Moscow, Ohio
Wagon Trains in Ohio
When most people think of wagon trains, they picture something out of Little House on the Prarie, settlers heading west to set up homesteads in states like Nebraska and the Dakotas. They don’t automatically think of Ohio. However, wagon trains did cut through the state, going from the east coast to the west, and in this case, they unfortunately had to leave someone behind.
Diana Whitney’s Grave
Diana Whitney died in 1823, and was buried by the side of US 52, between the towns of Chilo and Felicity. (The Clermont County Historical Society lists the exact location as being in Moscow, Ohio.) With that said, what really matters here is who the young girl was. She was 16 when she passed away while traveling in a wagon train with her parents. It’s suggested that Diana had cholera, but the disease didn’t really come to the area until the 1830s. Dysentery is out as well, due to the time period. Due to a lack of a death certificate, we may never know.
Diana’s family consisted of her parents, Lemuel Whitney and Sarah Pratt Whitney, as well as a number of siblings. Lemuel and Sarah were both born in Massachusetts, as was their daughter, and have family histories that trace their ancestors in the United States back to the 1600s.
Records show that the Whitney family’s journey west stopped around the same time that they lost Diana. They settled in nearby Kentucky, and lived out the rest of their lives in the area.
What they left behind in Ohio is a grave with a simple headstone that now bears a metal marker reading
There rests here in the quiet beauty of the valley of the Ohio, the dust of a young girl.
On July 23, 1823, a wagon train, creaking toward the west, came to a halt close by.
When the train moved forward, one of it’s party had been left along the trail, a hostage against time.
Diana Whitney, sleeping where the morning sun paints with strange scarlets and magic golds the surface of the river, was sixteen on that summer’s day long ago.
In a later summer this tablet was placed on Diana Whitney’s grave to remind those who pause to read of a humble sacrifice woven into our country’s greatness.
The next time you’re driving down US 52 in Clermont County, take the time to stop at Diana’s grave and wonder what the area around it looked like back in 1823.
Found in Ohio 