people generally get. So did I. When I could get near enough with safety, I told her to dress and I would assist her on deck .... She dressed. I carried her up to the companionway to the deck and placed her on the sunny side of the vessel where she remained all the afternoon and was left to go below at night."

Jacobs' experience, which would have been shared with Ezra, also had an impact on the rest of the passengers. 

'Whenever (the passengers) saw me coming, they would say, 'Here comes Brother Jacob. Let's get up."'

Another entry from Bro. Jacob's journal involves a far-greater problem that he and Elders Clark and Parry also wrestled with. They found a brother on the vessel "without funds"-which meant he had no ticket. "I went to the captain, told him I understood there was a man aboard without a ticket, but would try and find him. What to do I did not know. Neither did Brothers Parry, Clark, or Kimball."

After stewing over the issue and consulting with his fellow leaders, Elder Jacobs devised a plan to temporarily give the man a ticket when the captain passed by, and then re-secure the ticket after the planned encounter. It worked.

The vessel was at sea on July 4, 1868, a day noted in the diary of one passenger because the ship's captain fired the ship's cannons in salute of the holiday.

Hottest time of year

Ezra James' company landed in New York City on July 12 and came into the U.S. during one of the hottest times and weeks of the year. New York State was sweltering under blistering heat and the heat, combined with the high humidity, was taking a toll. One newspaper account18 says that people were stacked six and seven deep in the morgue on that July week with more dead coming in at almost an hourly clip—all of them dying from heat related illnesses.

18 The Mohawk Valley Democrat July 18, 1868

18