Twiss Bermingham: An Irish Convert's Diary of Sea and Plain (1855-1856)

Patrick Twiss Bermingham (1829-1899) was an Irish convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whose diary preserves a daily account of life aboard the emigrant ship Samuel Curling as it crossed the Atlantic, and of the crossing of the plains to the body of the Saints. His journal, later published as 'To Utah by Hand: The Diary of Twiss Bermingham, Mormon Immigrant,' records the faith and the perils of the gathering—of ocean, of trail, of hunger and weather—and the sustaining hand of the Lord upon those who traveled to Zion. His diary is a faith-promoting witness that the Lord keeps a record of every faithful footstep of the gathering, and that the journals of ordinary Saints, preserved, become a latter-day witness of the hand of God upon His people.