Lucy Oakey

Lucy’s parents are James Oakey Jr. and Mary Cooper. Lucy was the third child born into the family. She was baptized when she was 8 years old in 1853 in England. The family decided to go to America and cross the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. James however, made the decision to wait a year before coming to join with the rest of his family in Zion. Mary took some of the children and sailed to America, on the ship measles broke out among the children, unfortunately Lucy didn't recover from the disease.

When Mary arrived in America, she and the children went to Nebraska, there they joined the Joseph Horne Company for the journey west. On July 8 Lucy and her sister Sarah also fell sick, Charles C. Rich came to administer to the two Oakey sisters.

From the family journal:

"The next morning they got off early. It was rough on the girls.

28 Monday We were hurried up and we started by 8 o clock. The road was very ruff and maney hills and the waggon jolted Lucy and Sarah very much and Lucy wished and prayed for the waggon to stop as she was so bad. We passed through several small villages, past 2 trains that were going to Florance."

When they crossed the Elkhorn Bridge, an ox was drowned and they camped by a wooden area about two miles from the bridge. Lucy began to have trouble breathing, so her mother took Tom with her into the woods to find some yarrow. Finding none, Tom sent her back to Lucy while he cut some wood.

Mother was delayed getting back, having lost her way in the trees and brush, and arrived just as Lucy was breathing her last. By the time she could get into the wagon Lucy was gone. Sarah later wrote that she had been in the wagon with Lucy when she died.

At her mother’s request, they lifted Lucy out of the wagon and laid her out on the ground. Tom wrote that she “looked a beautiful corpse.” She was seventeen.

As the other men began digging a grave, Tom went round the camp to find boards for a coffin, but darkness fell before much more could be done. They put Lucy in the tent for the night. Tom and Jim slept on the grass at the tent door, the rest of the family slept in the wagon.

Tom made the best coffin that he could, lining it with grass below and above her in the box, they followed her to the grave. After a word of comfort and prayer she was covered, and Tom erected a post which he had cut before she died, with a board that had her name on it.

The grave was five to six feet deep, lay on the left side of the road and opposite the 44th telegraph post on the far side of the Elkhorn Bridge and 44 yards south of the left side of the post. He marked the board: “L. O. 62”.

The family went back years later and found the grave.