John McBride Belnap

John McBride Belnap is the second of 17 children born to Gilbert Belnap of Canada and Adaline Knight of New York. His parents met and were married in 1845 in Nauvoo, Illinois.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the family joined the Warren Foote Company to bound for the Great Salt Lake Valley. Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. Cholera (a bacterial disease caused by contaminated water) invaded the camp. One-year-old John McBride fell victim of the disease and passed away. He was wrapped in a blanket, placed inside his father’s wooden tool chest and buried on the east side of Salt Creek by Ashland, Nebraska.

From the book “Conquerors of the West” written by Joy Belnap: “When John was 13 months old, his family was encamped east of the ford at Salt Creek near present day Ashland, Nebraska when John took ill during the evening with cholera. The next morning his father put the little body inside his tool chest and buried him in an unmarked grave."