A Child of the Sea; and Life Among the Mormons

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Transcriber's Note

- The position of some illustrations has been changed to facilitate reading flow.

- The frontispiece featuring a picture of Elizabeth Whitney Williams (noted in the table of illustrations at the beginning of the text) is missing from the original scanned book.

- In general, geographical references, spelling, hyphenation, and capitalization have been retained as in the original publication.

- Minor typographical errors--usually periods, commas and hyphens--have been corrected without note.

- Significant typographical errors have been corrected. A full list of these corrections is available in the Transcriber's Corrections section at the end of the book.

* * * * *

A CHILD OF THE SEA

_This edition of "A Child of the Sea" is being printed under the auspices of the Beaver Island Historical Society, to give our friends some of the history and legend of the Island. The story begins in the early 1800's, discussing particularly the occupancy by the Mormons, over a century ago, and continuing through the resettlement of the Island by the Irish, whose descendants still live there._

A CHILD OF THE SEA; AND LIFE AMONG THE MORMONS

BY ELIZABETH WHITNEY WILLIAMS.

=========================== COPYRIGHTED 1905.

ELIZABETH WHITNEY WILLIAMS. ===========================

Having lived all my life beside the water, with my brothers and many dear friends sailing on the lakes, and with the loss of many of my people by drowning, connected with the many years of my life as a Light Keeper, I affectionately dedicate this little book, with fragments of my life history, to the sailor men in whose welfare I have always felt a deep interest.

Elizabeth Whitney Williams.

Introductory.

At the earnest request of many friends I have written this book with some incidents of my early life before coming to Beaver Island.

What I have written about the Mormons are my own personal experiences and what I knew about them by living constantly near them for four years of my life; our leaving the island and settling at Charlevoix for safety then our being driven from there. After the fight then my life in Traverse City and finally returning to Beaver Island again. After the Mormons were expelled my twenty-seven years' residence at that time with the four first years gives thirty-one years of Beaver Island life with as much knowledge of Mormon life as any one outside of their teachings could possibly have. In this little history I have only touched lightly upon the reality, writing what my memory contained that might be interesting, telling the stories as near as possible as they were told to me by the people themselves that had lived and suffered by the Mormon doctrine; some things my parents told me when I was too young to remember, during the first part of my residence on "Beaver Island."

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