The life of Susan Field Alder taken from Atalicoa Camp, Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Franklin County, Idaho, Volume I

Susan Field Alder was born in Morin Lane Chiltnam, England, on February 27, 1832. She was the daughter of William and Susan Rouke Field. Her father was a baker by trade. When Susan was eight years of age her father died and she was sent to an orphanage. At the orphanage, she was taught to sew and cook similar to what our girls are taught in their domestic art classes in the public schools. The girls were treated kindly and their people were allowed to visit them on special visiting days. The inmates were usually kept at the orphanage until they were eighteen years of age, then they were sent to live with some family as a servant girl to do various kinds of house work for the work rendered they received a stipulated wage.

While Susan was at the orphanage, her mother joined the Latter-day Saint Church, and like most of the converts at that time she decided to emigrate to America and join the main body of the Church. When she finally made up her mind to move to America, she took Susan from the orphanage and sailed from Liverpool for the United States on March 5, 1844, on the ship, "Glasco". They were six weeks on the ocean before the finally landed in Louisiana, from there they sailed up the Mississippi River to St. Louis and went on to Nauvoo.

April 27, 1844, two weeks after their arrival at Nauvoo, Susan went to live with the parents of the Prophet John Taylor, who lived in a one-roomed log cabin. The cooking was done on an open fire out of doors, which was a very new experience to Susan and while helping with the cooking, she burned the front out of her dress, but it did not take long for her to learn the wonderful art of open fire cooking. After she had been with the Taylor family for six weeks, word was received by the Taylor family that their son, John, had been wounded and the Prophet and Hyrum Smith had been killed by a mob that stormed the Carthage jail where the Prophet and several of the Elders were being held prisoners. The family went immediately to the jail and left Susan and another girl to care for the home. During the night the girls became very frightened because a few cattle came and rubbed themselves against the building and the girls thought they were some of the mob that had come to kill them as they had the Prophet and his brother.

Susan's mother decided to take up the bakery business again so Susan left the Taylor family and went home to help her mother in the bakery. A few months after Susan went back to live with her mother, her mother married and they moved to St. Louis and opened a bakery there. It was while Susan and her mother were in St. Louis that the Saints were visited with that terrible cholera epidemic and they were dying off like flies in a frost. They were dying so fast that it was impossible for them to receive a proper burial. The men that were able to do things would drive through the streets and just dump the dead into the wagon and haul them off and bury them similar to the way we would bury a few of our cows or hogs that had been foundered or met with some accident.

While Susan was in St. Louis, she met a young man, Alfred Alder, and on the 26th day of March, 1848, they were married. Three children were born to them while they were still in St. Louis, the oldest died when only twenty-four hours old.

Alfred Alder, Susan's husband was an engineer and plied his trade by running a steamboat on the Mississippi River from St. Lois, Missouri, to Louisiana.

In 1853 the left their home and trade in St. Louis and started west to join the Saints. They joined the Claudius V. Spencer Company, crossed the plains and reached Salt Lake City in September. The lived in Salt Lake until the following spring, then they moved to Kaysville, where Susan's husband again took up his trade as a blacksmith, having learned the trade while in England. It was while they were living in Kaysville that the grasshoppers came in such great numbers that the crops were completely wiped out and they were forced to go as long as weeks at a time without tasting bread, but were forced to live on the sego roots and other roots of edible nature that they dug from the ground. The cattle were so poor that the people killed them to remove them from their misery and suffering. In 1855 her third son died. During the next five years there were three more children born to bless their home. In the spring of 1850 they moved to Cache Valley and located at Franklin where Susan's husband and his cousin erected the first building that was built in that little hamlet although it was just a blacksmith shop where he again began to work at his chosen trade. The Indians were so troublesome the Saints had to build a fort or stockade around their homes for protection. It was during that time that the trouble with the Indians became so intolerable that the soldiers were sent from Fort Douglas to protect the Saints. The soldiers coming brought about the Battle Creek War.

They moved back to Kaysville in 1863 and in 1881 her husband went on a mission to England leaving her with seven children with practically nothing to support them. In Jun 1885, she moved to Preston. In February 1905, her husband passed to the great beyond, and in 1910 her oldest son died. She was the mother of twelve children, six sons and six daughters, of whom preceded her in death. Fifty-five grandchildren, after living a useful, exemplary, and faithful life at the age of 82 in the year 1914, she left this earth to join her husband who had gone before.