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I’ve never seen a likeness of our Uncle Cyrus Neff. None was available to the compiler of the family montage, above. Cyrus died of a fever in Winter Quarters, aged 20, and is buried, we’re told, in Grave 94 in the Pioneer Cemetery there. His only grave marker is the collective one visible at the bottom of this picture, under Avard Fairbanks’ sculpture Tragedy at Winter Quarters.

I recently read (but can’t now lay my hands on) a story that Grandpa John Neff was distressed by what he knew about polygamy. He never embraced it himself, and it appears that he may have spoken out against it intemperately during the Nebraska period. When Cyrus died suddenly, if the story is true, Grandpa interpreted the event as evidence that he was wrong to go against the Church leaders, with whom he hastened to make his peace. Too late for Uncle Cyrus, alas.

By all accounts, Uncle Cyrus was a handsome, affable, promising lad. It must have been hard to lose him, on the very brink of adulthood. Didn’t make it any easier that more than 600 others also made it only this far in their western exodus.

1Pictures are also missing here for Aunt Amanda Neff (1836-1840), who died as a child, and for Aunt Mary Ann Neff (1829-1866). We do have a painting of the latter, who became Mrs. Uncle Orrin Porter Rockwell.

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