52W Mark IV – Week 29: Card B3 Sarah Florilla Cook

As is typical of many of our female ancestors, there are not many primary records for my Gx3 Grandmother, Sarah Florilla (“Rilla”) Cook. Most of my sources are second or third-hand – or worse. Rilla was born, married, and died before vital records were kept in Utah, which was not yet a state during her lifetime. The few times Rilla is mentioned in the records are some of the US censuses or in the death registrations of some of her children.

Rilla was born on November 3, 1857 in Cedar City, Utah, to Henry Lyman Cook and Susan Ann Elizabeth Turple. Both of her parents seem to have had colourful lives. Henry was married four times; the last three were polygamous, with Susan being the last of those three. Susan had been married once before, in Nova Scotia, to a musician from Massachusetts. Henry and Susan each moved to Utah after joining the Mormon church. Rilla was the second of four children born to Henry and Susan. While Henry passed away when Rilla was 12, Susan outlived her daughter by 12 years.

When she was 18 years old, Rilla married Horace Conrad Liggett Burgess in Goshen, Utah on March 3, 1876. They had their first child, William Henry, on August 4, 1877. Over the next 16 years, Rilla had eight more children. The youngest, also named Sarah Florilla and who also went by “Rilla”, was born on December 19, 1893.

Sadly, Rilla died two weeks later, on January 4, 1894. While it is largely a matter of speculation given the timing of her death, I would not be surprised if Rilla died due to some complication following childbirth. Rilla was only 36 when she died.

It doesn’t even appear that she has a permanent marker on her grave. The only result I could find after consulting a wide variety of online sources was on Find A Grave. There is a photo of a “temporary” marker, which was taken in 2011. It does not appear that anything more permanent has been installed in the following 14 years.

^{The photo in this screen shot of Rilla’s entry on Find A Grave was taken in 2011.}