Elizabeth Stewart

Elizabeth Stewart was the youngest of four children born to William Stewart and Elizabeth Murdoch, both from Scotland. As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the family desired to immigrate to America and be with other Saints in the Great Salt Lake Valley. Before leaving, their 1-year-son William died. Not bearing to leave him behind William Senior placed him in a metal coffin that he had made and took their son with them, crossing the ocean and then across the plains.

Once in America they joined the William B. Hodgetts Wagon Company and they followed the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies across the plains.

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. Furthermore, the handcart company left late in the season, placing the Saints in the path of frigid temperatures, snowstorms, and very little food. Of the 500 Saints in the Willie Handcart Company, 67-70 pioneers died before reaching the Salt Lake Valley, and of 576 pioneers in the Martin Handcart Company, 145 perished before reaching the journey’s end.

October 26, Elizabeth gave birth to a baby girl, Elizabeth, named after her mother. Three days later, the baby died. They wrapped her in a blanket and packed her away in the back of the handcart with her older brother with plans of burying them together once they reached the Salt Lake Valley.

However, loss would not end there. Weakened from giving birth, compounded by conditions already mentioned, Elizabeth died on November 23, 1856. Near the bend of Green River, Wyoming, William buried his wife, Elizabeth, and their two children together in a shallow grave, because the ground was too frozen to dig deep.