George Cottle

George Cottle is the third of five children born to Henry Cottle and Elizabeth Brettell from England. After immigrating to America, the family joined the John D. Hollaway Company to journey to the Great 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, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. The Cottle family crossed the Laramie River ahead of the Company when Indian approached their wagons. Twelve-year-old George was killed and was buried near Laramie, Wyoming.

This is an excerpt from a book written by George’s brother: “When they crossed the Laramie River, they had to pay a toll and after crossing the river, got way ahead of the company. They talked the thing over for quite a while and finally the Indians agreed, if father would give them all the sugar, coffee and bacon he had and one hundred pounds of flour, they would let them travel on with [out] hurting them. So, father said he would do it. Father turned around to come back to the wagon and one of the Indians shot him down like a dog. Then they made a rush for the wagons. The cattle stampeded and one of the oxen was shot and it fell and broke the wagon tongue. The Indians killed my grandmother by cutting her throat, then scalped her, they struck my grandfather over the head with the butt of a pistol, he died six weeks later from the effects, they took my baby brother George and killed him by hitting his head against the wagon wheel. They took my mother prisoner and we never saw her since. My father was not dead as we first thought, he had only gotten a scalp wound. The bullet just grazed his skull and knocked him senseless for a while. Father, sister Anne, and myself ran for miles, my sister being shot four times in the back with arrows and I received a bullet in my left leg. When we had run four miles we met the company.”

George is buried by Laramie, Wyoming.