Zenas' Story
Birth: January 1st, 1838 | male | in Caldwell County, Missouri
Death: June 26th, 1850 | 12 years old | in Nebraska
Memorial: Stone 1 | left column
Zenas Keyes is the second of six children born to Perry Keyes and Lucinda Herrick both of Ohio. Perry and Lucinda were married in 1835 in Ohio.
In 1850, the Keyes family joined the James Pace Jr. Company to travel west to the Salt Lake Valley with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Company left Iowa on June 11, 1850.
Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, premature birth, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. Some of the Saints suffered from cholera (a bacterial disease caused from contaminated water). On June 17, Zenas’ father, Perry, passed away from the disease. Nine days later, 12-year-old Zenas also died from cholera. He is buried in Nebraska somewhere along the Mormon Trail West.