Diary Five
During the years 1856 to 1862, Patty bent her back to her garden and plied her fingers to the needle and the loom in ever more intensive fashion. She continued to give care to the sick and needy through her expertise in midwifery and in mixing medicines, and she shared her hard-earned money and produce for worthy purposes.
But these years encompassed events of lasting historical importance: The Utah War drove the saints from their homes for a brief period. And in 1862 a ferocious flooding of City Creek threatened to destroy Patty's property. In all circumstances, she showed her grit in marshaling her own energies and recruiting help from others in order to survive these and other challenges.
On 16 July 1862 the Deseret News ran a small article from the London Magazine entitled, ''Keeping a Diary." It began, "If a man keeps no diary, the path crumbles away behind him as his feet leave it; and days gone by are but little more than a blank, broken by a few distorted shadows. His life is all confined within the limits of today. Who does not know how imperfect a thing memory is?"
Although Patty's entries are cryptic, she knew what and where and whom. She wrote and noted enough to encourage a reader to discover the details. Who knows how history may be enriched by exploring the shadows within the allusions she didn't trust to memory alone.
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