Caroline Matilda Hardy

Caroline Matilda Hardy is the seventh of nine children born to Samuel Brocklebank Hardy of Massachusetts and Caroline Bacon Rogers of Maine. Samuel and Caroline were married 1826 in Massachusetts.

The Hardy family joined the 1850 Wilford Woodruff Company to travel to the Salt Lake Valley with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 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) and consumption (might have been tuberculosis) invaded the company. Many of the Saints became ill and died. Among them was 2-year-old Carolina Matilda.* She is buried along the Mormon Trail in Western Nebraska.

From the Journal of the Wilford Woodruff Company: July 3. 1850, Caroline Matilda Hardy died of Consumption this morning at 2 o’clock; was buried this morning. They buried their little daughter, Matilda, and a little girl named Lucy Johnson, whom they were bringing to the Valley. There were two more little graves along the lonely trail, guarded by the angels.”

*Some reports said Caroline died of cholera; others said consumption.