Tribute to Christina Campbell Livingston
From LFAwiki
By Ronald B. Livingston
Few people, I feel, realize the great debt of gratitude we all owe Christina Campbell Livingston (Granny) for there are not many who would have made the sacrifices she did.
After hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ and recognizing it to be true, she accepted it and was baptized in May of 1848. She was then about 59 years old.
After raising 12 of her own children, at the age of 60 she began raising 6 more of her orphaned grandchildren, the youngest being 9 months old (William). Though having very little, they saved for four years to send the oldest grandson, James, to Utah on 15 March 1853. Then they saved for twenty-one months more before the rest of the family could go.
After deciding to leave her home, she left most of her belongings of a lifetime acquirement, her friends, sons and daughters (how many and which ones we don't know) and other relatives, knowing she would probably never see them again.
Now, at age 65, with six remaining grandchildren, the youngest 6 years old, and two of her own children (James, 26, and Helen, 23), they prepared to leave to a land they had never seen - a place that would have very little developed when they got here, actually much less than they were leaving behind.
They began in the cold months of winter, 16 December 1854, to go 9,000 miles in a time of primitive transportation that would take 10 long months; first made their way over to Glasgow (10-15 miles), boarded a ship, went 250 miles to Liverpool, England, boarded another sailing ship, spent 8 weeks on the water with little or no heat, down around the tip of Florida to New Orleans, boarded a steam ship and then up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri, then over the Missouri River to Atchinson, Kansas, then prepared for another journey across the plans and mountains 1,450 miles to Salt Lake City. They arrived with virtually nothing but themselves and knowing others were depending on them and in essence build again, started a new life and in hard times and did it for twenty-two more years.
Had Christina's decision been any other, all our lives would have been different, if at all. What a beautiful, stalwart and noble individual.