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Show Pioneer Trails Pioneer Mother's Grave Becomes Honored Landmark for Travelers services, William F. Reynolds started chiseling the name and age of Rebecca Winters on the outside of the tire rim. He worked on it nearly all night, as little Ellis Reynolds (Shipp) held a lighted tallow dip which furnished the necessary nec-essary light. As the work was completed, Captain Hawley was heard to say: "This wagon tire will be the means of identifying this grave in years to come." The wagon tire was then anchored securely over the grave and the caravan continued on its way. Many years passed. Many thousands of over-land emigrants passed that way and stopped to read the inscription chiseled on a discarded iron wagon tire. In the early 1880's homesteaders pioneered pio-neered the Platte River Valley. They, too, saw the grave of Rebecca Rebec-ca Winters and held it in sacred remembrance as the last resting place of a pioneer mother of the plains. Pioneers to Oregon, California, Cali-fornia, Utah and elsewhere, wrote her name in their journals. The name of Rebecca Winters became known from the Atlantic to the Pacific. (Continued next week) Editor's Note: The story of Rebecca Winters' grave is told in two parts. For over a century, one of the most interesting and historic landmarks land-marks on the Mormon Pioneer Trail has been the Rebecca Winters Wint-ers grave located near Scotts Bluffs and Gering, Nebraska. Rebecca B u r d i c k Winters, daughter of Gideon Burdick and Catherine Robertson Burdick was born December 16, 1801 at Cayuga, Cayuga County, New York and died August 6, 1852, on the Nebraska plains while enroute to Utah. She was the wife of Hirara Winters whom she married mar-ried in about 1824. From this family descended an illustrious succession of men and women who were destined to play important parts in the growth of the Church and the development of the West. At the time of her death Rebecca Rebec-ca Winters had been assisting in the care of the sick as cholera had appeared in the camp with which she was traveling, and many were stricken. While so engaged en-gaged she became afflicted and at noon, August 6, 1852, although willing and loving hands ministered minister-ed unto her, she passed away. Because there was nothing available with which to make a marker for the grave, William Fletcher Reynolds, father of Ellis Reynolds obtained from Captain William John Hawley an old iron wagon tire which the Captain Cap-tain had picked up on the trail a few days previously and had tied to the rear of his wagon. As the lumbering ox-drawn vehicles moved mov-ed onward, the children noted with amusement the clanging noise of the iron tire as it hit against the brass kettles tied to the rear of the wagon. "We may have some use for this tire," Captain Hawley had said. Shortly after the grave side |