Capt. James Brown would have led his band from Pueblo as soon as the
snows had melted in the passes, but held back on receipt of information
that the main body of Saints still was on the plains. As it was, he and
his charge arrived at Salt Lake, July 29, 1847, five days after the
advent of Brigham Young. Brown remained only a few days, setting out
early in August for California, there to receive the pay of his command.
The main body had been paid off at Los Angeles, July 15. On his westward
way, Brown led a small company over the Carson route. In the Sierras,
September 6, he met the first returning detachment of Battalion soldiers.
To them he delivered letters from the First Presidency telling of the
scarcity of food in the Salt Lake Valley. Sam Brannan, leader at San
Francisco, had passed, going westward, only the day before, giving a
gloomy account of the new home of the Saints. So about half the Battalion
men turned back to Sutter's Fort, presumably with Brown. Brown returned
from Los Angeles with the pay of his men, money sorely needed.
The Pueblo detachment arrived in Salt Lake with about fifty individuals
from Mississippi added to the 150 men and women who had been separated
from the main body of the Battalion in New Mexico. Forty-six of the
Battalion men accompanied President Young when he started back, August 8,
for Winter Quarters, on the west side of the Missouri, five miles above
Omaha, to help in piloting over the plains the main body of Saints.
Captain Brown, according to a Brigham Young manuscript, was absent in
California three months and seven days, returning late in November, 1847,
bringing back with him the pay due the Pueblo contingent. Several stories
were given concerning the amount. One was that it was about $5000, mainly
in gold, and another that the amount was $10,000 in Mexican doubloons.
The Pueblo detachment had been paid last in Santa Fe in May, 1846. The
muster-out rolls were taken by Brown to Paymaster Rich of Colonel Mason's
command in California. Pay included July 29, 1847, thirteen days after
expiration of the term of enlistment.
A part of the money, apparently considered as community property, was
used early in 1848 in the purchase of a tract of land, about twenty miles
square, at the mouth of Weber Canyon. The sum of $1950, cash, was paid to
one Goodyear, who claimed to own a Mexican grant, but who afterward
proved to have only a squatter right. The present city of Ogden is on
this same tract.