Eliza Le Clercq

Eliza Le Clercq is the third of five children born to Philippe George Le Clercq and Jane Labey. In 1860, Philippe died and was buried at sea. Jane and her three daughters immigrated to America on the ship “The Antarctic.” After arriving in America, they traveled to Nebraska to join with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bound for the Great Salt Lake Valley. Utah. On August 1, 1862, the Saints began their travels west with the Ansil P. Harmon Company.

Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. While the company was making way through Wyoming, a wagon tipped over in a creek and 7-year-old Eliza drown. She is buried in Echo Canyon, Wyoming.

From the journal of William Ajax: "When they were in Wyoming, the roads were very bad and the oxen kept too near to the creek, the embankment was very steep and about 30 feet high, that the wagon tipped into the creek.

"Emma [Ajax], sister [Eliza] Crabbe, Catherine [Caroline] Winter, Anne Crabbe, and Eliza and Harriet Le Clarcq [Le Clercq], were in it at the time, and were all taken down with it. Sister Winter and Harriet LeClarq [Le Clercq} (the daughter of sister Jane Le Clarcq [Le Clercq}, and about 2 year old) received scarcely any injury. Eliza LeClarcq [Le Clercq] (a young girl about 7 year old, and the daughter of sister Jane LeClarcq [Le Clercq], Jersey) and Anne Crabbe (the daughter of bro. Wm. Crabbe, Cheshire, England, and about 18 months old) were drowned, and sister Crabbe, the mother of the latter, was very near being drowned."