Frances' Story
Birth: February 14th, 1847 | female | in Southampton, York, New Brunswick, Canada
Death: June 23rd, 1855 | 8 years old | on the East side of the Big Nemaha River in Kansas
Memorial: Stone 5 | left column
Frances Hellen Phillips is the sixth of eight children born to Matthew George Dow Phillips and Ellizabeth Phillips, both of Canada. Her name is listed as "Fanny" in the Edward Stevenson Emigrating Company Journal.
With a desire to travel to the Great Salt Lake Valley with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the family joined the Seth M Blair / Edward Stevenson Company.
Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. When cholera (a disease caused from contaminated water) invaded the company, 8-year-old Frances and her brother, Hugh, were both victims of the disease and died the same day. They are buried together by the Big Nemaha River in Kansas near others who passed away that day.
Because the family stopped at the Big Nemaha River, they continued on to Utah with the Richard Ballantyne Company.
From a company journal: “On the Next day 23rd Sister Middlemas, Eliza Greer, and A. Priestly died. On the same day S. Bagley, M. A. Jones, Julia A. Bagley, Fanny Philips, Emma S. Middlemass, Hugh Philips, and John Greer. On the evening of the 23rd camped on the East side of the Big Nimcha [Nemaha].