Family:John Barton and Elizabeth Walley (1)

SS John is in Salt Lake City, Utah being sealed to Elizabeth Walley (2nd marriage) in 1864. More details of his journey are found in Johns personal history. As I think of there daughter Jane dying at age three while on the journey made me recall these words

.. I will remember the first death that took place on the plains, the scene I shall never forget. I think it was about two 2 weeks after we started on the Plains, I think it was a sister. A rough box was made somewhat in the shape of a coffin, with no lining, or anything of that kind, the grave was dug on a hill a little way from the side of the road, and the train was stopped for noon, and she was burried, and in the afternoon the train went on, almost as though nothing had happened. We had about 6 deaths on the plains, all buried alike, on the road here and there we would see a piece of wood about the size of a pickett stuck up, it was the toomb "stone" of some weary emigrant, who tired of the long and weary journey, by the ox teams, has taken his last long rest, or perhaps a toilworn Saints, who, with his hand cart had given up under what might be considered one of the most wearisome and laborious journeys ever undertaken by man or woman in this or any other generation, another toombstone would mark the last resting place of some loved son or daughter, who, overtaken by cholera or other disease incident to the plains, had bid their parents gon or brothers & sisters go on while they, weary of the March, laid down for their last long sleep. In other places nothing but two cross Bones of oxen would mark the grave of the sleeping traveler, with his or her name written on the bones. These land marks were not touched by the travellers, but left all alone in the solitude of death, with none but the eye of that all seeing God, who does not let even a sparrow fall to the ground without his notice, to watch over them. Others were not so fortunate, if it might so be called, as to have even a box to be laid in, but had to be rolled in a blanket, and in that way were burried. Here and there might be seen holes in the ground about 10 or 15 feet from the graves, which were made by wolves, who in their desperate hunger had burrowed into the graves and feasted on the remains of some burried traveler. (These words are from the Diary of Charles Denney who traveled in the John D. Holladay Company (1866))