Baby Girl Borum

Baby Girl Borum is the daughter of Mr. Borum. Mr. Borum and child joined the Benjamin Hawkins Company to journey with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the Great Salt Lake Valley. The company departed on June 5, 1850.

Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, premature birth, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. Cholera, a bacterial disease caused from contaminated water, infected many of the travelers.

Little is known about the family. This is from a journal entry by Thomas B. Nelson: “The next, a few days later, was a <little child of a> Brother Borum[.] Melvin Ross and I dug the grave and buried it. These persons were buried in graves made with a vault in the bottom. The bodies were wrapped in a quilt, blanket or wagon cover, whichever could best be spared and would then be placed in the bault [vault], timbers <were then> put across and hay spread over and then covered with dirt.”