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Winter Quarters
Winter Quarters Cemetery, Present Day Omaha, Nebraska

 

Burials at Winter Quarters


                                                                                                                                                          

History

Quoting Richard E. Bennett from his book, "Mormons at the Missouri - Winter Quarters, 1846-1852."
 


Cemetery Plot Map Click Here

  "Between February and June 1846, the period between the initial Nauvoo departures and the arrival at the Missouri, comparatively few died.  The first rush of deaths broke out at Mt. Pisgah and Garden Grove starting in June,
lasting through the summer, and climaxing in the fall...

 

 

 






The best starting point for mortality studies at Cutler's Park and Winter Quarters is the sexton records of both places. Three hundred sixty-one people were buried in the Cutler's Park burial ground and later in the nearby Winter Quarters cemetery (or cemeteries) between August 1846 and May 1848... more than twice as many people (248) died in the first year as in the succeeding year at Winter Quarters --- evidence that they were better prepared , better provisioned, and better sheltered as time passed...

For several reasons, the figure of 248 deaths can be used only as a starting point, as it is the number of known and recorded deaths and not the actual total.  First, if the sexton's complaints are to be believed, many died without proper records."

 Bennett explains that the sexton said that many would go and bury their dead in

 

Maps
 

Click HERE for a Google map giving
directions to the
Mormon Trail Center
at Historic Winter Quarters
adjacent to the
Winter Quarters Cemetery
 

the grave yard without reporting the burial and that they would  "sometimes bury between the graves thus altering the number of those already reported." He, the sexton, said, "that he did not know who were buried thus."1

"Although some of these may have been recorded eventually, the problem of non-reporting and undercounting constantly plagued officials.  It is probable, therefore, that a large number of deceased were never officially tabulated"

 1. Winter Quarters High Council Minutes, 8 November 1846.

 

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This site is not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Early Latter-day Saint Database is a project of the
Nauvoo Land and Records Office and
The Pioneer Research Group of the "Winter Quarters" Nebraska area.