Hugh Gordon Phillips

Hugh Gordon Phillips was the last of eight children born to Matthew George Dow Phillips and Elizabeth Phillips, both of Canada. With a desire to reach 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, 4-year-old Hugh and his sister, Frances, became victims of the disease and died the same day. They are buried together with others that perished that day on the East side of the Big Nemaha River in Kansas

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].