Louisa Shelton Obray

Louisa Shelton Obray was the nineth of 12 children born to David Booth Shelton Sr. of Connecticut and Bethia Slason of Canada. At Fort Leavenworth on June 24, 1854 at the age of 16, Louisa married Thomas Lorenzo Obray and was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Shelton and Obray families joined the James Brown Company bound for the Great Salt Lake Valley.

Exhaustive travel, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. As the company was leaving, Louisa and other members of the company, got the measles. Just as Louisa was recovering from the measles, she was infected with cholera (a bacterial disease caused from contaminated water). Louisa Shelton Obray died three weeks after getting married.

From the book “History of Bear Lake Pioneers,” it says, “The government furnished caskets as long as we were in reach of Fort Leavenworth. About this time our leaders told us to move out and go as fast as we could. One morning our captain, Thomas O'Hara [Obray], a young Welshman, lost his wife, Louisa Shelton, a bride of three weeks. We had to bury her beside the road without a coffin. That was the first I ever saw buried this way.”