Julia Ann Bird

Julia Ann Bird is the daughter of Edmund Fuller Bird from England and Cordelia Moore Martin from Vermont. Her parents were married in 1846 in Massachusetts.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they joined the Wilford Woodruff Company to trek west to 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. While in Nebraska, Cordelia gave birth to their second child, a daughter they named Julia Ann. The baby was stillborn and buried on the plains in Wyoming, near the Platte River.

From the journal of Sophia L. Goodridge Hardy: “Aug. 18. Sunday. On account of the feed being so poor, we thought it best to travel. We went twelve miles, passed Ft. Laramie where we camped on the Platt river. We found Captain Hardy's train about one-fourth mile from us. We had not seen them for two weeks. They were all well. Mrs. Bird had a still-born child on Saturday morning.”