Josephine Crandall

Josephine Crandall is the only child born to Sharah Susannah Gill and Spicer Wells Crandall.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Crandall family joined the Warren Foote Company bound for “Zion,” in the Great Salt Lake Valley. When the Company departed on June 17, 1850, Sarah was pregnant with Josephine.

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, infected many of the travelers.

From the Company journal: “we had another storm last night. everything is wet and uncomfortable this morning. started early as we knew the road was bad, and so we found it quite a drag to get along. so many sloughs to and small creeks that would have been dry, but for the late heavy rains. we were called upon to Bury another of our Co. Sister [Irinda] Spaf[f]ord Crandle [Crandall]. she died in childbed [birth]. this makes 7 out of a famly of 15[.] Mother and 6 children. we feel very sory thus to Bury <our> friends by the wayside. we are camped on the Bank of the Platt[e] river.”

From a family history: “All seemed to go well until the wagon train reached the Platte River in Nebraska Territory. As they made camp one night, many members of the family became very ill. The next morning, Irinda, her infant daughter, Josephine, her mother, two brothers and two sisters were dead of cholera. They died near the Platte River in Nebraska, United States Territory, in June 1850. Her father, Horace Spafford, wrapped their bodies in a feather bed and quilts and placed them in a single grave on the edge of the Platte River. He placed large stones over the grave to keep wolves and other wild animals from digging up the bodies.

They buried Josephine and her family by the Platte River in Nebraska.