Carepta Fly

Epitaph

Description

Birth date calculated from age at death as recorded on headstone.

Missing word at beginning of last sentence on Epitaph poem supplied from other headstones with the same poem.

From OCTA Interpretive Marker:

"SAREPTA GORE FLY

The exact location of the Sarepta Fly grave is unknown. The headstone marking her grave was discovered early this century by children playing in a field on the old Dilworth Ranch, not far from this location. It had been covered by prairie grasses and was found half-buried in an animal burrow.

Sarepta Gore, the daughter of James Gore of Andrew County, Missouri, was born January 6, 1841. In 1857 she married William Fly, a twenty-seven year old native of Howard County, Missouri. Fly went to the California gold mines in 1852 and remained there for five years. Sarepta and William were married upon his return to Missouri. The Flys soon took up farming in Kansas, but after three years there they joined the Colorado gold rush and crossed the Plains to a Rocky Mountain mining town.

In 1865 the Fly family decided to return to Missouri. By this time William and Sarepta were the parents of three children: Carey B., born December 14, 1858; John Davis, born October 12, 1860; and James M., born April 21, 1863. When the family reached the Plumb Creek area, Sarepta died. According to family tradition, her death was sudden and unexpected, and the exact cause is unknown. The date, as revealed on the gravestone, was June 16, 1865. A local legend says that William returned years later with the headstone to mark his wife's grave, carrying it in a wheelbarrow from Kearney, but like other similar wheelbarrow stories, this one is probably pure myth.

William Fly settled in Montana, where he again took up mining and later ranching. he remarried in 1872 and became a prominent citizen of the Bozeman area, where he died in December 1887.

The Sarepta Fly headstone was moved to this location in 1930 in preparation for the dedication of the Plum Creek Massacre marker and cemetery. The only actual burial within this cemetery plot, however, is that of a small, unidentified child whose remains were discovered on a farm near Loomis, Nebraska. The reinterment took place in 1963.

Research for this sign by the Dawson County Historical Society

Oregon-California Trails Association

1995

This a part of your American heritage. Honor it, protect it, preserve it for your children.", Here where the silent marble weeps,

A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps.

A heart, within whose sacred cell

peaceful virtues loved to dwell., Wife of Wm Fly