Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1859 — Latter Day Saints and Saintesses from over the Sea. [ARTICLE]

Latter Day [sic] Saints and Saintesses from over the Sea. -----

<Their Appearance and the Incidents of their Transit>. ----- At the Michigan Central Depot grounds yesterday morning arrived a special train from Detroit, bearing a small party of Latter [sic] Day Saints and Saintesses, only seven hun- | dred and fifty strong, a fresh arrival in this country by the Liverpool liner packet ship <Wm. Tappscott>, at New York, on Friday last. They were an assorted cargo of humanity, made up from the several proselyting agencies of the Elders of Joseph Smith, but chiefly represent, the British Isles and the North of Europe. Thus we learn there were from Great Britain, 301; Danish, 224; Sweedish [sic], 108: Norwegians, 26—a total of 653, representing eight different nationalities. As they debarked front the long train and filed into the depot and waiting rooms, the spectacle drew numerous curious spectators. Of the whole number less than 150 are children—the balance of about 600 being adults, none over sixty years of age; the ladies being in excess of the brethren in point of numbers nearly two to one. Altogether they were an orderly, quiet, and well appearing party quite above the usual average of emigrants from the old country in point of intelligence. They were, we learn, divided into two bands, those from the British Isles, and those from the North of Europe. Each chief department, has five sub departments over which ten Elders were appointed, and their offices seem to have been no sinecures, and to have secured results to the effect of winning warm praise from all the Gentile world with whom these emigrants have had to do from Liverpool to this place. The company, comprises, we learn, nearly one hundred widows and damsals unmarried, a number lessened by the voyage out., since about twenty nuptial ceremonies have been performed after the Mormon mode of “sealing.” The lovers had to appear at the public meetings and make their declaration of willingness to take each other “for better or worse;” after which the president joined, their hands and pronounced them husband and wife. The ceremony closed with singing and prayer invoking the blessings of Abraham upon the heads of the faithful children, the officiating priest dispensing the usual “holy kiss’’ to the bride. We learn that among the number one disciple has in his family five sisters, to each of whom he is at once brother-in-law and husband. Another has a mother and her daughter in the same relation to his bearded and sanctimonious looking self. They travel in the ordinary manner of emigrants, coming hither in emigrant and second class cars. They look to surrounding Gcntiledom for bread and various choked viands, and eat in their own messes or squads, save as we noticed yesterday a few of the better class were not slow or behind any of the elbowing crowd in a game of knife and fork at the adjacent eating houses. They have with them a large amount of baggage, nearly twenty-five tons in all, or an aggregate of three or four tons over and above the baggage allowed and free to each passenger. From their point of departure, their overland journey they propose to make up the usual train of ox teams, to reach Salt Lake as early as possible. We learn that about one hundred of the emigrants by the <Tappscott> deserted at. New York, showing that they had availed themselves of this tidal wave of proselytism for an easier flitting to this country. The same may prevail with others of the company, but the majority are evidently intense and zealous religionists, and bound up in the destiny of their co-partners in the Mormon faith and doctrines.—<Chicago Press and Tribune 19th>. ---<>---