William's Story
Birth: ?? ??, 1851 | male | in Manchester, Lancashire, England
Death: ?? ??, 1852 | 1 year old | in the Black Hills of Nebraska
Memorial: Stone 3 | left column
William Moroni Reeves is the first child born to William Reeves and Mary Ann Storer, both from England. William and Mary were married in 1849.
After immigrating to America, they joined the Abraham O. Smoot Company of 1852 to journey to the Great Salt Lake Valley with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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 from contaminated water) invaded their camp, and William fell victim to the illness. He is buried along the Mormon Trail on the way to Utah.
From the history of William's father: “While crossing the plains, cholera broke out in the Company and claimed the life of the little one from which sorrow they could hardly recover and they never forgot. They buried him in Blackhills, Nebraska. The wolves dug his body up before they got out of sight which made their sorrow doubly hard.”