The Singleton train left Council Bluffs in May 1852, the year which is recorded in emigrant annals as the "cholera year."Nothing beyond the usual brushes with Indians occurred to the train until it was well out on the Platte Valley, and then, on the night of June 20, cholera came upon it. Several persons were stricken but that first night none but little Clara succumbed. Early in the morning the mother saw the remains of her only child placed in a rude feed box, which had been detached from the back end of one of the wagons, and buried with scant ceremony beside the road whose course during that frightful year was clearly defined through the fatal Platte Valley by the way-side mounds that registered the awful toll exacted from the multitude whom the lure of gold tempted into the western wilds.

To escape the deadly scourge of the valley the train was forced to hurry on and on ever westward, the length of the marches limited only by the endurance of the teams. Death itself was not permitted to retard the flight for life. The dead hurriedly buried in shallow graves with only the mournful howl of the prairie wolf as a requiem, and the train moved on.

While the bereaved mother stood leaning against the wheel of a wagon and looking in mute agony at the newly made grave of her loved one. E.S. Jewette, a member of the company, sat up there a little headboard, a strip plank, on which was inscribed "Clara J. Fenn, aged 1 year and 10 mos", and at the same time placed in the mourner's hand a slip of paper on which was written the following:

"How oft the tenderest tie is broken,
How oft the parting tear must flow,
The words of friendship scarce are spoken,
Ere those are gone we love below,
Like suns they rise and all is bright,
Like suns they set and all is night.

To Mrs. Fenn, from E.S. Jewette."

THE KOOSKIA MOUNTAINEER WED. NOVEMBER 24, 1920