Amanda Lamme

The stone now on the grave is at least her third marker. Her husband, May Jackson Lamme, buried her on a low knoll above the North Platte under a board whose words the traveler Micajah Littleton copied on June 30, 1850. Trail lore adds a marble headstone bought at Fort Kearny and wheeled some 200 miles west, a story also told of two other Nebraska graves. The residents who set the present stone in 1912 were reconstructing her story, and besides misspelling her name they made her a woman of Devonshire, England, a line the stone still carries.

What the plaque says

Amanda Lamme On June 23, 1850, twenty-eight-year-old Amanda Lamme, a California-bound emigrant, died of cholera and was buried near here in what is now private pastureland. She was the wife of M.J. Lamme of Boone County, Missouri, and mother of three daughters. The monument that marks her grave was erected in 1912. It was incorrectly engraved with the name Amanda Lamin. Between 1842 and 1859 an estimated 20,000 emi- grants, about five percent of the total, died along the overland trails. Cholera in 1849, 1850, and 1852 caused many adult deaths. Few children died from this. Malaria, smallpox, measles, and dysentery took a toll of children and adults alike. Although wagons moved slowly, people were sometimes crushed beneath the wheels. Drownings were common at river crossings. Accidental shoot- ings were frequent because many travelers were unfamiliar with the use of firearms. Contrary to movie and television portrayals, few emigrants were killed by Indians. The risk of death probably was about the same for the emigrants as for the people who stayed at home. Nebraska State Historical Society National Park Service

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Courthouse and Jail Rocks — 5.0 mi
  Two clay and sandstone buttes south of Bridgeport that emigrants called a castle, a capitol, a church and coffins before the courthouse and jail names stuck, with a path to their base.
• Chimney Rock National Historic Site — 18 mi
  The spire the trains watched for along the North Platte, measured again and again by the people passing it, and shorter now than when the first of them wrote it down.

More markers nearby

• Courthouse and Jail Rocks — 5.0 mi
• Bridgeport, Nebraska "Trail City, USA" — 6.5 mi
• Mud Springs — 8.5 mi
• Camp Clarke Bridge and Sidney-Black Hills Trail — 9.4 mi