The Search Is On For Pioneer Graves

Joe and I and Nephi, Hannah and Joanna started out on a daycation yesterday with a mission.  We were in search of a canyon and four pioneer graves.  I'd searched the internet to find the best directions of how to locate these places.  So, armed with a picnic lunch and scant directions we set off on our adventure.  By the end of the day, we'd found the canyon and three of the graves all along the Oregon Trail.

This grave is a special one because it is the only known instance of a surviving marked grave for an individual whose signature can also still be found on the trail. Alvah's signature can be found at Register Cliff in Guernsey, Wyoming.  (See Sunday, June 6, 2010 Register Cliff).

Nineteen year old Alvah Unthank was one of a group of young men who left Newport, Wayne County, Indiana, for the goldfields of California in 1850. On June 23 the wagon train passed Register Cliff, south of Guernsey. There Alvah inscribed his name: "A. H. Unthank 1850."

In the early evening hours of June 28 the party made camp here by the North Platte River on account of the sudden sickness of Alvah. On June 29 a family friend, Pusey Graves, wrote, "Lay by today to doctor and nurse Alvah. June 30 Alvah getting worse it's quite hopeless complaining none. July 1 Alvah is rapidly sinking. July 2 in the early morning hours Alvah died." Cholera had taken its toll.

Graves wrote, "Alvah lay calm, bore his suffering patiently and uttered not a murmur or groan. Bid his father to be of good cheer. His child has paid the great debt of nature. Procured a large neat headstone. Solomon Woody carved the inscription." At noon Tuesday, July 2, 1850, the solemn task of burial took place.

No public access is allowed to the Unthank grave, which is located on private property. The owner has experienced vandalism in the past and, therefore, he has chosen to deny access to the gravesite.  So the picture below is as close as we could get to the grave.

This is what the gravestone looks like.

Then we found Mormon Canyon so-named because some Mormon travelers on the Mormon Trail wintered here in the 1850s.

This wild turkey was running down the road in front of us and then...

...he decided to race along side us.

When leaving Glenrock, we passed Rock In The Glen which has the names of the some of the emigrants that passed through Glenrock carved into its face stones.

Diaper change for baby Joanna.

Then we found the grave of Martin Ringo.

Martin Ringo left his Missouri home in May 1864 with his wife and five children, headed for California, where other relatives had settled earlier. Near Scottsbluff, their wagon train experienced some unstated troubles with the Indians and banded together with others for increased protection. A few days before they reached this site, the party passed by the recent Kelly-Larimer massacre site. That, combined with an attempted horse-stealing, led to jittery nerves on the night of July 29. The wagon train posted additional guards that night. The Ringo’s oldest son saw his father accidentally shoot himself with a shotgun while climbing onto a wagon. Johnny Ringo subsequently gained notoriety as an outlaw and met his own mysterious death in 1882 near Tombstone, Arizona. The family blamed his "going bad" on what he witnessed on the plains that July morning but Mary Ringo’s uncle was married to the widowed mother of Frank and Jesse James and her brother-in-law was a member of both Quantrill’s Raiders and the James Gang.

Buried next to Martin Ringo is J.P. Parker from Iowa. He died July 1, 1860 at the age of 41. Nothing more is known about this emigrant.

Lastly, we located the grave of Quintina Snodderly.  Yep, what a name, huh? 

Joe and Hannah checking out Quintina's grave.

This grave was discovered accidentally in 1974 during road construction work. The landowner, suspecting an emigrant grave, immediately called in local archaeologists to do the excavation. Snodderly had been buried in a full casket, which was most unusual for trail burials. The casket had since disintegrated. Inside the grave, however, a headstone was found bearing the name Quintina Snodderly. Although the stone had been fully scored, it was never completed. That it was then buried adds to the many unknowns about this burial. 

A pioneer mother, Quintina Snodderly died near here on June 25, 1852. A native of Tennessee, Quintina with her husband, Jacob, and their eight children (five girls and three boys) had lived in Clarinda County, Iowa for several years before embarking on their trip across the plains. They were members of a wagon train captained by Rev. Joab Powell which had left St. Joseph, Missouri in the spring of 1852.

What caused Snodderly’s death remains unknown. Because her ribs were crushed, it was originally believed she had fallen under the wagon. Subsequent study, however, suggests the ribs became crushed when the grave collapsed. Snodderly’s remains were placed in a simple wooden casket and reburied in 1987 by the Oregon-California Trails Association.

This picture shows how isolated many of these graves are.