Richard Fell Squires

Richard Fell Squires is the third of eight children born to John Paternoster Squires and Catherine Harriet Fell, both from England. After immigrating from England to America from England, they joined the Jacob Gates Company of 1853 to travel with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 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. Cholera (a bacterial disease caused by contaminated water) invaded the camp. Among the victims of the disease was 12-year-old Richard Fell Squires. He is buried near Sweetwater, Wyoming.

From his mother’s journal: “I am grieved to say that we had the unspeakable grief of loosing our little boy Richard, who fell asleep on Monday the 12th of Sept. 1853, about four miles this side of the dividing ridge at a place called Pacific Springs. His spirit left his body about 10 Minutes before three o’clock.] We buried him the next day at a place called Little Sandy, 27 miles this side of the dividing ridge on the south side of the main road 8 miles from Big Sandy—There is a road on the left leading to the river, we buried him between the forks of the two roads."

John Fell (Richard’s older brother) wrote: “The departed would be rolled up in a blanket, let down into a shallow grave, sticks, rocks and dirt would cover their remains. The mourners were up and off with the rest of the company never to see that spot again. My Brother Dick [Richard Fell Squires] died on the Big Sandy about two hundred miles east of S.L. City and was laid away and left behind in the usual manner. This was a severe blow to my mother, Catherine Harriet Fell Squires, as I always thought him to be her favorite child.”