Ida went to San Francisco, CA with her lawyer husband, Fredrick Sutherland. In 1866 she returned to England to visit family members. While there her friends asked her to write about her new life in California, so she wrote Five Years Within the Golden Gate under the pen name of Isabelle Saxon. Her book includes an account of her visit to Salt Lake, Council Bluffs and encounters with Saints along the trail. The book is available on Google Books.
Ida's aunt, Maria Susanna Merrick Maddison Thorne, had joined the Mormon church in England in 1848 and had emigrated to Utah with several of her children.
Ida and Fredrick appear on the 1870 and 1880 San Francisco census records.