William Slason Shelton

William Slason Shelton is one of five children born to Charles Shelton and Rebecca Ann Dow. With a desire to travel to the Great Salt Lake Valley with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, the family joined the James Brown Company.

Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. Before they began their journey, two sons of Charles and Rebecca became ill with cholera (a bacterial disease caused from contaminated water). William, 1-years-old died of the disease and is buried just a few miles West of Fort Leavenworth.

From the journal of Charles Shelton (father): “Next my little boy Wm Slason was taken and the last one Charles Edwin died at big blue and buried there. Thus I left on the way to Zion my wife and five children."