Katharina Buczek
In 1833, a young woman named Rebecca Winters was baptized into the Mormon Church– making her and her family some of the earliest converts.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had only been founded just a few years before Rebecca’s baptism. So, unfortunately, the Winters were forced to deal with discrimination and harassment over their religion.
Then, during the 1850s, Rebecca and her family ultimately decided to move west throughout the United States. They were a part of the Mormon migration to the state of Utah, which was trailblazed by Brigham Young.
Venturing to the west was a treacherous challenge at the time, though. And by August of 1852, cholera– an infectious bacterial disease of the small intestine– had started to run rampant among the group Rebecca was traveling with.
So, unfortunately, she eventually contracted the fatal disease and passed away very shortly afterward while in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
Countless people died while traveling along the very same trails that Rebecca and her family migrated. However, graves of the deceased are often never found because people were typically buried right underneath the road.
In turn, whenever wagon wheels ran over the graves, the ground would harden, and peoples’ remains were not likely to ever be discovered.
That was except for Rebecca’s grave, though– which was thoughtfully placed and marked with a wagon wheel.
The Winters family had buried her next to the road, rather than directly under it, and made sure to dig her a deep grave. Afterward, they then placed planks taken from a broken-down wagon on the bottom.
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