Ann Bennion

Parents are John Bennion and Esther Ann Wainwright, both born in Wales and married in England 1842. John and Esther were blessed with 13 children; Ann was their third child. They traveled to America and joined the Edward Hunter – Joseph Horne Company to cross the plains to the Salt Lake Valley.

Ann passed away at “1 year, 9 months and 19 days old while the company was on the trail. There is no information found as to why she died.

According to her father’s letter to the Bennion family, it says in part: “Giving you some account of our journeying from Garden Grove to that place of our affliction, on account of the loss of our little girl whose body we carried with us the next day 13 miles and buried it on the morning of the 9th near the camp ground called the Pacific Springs, on the left handside of the road.”

Another story which tells of where she is buried with a headstone. This information was told to Joe Bennion with a customer in his pottery shop in Spring City, Utah. He said: “A woman named Teri Price visited my shop today. She said that while riding her horse over the Mormon Trail she found a grave out off the trail in the sage brush. The grave was marked with a stone that bore the inscription Anna Bennion. On returning to Utah, she researched the name and found that she was a 2-year-old who died and was buried on the trail in an unknown site west of the Continental Divide. She said the grave was near Pacific Springs (within 400 yards) but would be difficult to relocate as the brush is so thick there.”