Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude - Volume II - International Society Daughters of the Utah Pioneers

Birthdate: 1 May 1850, Janetown, Caithness, Scotland

Death: 19 Feb 1924 Huntsville, Weber, Utah

Parents: William McKay and Ellen Oman

Pioneer: 29 Aug 1859 James Brown Wagon Train

Spouse: John Wood Grow

Married: 8 Nov 1869 Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah

Death SP: 2 Apr 1916 Huntsville, Weber, Utah

Children: Lean Favoritt, 2 Sep 1871, Catherine Rosell, 3 April 1885, John Moyer, 25 Jun 1874, Arthur Wilford, 15 Sep 1887, Mary Janett, 1 Sep 1876, Lorin McKay, 16 Sep 1889. David Henry, 8 Nov 1878, Clarence Oman, 1 Oct 1801, Charles Isaac, 3 Nov 1880, Isabel, 12 Jun 1894, William Angus, 17 Jun 1883

Catherine was the youngest of seven children. She left Liverpool, England, with her family on May 4, 1856, just three days after her sixth birthday. They sailed on the ship "Thorton" and were on the ocean eight weeks before reaching Castle Gardens, New York, on June 12, 1856.

They were to have traveled West with the ill-fated handcart company, but due to unexpected financial problems the family moved into Williamsburg.

Her father and two brothers went to different states to seek employment. Catherine, with her mother and two sisters, stayed behind in an upstairs bare room tenement house with no bed to lay on just their bed clothes for bed and covering. It took three years to save enough to get provisions so they could come West.

Catherine and her family left Florence, Nebraska on June 13, 1959 with the James Brown Company. She had just turned nine years old that month.

Catherine walked the entire distance. She was finally barefooted because her shoes had become so hard with traveling through mud and sand that she could not get them on. Her feet became very sore from the alkali dust, and her mother would bind her bleeding feet the best she could.

The family arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on August 29, 1959, and camped on Emigration Square. They moved to Ogden where her father bought a lot of ground, where a sod house was built.

Catherine was nineteen when she married John Wood Grow. She became a mother ot Eleven children, was a devoted wife, and mother working hard to help provide for their family. Catherine died in Huntsville at the age of seventy-three.