A Devonport Boy Comes to America: A Portion of My History

Samuel Roskelley’s autobiography, written for the benefit of his family, shows that he could tell a story–his story–and make it live in words and images that make reading it a pleasure, even more than a hundred and a quarter years after it was first set down. The writer was a literate, mid-nineteenth century English immigrant to Utah Territory. He arrived in the Great Basin at a time when travel really was a life-in-your-hands adventure. The section selected and presented here is only the first part of a longer, incomplete work. As presented in these pages, Samuel begins his account in an English port city, and concludes as a dusty, footsore, trail-worn young man arrives in a corner of an entirely foreign world he had decided–without ever seeing it–to call home.