Jane Clarke Green

Jane Clarke Green is the only child born to Samuel Clarke and Margaret Connolly, both from England. Jane’s parents separated and her mother (Margaret) married Thomas Green in 1836. Margaret died a year later in 1837. Thomas married Mary Ann Gibson and took his step-daughter with them to America. In 1850, the family joined the Wilford Woodruff Company to go to the 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, premature birth, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. Cholera (a bacterial disease caused from contaminated water) spread through the camp. Jane, her step-mother, Mary Ann, and a step-brother, Joseph Nephi, contracted the dreaded disease. Mary Ann was the first to pass away on June 27. Three days later, 15-year-old Jane Clarke Green passed away. Finally, Joseph Nephi died on July 1. Jane is buried along the Mormon Trail west of the Salt Creek in Iowa.

From the journal of Sophia L. Goodridge Hardy, June 7, 1850: “June 30. Jane Green died this morning of cholera. She was *eighteen years old. Our first fifty came up with us this morning. They had buried a Brother Smith this morning. The rest of the camp all well. We went four miles and camped where we found wood and water. We killed a rattlesnake.”