Miller published from the manuscript in 1917 by H. W. Mills, under the title, "De Tal Palo Tal Astilla," in Annual Publications of the Historical Society of Southern California, X, Part III, 86172 (printed separately under the title, A Mormon Bishop and His Son). The autobiography breaks off in 1819, but continues as an actual diary for the period October 13, 1842-February 2, 1843. Though most of the manuscript was unfortunately destroyed, much of the information it contained was preserved in the form of a series of seven letters Miller contributed to the St.
