One of the better known periods of LDS history is the rich and moving chapter at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, 1846-48. Having taken much longer than anticipated to cross Iowa, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints needed somewhere to take refuge from the challenges of winter.
At first, they were told they could not stay there on the banks of the Missouri River because it was Native American land. However, because of the enlisting of the Mormon Battalion, Capt. James Allen was authorized to give permission to the Saints to stay there on a temporary basis. In spite of that blessing, suffering, disease and death were widespread in the Winter Quarters area.
These are three of the few remaining markers in the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery, Florence, Nebraska. | Kenneth Mays
Many of the dead were buried in a cemetery now situated between the Mormon Trail Center on the east and the Winter Quarters Temple on the south.
Richard E. Bennett writes in "Mormons at the Missouri, 1846-1852": “Just how many people were lost during the winter of 1846-47 will never be known. The standard interpretation is that some six hundred died at Winter Quarters.” Mormon Newsroom explains that “the cemetery contains graves of many who died in the westward migration. The cemetery has no gravestones intact from the time of the early Saints, but thanks to the sexton’s records and work from researchers, exact spots of graves have been found. Families can use maps available at the Mormon Trail Center to find graves of their ancestors who died at Winter Quarters.”