Sidney C Tanner

Sidney C. Tanner is the sixth of eight children born to Sidney and Julia Tanner. With a desire to join other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Tanner family join a company to journey west to the Great Salt Lake Valley in late June, 1848.

Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. On the July 26, near the Platt River between Wood River and Fort Laramie, 6-year-old Sidney tripped and fell under the wheels of a fully loaded wagon. Twenty minutes of extreme pain followed before he died. Sidney was very brave. He didn’t cry out at all. He was given a blessing of peace before he died. It was almost more than his family could bear. They buried him on a grassy knoll beside the Platt River. His sisters carved his initials on the trunk of a tree, daring not to mark his grave fearing that the grave would be disturbed.