Elmira's Story
Birth: April 26th, 1851 | female | in Plum Hollow, Pottawattamie, Iowa
Death: July 5th, 1852 | 1 year old | near the Platte River
Memorial: Stone 2
Elmira Zallotta Clinger is the third child of James Clinger of Pennsylvania and Harriet Chapin born in New York. Her parents were married in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1845.
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Clinger family joined the Thomas C. D. Howell Company with a desire to journey west with other Saints to great Salt Lake Valley.
Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. Elvira, 13-months-old, became ill and passed away. She is buried on the side of a hill near the Patte River, not far from the Mormon Trail West.