Susan O. Hail Grave

Judge W. R. Burton's 1916 history of Adams County called it Lone Grave, a few steps north of the trail on section 18 of Kenesaw Township. He printed the version told by a Mrs. Peterson of Holstein: the husband went on to the Pacific, later bought a slab in Omaha and, by one telling, wheeled it to the grave in a wheelbarrow. Burton added that nothing definite was known of these details. Relic hunters carried the slab off piece by piece, and children of the Waterhouse Sunday School set a second stone and an iron fence.

What the plaque says

Susan O. Hail Grave To overland emigrants the rigors of the trail began with the "Coast of Nebraska," the ridge of sand- hills separating the Platte Valley from the open prairie behind it. Thousands of emigrants passed this way during the peak emigration years of the 1850s. Hundreds died of disease, principally of Asiatic cholera. It is believed that a grave near here is of one such victim. Of all those who died, only a few graves are known. On August 3, 1859, a surveyor noted the grave and its marker: Memory of Susan O. Hail of Lafayette County, Missouri Who died June 2, 1852 Age 34 Yrs. 5 months 12 days That marker, since destroyed, was of polished work- manship, unlike most trail gravestones. It is said her husband returned to Missouri, had the stone made, and brought it to this spot on the prairie. The people of the area have cared for the grave, and the land was purchased in 1958 and presented to Adams County by the Federated Women's Club of Kenesaw and the Adams County Historical Society. Kenesaw Centennial Committee Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rowe Sanctuary — 8.6 mi
  Audubon's sanctuary on the Platte near Gibbon, where the river's sandbars are kept bare so that sandhill cranes, more than a million in the valley each spring, can roost safely at night.
• Fort Kearny State Historical Park — 15 mi
  The 1848 army post on the Platte, built on a strip of Pawnee land bought for $2,000 in goods, where emigrant wagons passed by the thousand and only the cottonwoods outlasted the fort.
• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 24 mi
  Edward Durell Stone's island pavilion in Grand Island and an 1890s railroad town of moved buildings, among them the cottage where Henry Fonda was born in 1905.

More markers nearby

• 1872 Lowell 1972 — 6.5 mi
• 1871 Gibbon 1971 — 7.2 mi
• Joseph E. Johnson and The Huntsman's Echo — 8.6 mi
• Gibbon — 9.0 mi