Abraham Lamb Lea

Abraham Lamb Lea is the seventh of eight children born to John Darbyshire Lea and Elizabeth Lamb. The family immigrated from England to America and then traveled to Nebraska. Along with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they joined the John Needham Company to cross the plains bound for the Great Salt Lake Valley.

Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. Shortly after their arrival in Salt Lake City, the family went to Farmington, Utah. Two-year-old Lea Abraham fell ill and died. He is buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

From a Lea family history: “Brother and Sister Lea and their six children arrived in Salt Lake City penniless. With no one to meet them they stayed for 13 days on Emigration Square where they camped without even a tent. Lorenzo Young hired Brother Lea to saw and split a cord of wood and in payment gave him a sack of flour and a leg of mutton, which probably seemed riches indeed to the struggling little family. Then they went to Farmington where they lived their first winter in Utah. In spite of all they could do, which included Elizabeth walking from Farmington to Salt Lake to procure medicine for him, baby Abraham continued to weaken and died in Farmington. He was buried in Salt Lake City Cemetery on October 26th.”