Instead of just listing the date and place of Katurah's birth in Carmarthanshire, Wales, Cheney told the Morning News that she researched books to help describe what life was like there for tenant farmers "and why it was hard to support a family." That difficulty led Katurah's father to work in the copper mills, and Cheney researched how hard that was.

Cheney said she found Katurah's life changed in 1848, when she was 21. "She went to a meeting . . . where missionaries from the church spoke to her and a group, and talked about Joseph Smith and the gathering in America. She was subsequently baptized, and married another convert," despite strong family objections.

In 1849, the couple traveled to Liverpool and crossed the ocean on a ship named the Buena Vista. In New Orleans, Katurah, then pregnant, boarded a steamer to St. Louis. There they boarded a second ship, the Highland Mary, for Council Bluffs, Iowa, a staging area for Mormon pioneers crossing the Plains.

"Cholera struck and killed many people, including her husband," Cheney said. "The captain of the steamship didn't want these sick people. He was trying to get rid of all the Mormons on the ship. The people in St. Joseph wouldn't receive them.

"When they first got to Council Bluffs, even the Mormon community wouldn't help them until one of the apostles came and said that what the Lord wanted was to extend help to those suffering, so they were helped. Katurah had a baby at Council Bluffs, but he died. So, she lost her husband and a son in a short period," Cheney said.

Katurah eventually made her way to the Salt Lake Valley in 1852, where she met and married another Welsh farmer, Charles Vincent. They reared six children.

Cheney says she might not have learned about the drama of people refusing to help Katurah except that others in the same company kept notes and diaries. She said Ronald Dennis, a scholar at Brigham Young University, translated many of them from Welsh and wrote about them, which helped her flesh out her own ancestor's story.

"Diaries that were kept of the westward migration, I think, are second only to the diaries that were kept during the Civil War in terms of number and how provocative they are. The people who were going West knew they were part of something bigger than themselves . . . so they recorded their experiences, and there is just a wealth of information to be mined," Cheney said.

Cheney also likes to talk about another great-great grandmother and Mormon pioneer, Fannie Peck, who also crossed the Plains in 1852 as a 7-year-old.

"There is this wonderful passage in one of her letters of biography about her having only one pair of shoes, and she wanted to save them for the Sabbath when the Mormons stopped and worshipped. So, she would walk barefoot during the week.