Martha Spafford

Martha Stiles married Horace Spafford July 9, 1851, and she died and is buried 17 miles beyond Salt Creek near the Platt River in Nebraska, probably while the company was crossing the plains to Utah.

The Aaron Johnson Company, of 135 wagons, along with the Spafford Family, left Illinois in the early spring of 1850 for Utah. All seemed to go well until the wagon train reached the Platte River in Nebraska Territory. As they made camp one night, many members of the family became very ill.

The next morning, daughter Irinda, her infant daughter, Josephine, her mother (Martha), two brothers and two sisters were dead of cholera. They died near the Platte River in Nebraska, United States Territory, in June 1850. Her father, Horace Spafford, wrapped their bodies in a feather bed and quilts and placed them in a single grave on the edge of the Platte River. He placed large stones over the grave to keep wolves and other wild animals from digging up the bodies.