Mary Ann Mellows Walker, mother of
James John Walker, was one that gave her life for the Gospel's sake.
Three hundred miles from Salt Lake City out on the prairie in Wyoming she was
laid to rest August 12, 1853 in an unmarked grave. She had prepared
a bird pie for their supper meal and during the night became ill and
died. The exact cause is not known, but because of the hardships and
trials of crossing the plains, and walking the many, many miles over the dusty
trails in all was just too much for her. In the early morning her son
asked the man in the near-by wagon if he could borrow a spade that he might dig
a grave for his mother. So it was, as she was prepared for burial in her
best clothes, wrapped in a blanket, lowered into the unmarked grave, the sod and
rocks were shoveled on her. A fire was then made on the grave so the
wolves would not molest her body. The company moved on in their journey
toward the Rocky Mountains in the West.
She had worked hard to prepare for
the journey. The census of 1851 tells us that she was a
washerwoman. Through the years previously to 1848 when her husband Thomas
Walker died, he had been a fisherman or a man away from home much of the time
as he had different jobs as a mariner on the rivers Thames and Medway. So
it is very evident that caring for her children was her concern and task.
