Kittie Bell Ryan

Kittie Bell Ryan is the second of eleven children born to William Thomas Ryan from New Jersey and Janet Cochran from Scotland.

After joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Ryan family traveled to join an “unknown company” to journey west to the Salt Lake Valley.

Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, premature birth, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. When the company was near the Platte River in Nebraska, 2-year-old Kittie passed away of undocumented causes and is buried along the Mormon Trail, by the Platte River, Nebraska.