Heritage Trail: Pioneers in Winter Quarters

The LDS pioneer experience at Winter Quarters in the 1840s is now commemorated in Florence, Nebraska (just a few miles from the Omaha airport and Iowa state border) at the Winter Quarters temple and the next-door Mormon Trail Center.

The temple is built next to the cemetery, and while few headstones remain, there is a plaque listing known deaths. The stained glass windows inside are spectacular, with a tree of life facing the cemetery and promising eternal life and resurrection to those souls. I particularly loved how the temple and cemetery were connected, as in ancient Egyptian funerary complexes. As you come upstairs inside, there is a beautiful 12-part stained glass with historic images, such as an Omaha chieftain, pioneer wagons, an odometer, and Brigham Young, set in sage green and golden decor to symbolize the prairie. 

Several of our ancestors lived, suffered, and died here. Elizabeth and Jeremiah Hatch died in the vicinity, and Elizabeth's name is on the plaque. Eliza Billington Welch lost her son Nicholas (also listed), and Jane Muir lost two babies. James Eastman died near here. Both of Eliza's parents, Joseph and Martha Billington, died in this area. Rebecca Rogers was kidnapped near here, and members of the Woodland, Everett, Cottam, Hatch, Thompson, Eastman, Grover, and Sanders families waited out the winter and launched westward from this region. 

Elizabeth Hatch's name

Nicholas Welch's name

There is also an LDS church site nearby, across the river in Iowa is the Kanesville Tabernacle (once Council Bluffs), a replica of the building in which Brigham Young was sustained as the president of the church in December 1847. The Mormon Battalion left from near here, so there are lists of the Battalion members, and the helpful sister missionary will give you a printout of your ancestor's bio (for us: Orin Hatch and William Smith Muir).

A poignant place.