Rich, thanks for the extra verses, they certainly help flesh out the story.

A friend and I were wondering about the meaning of "the winter of '49." Is it Dec. '48 to Mar. '49 or Dec. '49 to March '50? Does anyone know if there was a 19th century convention for this type of expression and what it was? In any case, by the summer of '49 the pioneers were apparently in no danger of starving to death as witnessed by a gold rusher's journal entry at the bottom of this page from the LDS Church web site.

As always, I would be interested in knowing what other songs share the tune of The Seagulls and the Crickets.