MARGARET DALGLISHBorn 2 May 1825, Belfast, Northern Ireland, to Alexander Dalglish and Elizabeth McNee. Her parents soon moved back to Glasgow, Scotland. They had come to Ireland for work. Margaret’s mother died when she was only 8 years old. Margaret was baptized in Glasgow on July 18, 1842, when she was 17. Margaret later told her grandchildren “I saw the valley before I ever left Scotland.” Margaret got the opportunity to come to Utah through the Perpetual Emigration Fund, sailing on the Thornton, with the Willie Company. Margaret’s captain of 100 was William Woodward, a returning missionary, and clerk who kept the company journal. Margaret was assigned to tent #3, with 18 others, including the Kirkwood family. It is reported that Margaret pushed her handcart over a cliff at the end of the journey and walked into the valley “with nothing but her gaunt bones, her empty hands, and her stout heart.” Most of the Willie carts were left at Ft. Bridger, so the event may have happened there. Diaries record that some carts were pulled behind the rescue wagons into the Valley. On April 12, 1857, Margaret became the second wife of Andrew Cowan, also from Scotland, who had come to the valley from Nauvoo. She lived in SLC and had one daughter, Margaret, and two sons, William, and Robert. Her grandchildren record that Margaret was a “student of Scripture and had the Gift of Tongues. She also was a lover of the soil and spent much of her time in her flower garden. She passed on to her reward September 23, 1905, and was buried in the City Cemetery.”
