Georgina Fisher

Georgina was born in Kent, England, the youngest daughter of Thomas Frederick Fisher and Jane Christton Fisher. There was lot of talk among missionaries and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about America. The Fisher family were eager to join the saints in a place called Zion. They boarded a big ship to America and were towed down the River Mersey to the ocean. The seas were rough and the food wasn’t like Georgina was used to, but she thought the ship was a marvelous wonder. Each day was a new and exciting adventure. One of the things she loved to do was put on her pretty red shoes, white frilly organdy dress and sing and dance for the crew and passengers. (The red shoes and pretty white dress are displayed at the Pioneer Memorial Museum in Salt Lake City).

After the ship landed in Louisiana, the Fisher family took a boat to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where they purchased a wagon and team of oxen. The joined the Rick Campbel Company to journey west. After crossing the plains for two months with a company of 397 Saints, 36 wagons, 170 oxen, 97 cows, 11 horses, 3 hens, 1 calf, 1 dog and last but not least 1 donkey, they arrived in Laramie, Wyoming. Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers.

From the Thomas Sutherland journal: “Tuesday, September 19… we camped about 8 o’clock in the evening at LaBonte Creek. There was an accident which afterward resulted in death at the camp. Brother Thomas Fisher’s wagon, having suddenly gone down a hill, his daughter aged 8 years asleep in the wagon, fell out and the wheel of the wagon went over her.”

Georgina, 8-years-old, was asleep when she fell out of the wagon. She died the next morning and was buried by the trail. Her parents remembered her in later years as their little girl who slept on the plains.