Grave Counting - A Perculiar Hobby

There is a peculiar group of journals which give detailed tabulations of the number of graves passed on the trail.  Traveling during the cholera years mainly, the women kept accounts like bookkeepers.  Graves passed where listed as either "old" or "new" perhaps to realize how close death really was to them.

Francis Sawyer wrote "today we have passed a great many new made graves, and we hear of many
"Dr. Baekwell informed us that his younger child died on the plains...the trials and troubles of this long wearisome trip were enough to bear without having our hearts torn by the loss of dear ones."
cases of cholera.  We are becoming fearful of our own safety."  Two weeks later she wrote

Cholera does appear in the journals of men, but they tend to treat the epidemic in aggregate figures.  Dr. T McCollum put the numbers of burials in 1849 between 1500 and 2000.  Franklin Langworthy estimated cholera victims in 1850 over 1000.  Ezra Meeker put the numbers at 5000 for the same year, saying that the "dead lay sometimes in rows of 15 or more."  Abraham Sontore wrote he was "scarcely out of sight of grave diggings." 

Next time ...some actual journal entries of the grave records. 

____________________________

Today in Pioneer History:  One of the ragged legions of gold and silver prospectors who combed the Rocky Mountains searching for fortune in the 1860s, Alfred Packer also supplemented his meager income from mining by serving as a guide in the Utah and Colorado wilderness where he was resorted to eating his clients.  On January 7, 1901, the cannibalist, Alfred Packer is released from prison on parole after serving 18 years.