The Andrew Jenson Collection

Andrew Jenson, who later became an Assistant Church Historian, collected material on Mountain Meadows for the immediate need of helping Orson F. Whitney write his History of Utah and the longer-range purpose of one day bringing to light all of “the true facts” of the massacre.¹ Nearly from its inception, the Jenson material has been housed at the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah—a portion of it in the First Presidency’s Office and the rest in the Church Historian’s Office (now the Church History Library). The Jenson material includes statements made not only by massacre perpetrators but also by contemporaries with less self-interested concerns.²

Jenson’s notes and reports, considered alongside statements of massacre participants and other sources, give us a much clearer picture of what happened and when—from the day the Arkansas company passed through Cedar City until most of its members lay dead at Mountain Meadows just over a week later. The documents shed important light on subjects such as Cedar City leaders’ efforts to spy on the Arkansas emigrants and to incite Paiutes against them, killings of emigrants who were away from the main encampment at the Meadows, and the “tan bark council” in Parowan, at which William Dame, Parowan stake president and colonel of the Iron Military District, reportedly authorized the destruction of the emigrant company.³

Andrew Jenson was a convert to the Church who personified the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century quest for documents. It was a time of “documania.” “Every man was his own historian,” wrote George H. Callcott, “searching for himself in the old manuscripts and colonial records, enjoying the mysterious lure of the unknown, standing at the frontier of knowledge.”⁴

Early in his career, Jenson issued an annual chronology of Church events. In the 1880s, he began issuing the Historical Record, a publication devoted to retelling important episodes in Church history. He produced a small biographical encyclopedia of prominent members of the Salt Lake Stake in 1888 as a supplement to the Historical Record. That would later grow into the Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, published in four volumes between 1901 and 1936. In the 1890s, he began to compile historical data on “most of the ecclesiastical units of the Church,” some of which was printed in 1941 in his Encyclopedic History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jenson was also responsible for the ambitious “Journal History,” a chronologically arranged scrapbook of Church history and one of the primary source documents of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Mormonism. Church leaders recognized the talents of the bespectacled, mustached forty-six-year-old by appointing him Assistant Church Historian in 1897.⁵

Five years before that appointment, during the third week of January 1892, Jenson was invited to the Church President’s office, where he received a startling assignment. He was asked to go to southern Utah “on a special mission to gather historical information, concerning the Mountain Meadow massacre.” The next day he returned to the office to pick up a “letter of instructions,” which became his credentials for obtaining details about the horrific event.⁶ “To whom it may concern,” the letter began:

Bishop Orson F. Whitney has been selected to write a History of Utah. Among other important subjects that will have to be mentioned is what is known as the Mountain Meadow Massacre. There have been many facts already published concerning this affair; but there is an opinion prevailing that all the light that can be obtained has not been thrown upon it. Many of those who had personal knowledge concerning what occurred at that time have passed away. Others are passing away; and ere long there will be no person alive who will know anything about it, only as they learn it from that which is written. We are desirous to obtain all the information that is possible upon this subject; not necessarily for publication, but that the Church may have it in its possession for the vindication of innocent parties, and that the world may know, when the time comes, the true facts connected with it.

Elder Andrew Jenson, who is the bearer of this letter, has been selected for the purpose of conversing with such brethren and sisters as may be able to impart information upon this subject. We desire to say to you that he can be trusted, and any communications that you wish to make to him will be confidential, unless you wish them published. Much information might be published, but it might be prudent to not publish names. Upon this point the wishes of those who have this information, if expressed to Brother Jenson, will be fully respected.

The letter was dated January 21, 1892, and signed by the members of the First Presidency: Wilford Woodruff, George Q. Cannon, and Joseph F. Smith.⁷

The next day Jenson left Salt Lake City for southern Utah on a Utah Central Railway train. He reached the terminus at Milford, Utah, the next morning. Time was of the essence. For several years Orson F. Whitney, a bishop serving Salt Lake City’s Eighteenth Ward who would later become an Apostle, had been working on the first volume of what would become a multivolume history of Utah. But he was in trouble. Whitney’s publisher, George Q. Cannon & Sons, feared “serious financial consequences” and “a loss of reputation through broken promises” if the volume was not released in March, and Whitney’s manuscript, which was to include an account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, was in disarray. Whitney was nervous and seemed on the brink of a breakdown.⁸

George Q. Cannon, publisher and member of the First Presidency, offered Whitney some help. Could Whitney use the ghostwriting of Cannon’s son, John Q.? Earlier in John Q.’s career, in the wake of a personal scandal, he had been released as a counselor in the Church’s Presiding Bishopric. But no one questioned his ability, especially his ready pen, and in October 1892 he would professionally resurrect himself as editor of the Church’s newspaper, the Deseret News. Whitney asked John Q. to help draft the portion of the text dealing with the massacre at Mountain Meadows.⁹

Cannon began the research for his writing and was disappointed to find “nothing except what has already been printed” on the subject. Not satisfied merely to rehash old printed accounts, he soon learned that new information could be obtained “if we take the right steps to secure it.”¹⁰ That became Jenson’s assignment, and the notes he took south with him included a set of John Q. Cannon’s questions.¹¹

Jenson kept a diary of his travel and investigation, which identified the dates and places of his labors, along with some of the people who gave statements to him:

Saturday 23 [January 1892]. I took the stage at Milford, and traveled 33 miles via Minersville, Adamsville and Greenville to Beaver, where I arrived about 1 p.m. and put up with Bro. John R. Murdock.

Sunday 24. I spent the day in Beaver speaking three times (once in the Sunday School, and twice in the public meeting) and had a good enjoyable time, speaking about historical matters with considerable freedom. I also made a few visits during the day and again stopped over night with Bro. Murdock.

Monday 25. About noon in company with Ellott Willden I started with team (horses belong to Bro. Murdock and buggy to Ellott Willden) and traveled 35 miles to Parowan, calling on several persons on our way to obtain the desired information. . . .

Tuesday 26. We continued our journey (19 miles) via Summit to Cedar City, where we put up for the night with C. J. Arthur, and made a number of visits in the evening to obtain information.

Wednesday 27. Spent the forenoon getting information from Daniel S. McFarlane, and Brother Arthur. About 3 p.m we started on our return trip for Parowan, where we arrived about dark . . . I sent a telegram to Abraham H. Cannon about Willden wanting $50 for some information he could give.

Thursday 28. Drove 35 miles back to Beaver, where I received an answer to my telegram of yesterday to the effect that they [Church leaders] would allow Wilden no money; but as he allowed <refused> to give the information without, I agreed to pay him myself if neither the Church or Cannon and sons would. I stopped over night with Prest. Charles D. White, after visiting Brother Nowers, for information.

Friday 29. Spent all day at Ellott Willden’s house getting information from him; again stopped over night with Bro. White.

Saturday 30. Spent the forenoon finishing up my labors with Willden, and about noon started for Milford with the mail. . . . At 7 p.m. I boarded the train at Milford and traveled all night [to Salt Lake City].¹²

Jenson’s trip through southern Utah had an interesting crosscurrent. His travel companion for much of the journey was fifty-eight-year-old Ellott Willden, who had a role in the massacre. Willden was ostensibly obliging, furnishing a buggy and, presumably, suggestions for many of the people and places the two men visited. But even as southern Utahns gave their reports to Jenson, Willden was tightlipped. Because the publishing of Whitney’s history was a semiprivate venture with the hope of a profit, Willden wanted to be paid for his information. At Parowan, he proposed his terms. He wanted fifty dollars and a set of the forthcoming multivolume history—worth another thirty dollars.¹³ Jenson sent a telegram to Church leaders endorsing Willden’s terms.¹⁴

When the men returned to Beaver, Willden wrote a letter to the First Presidency in which he explained himself. “I have just returned from a four days’ trip with Elder Andrew Jenson to Cedar City during which we gleaned some valuable information concerning that which is mentioned in your letter of instruction to him,” he wrote. “I am still in possession of more valuable data and facts which the Church would be perfectly welcome to, were it wanted for Church purposes alone; but as I understand from your letter already referred to that the information is wanted for Bp. Whitney’s history of Utah about to be published, I think I am justly entitled to some little remuneration.”¹⁵

George Q. Cannon & Sons and Church leaders were willing to meet Willden only partway. They approved giving him a set of the history, but fifty dollars—a considerable sum at the time—seemed too much.¹⁶ Jenson, who was on the scene and understood the value of Willden’s testimony, refused to argue. He “agreed to pay him myself if neither the Church or Cannon and sons would.”¹⁷ He gave Willden a promissory note saying as much.¹⁸

The two men huddled at Willden’s house, and Jenson did his best to get Willden’s story written down. When they were through, Willden had provided an impressive body of information: three of his own first-person accounts of massacre-related events, corrections to the massacre account in Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of Utah, answers to some of the questions posed by John Q. Cannon, commentary on an account by Willden’s brother-in-law Joseph Clewes, and several other bits of information.¹⁹ Jenson got his money’s worth.

Jenson lingered at Willden’s home until joining the mail coach for its half-day trip to Milford and the railroad for the trip home. Jenson’s nine-day, whirlwind circuit took him 620 miles, 176 of those miles by grueling wagon travel through the southern Utah settlements of Beaver, Parowan, and Cedar City during the wintertime. “I . . . have been successful in getting the desired information for the First Presidency,” he wrote upon returning to Salt Lake City. “But it has been an unpleasant business. The information that I received made me suffer mentally and deprived me of my sleep at nights; and I felt tired and fatigued, both mentally and physically when I returned home.”²⁰

Jenson’s travels netted him a treasure trove of information from the following individuals, some of whose accounts are included in this issue of BYU Studies and all of which are included in Mountain Meadows Massacre Documents.

Charles W. Willden Sr., Statement, February 18, 1882

Charles William Willden Sr. (1806–83) was born to Jeremiah and Elizabeth Revill Willden in Anston, Yorkshire, England. He married Eleanor Turner on January 21, 1833, in Laughton-en-le-Morthen, Yorkshire; approximately three years later the couple moved their family to Sheffield, where Charles worked in the steel mills. He converted to Mormonism in 1839, his wife four years later. After immigrating to the United States in 1849, the family worked a small farm near Council Bluffs, Iowa, for two years. Once in Utah, Charles’s experience in steelmaking made him an ideal candidate for the Cedar City “Iron Mission”—the Latter-day Saints hoped to establish iron foundries in southern Utah. The Willdens arrived in Cedar City in October 1852.²¹

Charles served in the Iron Militia along with his sons Ellott, Charles, John, and Feargus, though there is no evidence that any Willden but Ellott participated in events at Mountain Meadows.²²

The elder Charles Willden, however, claimed to witness events leading to the massacre. He testified that fifteen to twenty emigrants had taunted and threatened local people at a time when rumors were circulating of the arrival of U.S. troops through nearby Frémont pass. The acts of these emigrants—perhaps outliers who had joined the Arkansas company or young drovers who had consumed too much of the local sagebrush whiskey—created “grave fears” among the local citizens, he said. According to Willden, the settlers “felt that their lives were in jeapardy from molestation or attack by said company and incoming U.S. troops.”²³

Willden’s 1882 statement had been sworn before Josiah Rogerson, a court reporter at John D. Lee’s two trials. Jenson apparently secured the original statement from Charles Willden’s son Ellott while in southern Utah. He then made a copy of the original to submit to the First Presidency as part of the report on his fact-finding mission. The original differs slightly from Jenson’s copy. For example, the original has several strikeouts not found in the copy made by Jenson.²⁴

Mary S. Campbell, Statement, January 24, 1892

Mary Steele Campbell (1824–1904) was born in Kilbirnie, Ayrshire, Scotland, the daughter of John and Janet Steele.²⁵ Mary and her husband, Alexander, were among the first settlers of Cedar City, where Alexander was employed mining coal for the town’s iron furnace.²⁶ Mary joined the Cedar City Female Benevolent Society on February 4, 1857.²⁷ Her husband was a member of a Cedar City company of the Iron Militia but is not listed among those who participated in the massacre.²⁸

Mary and Alexander had three children while residing in Cedar.²⁹ By 1859, they had moved to Beaver, Utah, where they had several more children.³⁰ Alexander died March 14, 1882, in Beaver, and Mary also died there in August 1904.³¹

On January 24, 1892, Jenson interviewed Mary Campbell, which resulted in field notes and a final written report. There are subtle differences between the field notes and the report. For example, the field notes merely reported that the Arkansas company threatened the people of Cedar, while the report expanded it to say, “The profanity and bad language used by them, and the oaths they uttered, were something terrible.”³²

Campbell was one of a half-dozen southern Utah settlers who remembered hearing stories of the company’s purported misconduct before the emigrants reached their communities. In reporting on the group’s behavior in Cedar City, Campbell particularly indicted the conduct of a man riding a gray horse—as did other Cedar City citizens. Whether all of her memories accurately described events or anachronistically reconstructed them can never be known for sure.³³

Campbell did not confine her criticisms to the emigrants. She suggested that local people were on edge before the outsiders arrived and that Cedar City stake president Isaac C. Haight had hinted about getting some of the emigrants’ stock from them.³⁴ Further, she claimed that Cedar City leaders incited local Paiutes and monitored events at the Meadows—they knew what was happening. She said that when the massacre was over, settlers were warned “to keep everything quiet.” They were told that “if you should see a dead man lying in your wood pile, you must not say a word, but go about your business.”³⁵

William Barton, Statement, January 25, 1892

William Barton (1821–1902) was born in Lebanon, Illinois, to John and Sally (Sarah) Penn Barton. William married Sarah Esther West at Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1845. Their first child was born in Lebanon in 1848.³⁶ The family crossed the plains to Utah in 1851, locating in Parowan in November of that year.³⁷ William served as a counselor to Bishop Tarleton Lewis and in 1857 was a second lieutenant in the Iron Military District of the territorial militia.³⁸ He was well placed to know what was going on both in his village and in the southern militia command, but he was not present at the massacre.

Barton was called to settle in Minersville, Utah, in 1858 to mine and smelt lead. In 1860, he moved to Beaver, where he became a mill operator. In the late 1860s, he moved his milling business to Greenville, Utah, and in the early 1890s, he moved to Paragonah, Utah, where he farmed with his brother. Barton died on October 11, 1902.³⁹

Jenson produced both field notes and a final report of his 1892 interview with William Barton. As with other interviews Jenson conducted, ambiguous portions of the notes are clarified in his final report. The field notes record, “Later Jesse N. Smith and Edward Dalton were sent to Pinto to ascertain how things were moving in the Meadows,” and when they returned, they “said that Lee and other[s] were taking on the attitude toward the emigrants.”⁴⁰

The finished report clarified what was meant by “taking on the attitude,” explaining that “John D. Lee and other white men were assuming a very hostile attitude toward the emigrants in connection with the Indians.” Barton remembered that when word first reached Parowan of a difficulty at the Meadows, it was thought to be strictly an emigrant-Indian affair. Colonel William H. Dame convened a local council, which decided on a hands-off policy—Parowan would give help only if the emigrants requested it. The decision reflected Brigham Young’s recent counsel that the Saints not become involved in emigrant-Indian conflicts while Utah faced the prospect of war with approaching U.S. troops. Dame decided to send Smith and Dalton to investigate the situation; the men returned, expressing “much disgust” over how Lee and other settlers were acting at the Meadows. Isaac Haight and John D. Lee had not kept Dame, the militia commander, informed of their actions.⁴¹

Barton’s statement also included another key piece of information. On Wednesday, September 9, 1857—two days before the final slaughter—Haight and his counselor Elias Morris went to Parowan seeking Dame’s authority to use the militia against the emigrants. Dame convened a council of Church and militia leaders, which decided just the opposite: the militia should go “to the Meadows, to call the Indians off, gather up the stock of the emigrants and let them depart in peace.” But Haight was unwilling to let the decision stand. Following the council, he sought a private conference with Dame and obtained his approval to kill the emigrants. According to Barton, a repentant Dame later traveled to the Meadows to stop the slaughter but arrived too late.⁴²

John H. Henderson, Statement, January 25, 1892

A native of Belview, Missouri, John Harris Henderson (1831–1915) was born to James and Anna Harris Henderson. He traveled to Utah in 1847, arriving in Salt Lake on October 1 of the same year. Early in 1857, he married Cecilia Jane Carter. That year he served in Parowan as a private in Company C of the Iron Military District of the territorial militia.⁴³ He was living in Parowan when the Arkansas company passed through.⁴⁴ In addition to Jenson’s field notes of his interview with Henderson, the latter’s comments also appear in two other places in Jenson’s notes.⁴⁵

Henderson recalled skirmishes in and around Beaver between Indians and emigrants who were members of the Missouri company, which was traveling several days behind the Arkansas company. Henderson was part of a militia contingent from Parowan that was sent to help protect the Missouri company, and he recalled spending “a whole day” with them. He noted that Colonel William Dame, after addressing the Beaver disturbance, started “for the Meadows.” Henderson also compared the conduct of the Missouri and Arkansas emigrant companies, reporting favorably on the Missouri group but sharing secondhand reports of cursing and swearing by members of the Arkansas party.⁴⁶

Jenson’s interview with Henderson resulted in just over a page of field notes concerning Henderson’s remembrance of the Missouri company.⁴⁷

Henderson resided in the Parowan area the rest of his life, where he served in a number of civic offices, including supervisor of roads, justice of the peace, and county treasurer.⁴⁸ He died in Parowan March 31, 1915.⁴⁹

Christopher J. Arthur, Statement, January 26 or 27, 1892

Christopher J. Arthur (1832–1918) was born at Abersychan, Monmouthshire, Wales, the son of Christopher Abel and Ann Jones Arthur.⁵⁰ Arthur and his family immigrated to Utah in 1853 and were called to settle in Cedar City in 1854.⁵¹ His training as a warehouseman and store clerk served him well when he was given the responsibility of keeping the Iron Company’s books and clerking at the company’s Cedar City store.⁵²

Arthur married Caroline Haight, daughter of Isaac C. Haight, on December 30, 1854. At the time of the massacre, Arthur served as an adjutant in the local militia.⁵³ In later years, he served Cedar City as its mayor, bishop of the local congregation, and finally as a local Church patriarch, giving blessings of comfort and promise to the Saints. Arthur was described as a devoted thespian and musician.⁵⁴ He was called as a possible juror and witness at Lee’s first trial but served in neither capacity.⁵⁵

Jenson’s 1892 interview with Arthur resulted in a page and a half of field notes and a two-page report; neither has been available to researchers until now. Arthur claimed that some of the emigrants came into the Iron Company store and became “very angry, and made use of some very rough and profane language” when told that the goods they wanted were unavailable. The local police tried to arrest the men, but the emigrants united to resist their efforts.⁵⁶

Arthur’s account had a curious footnote. He claimed that on the day of the massacre, he and Isaac Haight’s counselor Elias Morris carried an express to the Meadows calling off the slaughter.⁵⁷ Morris, responding to this claim, said that “neither he nor Arthur carried anything in writing” but asserted that Haight asked Morris to “do everything possible to avert the shedding of blood.”⁵⁸ Arthur stated that an ill horse delayed the two, and they arrived after the killing was done. ⁵⁹

Daniel S. Macfarlane, Statement, January 27, 1892

Daniel S. Macfarlane (1837–1914) was born in Stirling, Scotland, on June 21, 1837, to John and Annabella Sinclair Macfarlane. During the 1840s, his immediate family members converted to Mormonism, except his father, who died in Scotland in 1846. His mother, Annabella, and her children embarked for America in February 1852 in a company of Church members led by missionary Isaac C. Haight, who returned to England after guiding the company to St. Louis. In October 1853, after completing his mission to England, Isaac married the widowed Annabella in Salt Lake City as a plural wife, and they set out for Cedar City “the morning after the marriage.”⁶⁰

In 1862, Daniel Macfarlane married Temperance Keturah Haight, a daughter of Isaac Haight and Eliza Ann Snyder, making Isaac both his stepfather and his father-in-law. The marriage also made Christopher J. Arthur his brother-in-law.⁶¹

In September 1857, the twenty-year-old Macfarlane was a militia adjutant.⁶² On the day of the massacre, according to John D. Lee, Macfarlane carried “orders from one part of the field to another.”⁶³ He conveyed a message from John M. Higbee to Lee—who was negotiating with the Arkansas company—that urged him to hasten the emigrants’ departure from their wagon enclosure.⁶⁴

Macfarlane provided enough information to Jenson to fill ten pages with notes.⁶⁵ It was not the only statement Macfarlane made. In 1896, he swore an affidavit before his son-in-law Mayhew Dalley—one of several affidavits made in an effort to boost Higbee’s reputation after the federal government dropped murder charges against him.⁶⁶ Both statements have similar themes. Macfarlane claimed he and others went to the Meadows on an errand of mercy, believing the Indians had killed the emigrants and that help was needed to bury the dead. Both of his statements minimized his actions in the final killing and sought to shift the responsibility for the massacre from Haight and Higbee to Lee and Dame. Macfarlane emphasized Indian participation and strongly indicted the emigrants for misconduct, including, he claimed, their supposed use of strychnine to poison springs and kill Indians.⁶⁷

In some places, Macfarlane’s statements contradicted the testimony of others, but he did provide interesting details not found elsewhere. For instance, he told of a fearful young emigrant who left the death march and returned briefly to the Arkansans’ fortified camp, fearing “treachery.” Macfarlane also described how Lee later used some of the captured cattle to settle private debts.⁶⁸

Willson G. Nowers, Statement, January 28, 1892,
and Letter, January 1892

Willson Gates Nowers (1828–1922) was born in Dover, Kent, England, the son of Edward and Susannah Gates Nowers.⁶⁹ As a young man, Willson was apprenticed to a carriage maker, an apprenticeship that proved irksome and made him hope for a freer life in America. His dream was fulfilled when fellow workers shared with him the teachings of the Latter-day Saints, and a way opened up for him to cross the Atlantic with a Mormon emigrating company.⁷⁰

After reaching the United States, Nowers crossed the plains to Great Salt Lake City in 1851. In 1853, he moved to Parowan, where he helped build a mill for George A. Smith. Nowers married Sarah Anderson at Parowan in 1855. The next year they were among the first residents of the new settlement at Beaver, about thirty-four miles north of Parowan.⁷¹

Nowers became prominent in local affairs, serving at various times as Beaver City recorder; Beaver County treasurer, recorder, and surveyor; a justice of the peace; and a city councilman. The Church also made use of his talents. He served for many years as a member of the Beaver stake high council and as the Beaver stake clerk. In 1882, he embarked on a mission to Great Britain but returned later that year “in broken health.”⁷² Nowers died on May 17, 1922, in Beaver.⁷³

Jenson received information from Nowers on two separate occasions. The first was an interview that resulted in just a page of field notes. After the interview, Nowers evidently took time to review what he knew about events in 1857. He then wrote to Jenson, providing three pages of information.⁷⁴

Nowers’s statement did not directly relate to the events at the Meadows. As a resident of Beaver, he gave information about the attack in his village by a rogue band of Pahvants upon the Missouri company. The attack occurred less than two days after Lee led the first assault on the Arkansas company at Mountain Meadows, more than ninety miles to the south. In the case of the Beaver fight, Dame moved swiftly to protect the emigrants. Nowers’s statements identified several events that took place in Parowan and Beaver in relation to the attack on the Missouri company, but his dating of events was off in several instances.⁷⁵

Later, Nowers wrote in his letter to Jenson, “Since considering the matter upon which we were conversing I have been able to recall the facts more correctly.” Once more, Nowers’s main concern was to tell what happened at Beaver with the Missouri company. But this time there were also details about Mountain Meadows.⁷⁶

Nowers admitted that many Mormons had refused to trade even food with the Arkansas company, though their action was contrary to official Church policy as he understood it. On the other hand, Nowers indicted the taunting of one man in the Arkansas company at Beaver and the “cursing and swearing” of others. “The whole country was in an uproar,” he said. Although Nowers’s letter confirmed other Mormon memories, perhaps enlarged by the passing years, it was hard for him, or any other witness, to point to a single fact that could possibly have justified the fate of the emigrants at Mountain Meadows.⁷⁷

Ellott Willden, Statements and Corrections,
January 29–30, 1892

Ellott Willden (1833–1920) was born on September 28, 1833, in Laughton-en-le-Morthen, Yorkshire, England, to Charles and Eleanor Turner Willden. His parents embraced the Latter-day Saint faith in England, and the family immigrated to the United States in 1849. They lived in Iowa before traveling to Utah in 1852, where they settled in Cedar City.⁷⁸

Ellott married Emma Jane Clewes in Cedar City in 1856. She was the younger sister of Joseph Clewes, who carried messages between Cedar City and Mountain Meadows during the week of the massacre.⁷⁹ As a private in the Cedar City militia, Ellott was present during the massacre on Friday, September 11, 1857.⁸⁰

Willden moved to Beaver around 1859, and he and other family members established Willden’s Fort on Cove Creek, twenty-five miles north of Beaver, in 1860–61. The family returned to Beaver in 1865. They sold the fort to the Church in 1867, and shortly thereafter it was rebuilt and renamed Cove Fort.⁸¹

For the rest of Willden’s life, he resided in Beaver, where he organized the town’s first band—he played the organ and violin—and worked in various capacities, including as justice of the peace, Indian interpreter for the district court, and state inspector of weights and measures.⁸²

A grand jury indicted him in September 1874 for complicity in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and authorities arrested him in August 1876. His case was postponed for more than two and a half years but was finally dismissed in March 1879, never coming to trial.⁸³

Willden’s wife Emma Clewes died in 1890. He married Christiana Brown in February 1892, shortly after his interviews with Jenson. Willden died in Beaver in 1920.⁸⁴

Willden provided key testimony on such things as the changing plans of attack, Lee’s role, the first assault at the Meadows, the killing of three emigrants on the road outside Cedar City, the conduct of Indians during the siege, Willden and Clewes’s desperate run through gunfire in Indian dress, the number of militia and where they came from, the location of militia camps, the councils and plans before the killing, the rationale for the slaughter, the events of the massacre, the burying of the bodies, and the disposition of the emigrants’ property. Along the way, Willden corrected more than a dozen small errors that had crept into previous narratives.⁸⁵

Willden also admitted to having been at the Meadows before the first shot was fired. Haight had sent him west, along with Josiah Reeves and perhaps Benjamin Arthur, to learn of the intention of the Arkansas company and to build a case against them. Accordingly, they visited the Arkansans’ encampment and witnessed key events during the week that followed. ⁸⁶

Like the statements of most of the Mormon witnesses, Willden’s revelations must have had an element of restraint. There was little self-incrimination as he insisted that he had no role in the initial attack or in the final killings. The rest of his information was more convincing. The details he provided fit a general mosaic of events and testimony offered by others.

Mary H. White, Statement, January 1892

Mary Hannah Burton White (1818–94) was born on August 31, 1818, in Putneyville, New York, the daughter of Samuel Burton Jr. and Hannah Shipley Burton.⁸⁷ Mary’s family moved to Ohio, where they joined the Church, Mary being baptized in the spring of 1838. The family later moved to Illinois, where Mary married Samuel Dennis White in October 1841. Leaving Nauvoo, Illinois, in February 1846, the couple spent several years in Atchison County, Missouri, before moving west in the spring of 1850. They lived for three years in Lehi, Utah, and were then called to settle in Iron County.⁸⁸ They moved to Hamilton’s Fort, just south of Cedar City.⁸⁹

At the time of the massacre, Samuel White was a private in the territorial militia at Hamilton’s Fort and a member of the Cedar stake high council.⁹⁰ He is identified as a massacre participant in a list at the end of John D. Lee’s memoirs, Mormonism Unveiled, but is not mentioned in the narrative of the massacre earlier in the book.⁹¹

Samuel’s widow, Mary, spoke with Andrew Jenson at Beaver in January 1892. She reported that Samuel had “opposed the killing of the company.” According to Mary, before the massacre, Indians had asked Samuel why the Mormons did not kill the emigrants as planned in Cedar City. Samuel responded that the Mormons had been referring to “the soldiers who were coming in, . . . not women and children.” Mary said that when Isaac Haight afterward learned of the conversation, he appeared upset, telling Samuel “he wished they would let the Indians alone.”⁹²

Samuel’s brother Joel was a massacre participant and testified at the John D. Lee trials in 1875 and 1876.⁹³ Samuel White died in October 1868 without leaving a written account of the massacre. Mary died in Beaver on December 2, 1894.⁹⁴

Elias Morris, Statement, February 2, 1892

Two days after returning to Salt Lake, Jenson interviewed Elias Morris (1825–98). Few Mormons had such a sterling reputation as Morris. Born to John and Barbara Thomas Morris in Llanfair-Talhaiarn, Denbighshire, Wales, he converted to Mormonism in 1849 and in early adulthood distinguished himself in Church activity and professional enterprise. Apostle John Taylor recognized his abilities as a mason, mechanic, and furnace maker and asked him to immigrate to Utah in 1852 to help with the territory’s budding sugar industry. The next year, Church leaders assigned him to oversee the building of the masonry, blast furnaces, and iron works at Cedar City. In 1856, Isaac Haight made him one of his counselors in the Cedar stake presidency.⁹⁵

Morris later returned to Salt Lake City, where his building company was responsible for the construction of some of the major buildings in the city’s new commercial district, as well as for the blast furnaces for almost all of the territory’s mines. In 1890, he became bishop of Salt Lake City’s Fifteenth Ward. “He was a man of great ability and resource, while his philanthropy was a proverb,” wrote the Deseret News upon his death.⁹⁶

At the time the Arkansas company passed through Cedar City, Morris was scouting the mountain passes east of town for U.S. troops. But on returning home, he may have gotten an earful from his mother, Barbara Morris, who had been crossing the road east of her home when she was reportedly accosted by an emigrant. Elias Morris said, “One man on horseback, a tall fellow, addressed her in a very insulting manner, and while he brandished his pistol in her face he made use of the most insinuating and abusive language, and with fearful oaths declared that he and his companions expected soon to return to use up the ‘Mormons.’”⁹⁷

This passage was typical of the rest of Morris’s statement to Jenson—self-serving and without a hint of Morris’s personal involvement in events leading to the massacre. Rather, he described his role as advocating delay and forbearance when the topic of punishing the Arkansas company came up. Likewise, choosing his words carefully, Morris refused any responsibility in the “tan bark council” that led to the decision to kill the emigrants, though he was present when Dame and Haight discussed the matter.⁹⁸ Morris’s full role in the massacre planning and discussion can never be known, and his statement to Jenson was not entirely forthright, though it did provide some useful details.

Jenson Continues to Collect Material

The statements of Charles Willden Sr., Mary S. Campbell, William Barton, John H. Henderson, Christopher J. Arthur, Daniel S. Macfarlane, Willson G. Nowers, Ellott Willden, Mary H. White, and Elias Morris were among the main documents in the Jenson collection.⁹⁹ Over time Jenson gathered additional information. After returning to Salt Lake City from his fact-finding mission, he took his rough field notes and prepared more formal transcripts—and like many note takers, he expanded his sometimes cryptic notes from memory as he did so. He also rearranged information to make it more understandable or omitted details that may have seemed unimportant. Scholars must use both the field notes and the finished transcripts to get as full a version of events as possible.

On February 2, Jenson had “a lengthy conversation” with First Presidency counselors George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith, reporting on his successful mission to southern Utah and sharing what he had learned about the massacre.¹⁰⁰ He must have also told them about the payment he and Willden had agreed upon and the financial note or obligation he had given his interviewee.

Eleven days later, the troublesome chapter 32 of Whitney’s History of Utah, with all its new details of the massacre, was ready for review. “I spent the day in the office,” wrote Church President Wilford Woodruff in his journal. “I listened to the reading of a Chapter in the History of Utah, including the Mountain Meadow Massacre which was a painful Chapter.”¹⁰¹ The process required most of the day and occupied Apostle Franklin D. Richards and perhaps the two other members of the volume’s reading committee, Robert T. Burton and John Jaques, as well as A. Milton Musser.¹⁰²

Despite determined efforts, the first volume of Whitney’s History did not meet its announced date of publication (though its frontispiece would perpetuate the date of “March 1892”). Apostle Abraham Cannon of George Q. Cannon & Sons described the project in his diary on February 19, 1892. “I found that the manuscript of the first volume of the History of Utah has been finished by O. F. Whitney and John Q. [Cannon], and the most of it is now in print,” he wrote. “I am now doing my utmost to crowd ahead the plates so that the binding may be done without any delay. We desire to deliver the book during the next month.”¹⁰³ In May the Deseret News announced at last that the volume “is now ready, and will be furnished to subscribers.”¹⁰⁴ The next month, the First Presidency paid Jenson’s obligation to Willden.¹⁰⁵

The indefatigable Jenson was not through collecting Mountain Meadows material. In mid-February he embarked upon another tour through Latter-day Saint settlements to lecture and collect historical data. This time he traveled in his new buggy, his wife Bertha at his side. The trip ranged through southern Utah, northern Arizona, and southern Nevada, and Jenson again chronicled his labors with mathematical sums. He traveled 1,435 miles by team and preached fifty-two times, he said—“1,350 miles with my own conveyance.”¹⁰⁶ Along the way he collected three more statements by massacre participants.

Richard S. Robinson, Statement, circa March 1892

The first of these undated statements was by Richard Smith Robinson (1830–1902).¹⁰⁷

Robinson was born on November 25, 1830, in Upton, Cheshire, England, the son of Edward and Mary Smith Robinson.¹⁰⁸ After embracing Mormonism, the Robinson family immigrated to the United States in 1842, stopping first in St. Louis, next in Nauvoo, and then in Iowa for three years.¹⁰⁹ Robinson reached Salt Lake City in 1849 before heading to the California gold fields at age nineteen.¹¹⁰

Robinson returned to Utah in 1852 and settled in American Fork, where he married Elizabeth Wootton. In 1854, the couple was sent to colonize Harmony, where Richard helped lay the rock and adobe for a fort. In the fall of 1856, the Robinsons, along with Rufus C. Allen and Amos G. Thornton, were among the first settlers at Pinto, located about six miles from Mountain Meadows. Though Pinto was the closest settlement to the Meadows, no Pinto residents are known to have participated in the massacre.¹¹¹

In the fall of 1857, Robinson was an Indian missionary and a second lieutenant in the territorial militia at Pinto. Following the massacre, Robinson served as branch president and bishop in Pinto, 1859–76; branch president in what is now Alton, Utah; and bishop in Kanab, 1884–87.¹¹² He was a witness for the defense at the first John D. Lee trial; his testimony focused on what he observed in Pinto at the time of the massacre.¹¹³ He died in Sink Valley, Kane County, Utah, on May 8, 1902.¹¹⁴

Robinson’s short statement confirmed Joseph Clewes’s claim about being sent to the Meadows on Monday, September 7, to call off the hostilities. It also confirmed that Haight sent another expressman, James Haslam, to Brigham Young for instructions. Robinson remembered Clewes’s message as saying that “Lee was to draw the Indians off and satisfy them with beef if necessary but not to kill the emigrants.”¹¹⁵ If the accounts of Clewes and Robinson are accurate, Haight knew of the initial attack on the Arkansas company before sending Clewes and Haslam on their missions. The precise wording of Haight’s message to Young remains one of the mysteries of the massacre story, as the dispatch has long since disappeared.

Samuel Knight, Statement, circa March 28, 1892

Jenson’s second additional statement came from Samuel Knight (1832–1910), whom he praised for rendering “efficient aid” in his historical labors.¹¹⁶ Knight was the son of Newel and Sally Colburn Knight, two of the Church’s earliest and staunchest converts from the famed Colesville Branch in the state of New York.¹¹⁷ Samuel was born on October 14, 1832, in Jackson County, Missouri, after the Colesville Saints moved to the region. His mother died less than two years after his birth, and his father perished in 1847 en route to Utah “on Ponca Indian Lands” in Knox, Nebraska.¹¹⁸ The orphaned Samuel successfully reached Utah in 1847. By 1854, Knight was in southern Utah laboring as a missionary to the Indians and helped found the Indian missionary outpost of Santa Clara.¹¹⁹

In 1856, Knight married Caroline Beck, a recent Latter-day Saint convert from Denmark. In August 1857, the month before the massacre, their first child was born, a daughter. The birthing took place in the family’s wagon box on Jacob Hamblin’s newly established ranch at Mountain Meadows. The new mother did not do well. She took cold and never fully recovered. Despite her semi-invalid condition, she and Samuel would become the parents of five more daughters.¹²⁰

When the Arkansas company reached Mountain Meadows in September 1857, the Knights were living in their wagon box at the north end of the Meadows “by the side of Jake Hamblins shanty.”¹²¹ Knight pointed the emigrants to a camping spot at the south end of the Meadows, about four miles away.¹²² The location, away from the Knights’ and Hamblins’ cattle, was the usual place for emigrants to camp and refresh their animals before taking the next difficult section of the California road, with its long stretches of desert.

Knight received orders from Cedar City to rouse Paiutes near Fort Clara “to arm themselves and prepare to attack the emigrant train.”¹²³ At first, the plan called for an attack at the junction of the Santa Clara River and Magotsu Creek.

Knight went as ordered despite Caroline’s precarious health. Because of his mission, he was not at the Meadows when Lee led the initial precipitous attack on the emigrants Monday morning, September 7. But Knight, with his team and wagon, were mustered into action on September 11, the day of the final massacre. Knight’s wagon, “loaded with some guns, some bedding and a few individuals,” led the procession out of the emigrants’ redoubt and up the road to the north. Knight claimed that when the slaughter began, he was fully occupied in trying to manage his young horse team, which was spooked by the gunfire.¹²⁴ Lee, on the other hand, claimed that Knight helped kill adult passengers in his wagon.¹²⁵

Knight spoke or wrote of the massacre on at least five occasions. He talked with Brigham Young’s counselor, Daniel H. Wells, probably before Lee’s second trial, though no details of their conversation were preserved. At the trial, he testified for the prosecution. Jenson interviewed Knight about the massacre in March 1892. Jenson’s field notes of their conversation survive, but a formal report is lacking. Knight discussed the massacre again with Apostle Abraham H. Cannon in 1895, and Cannon recorded the details in his diary. Finally, Knight swore an affidavit before David Morris on August 11, 1904. ¹²⁶

Knight’s statement to Jenson carried the same themes as his expanded formal affidavit of 1904. Several pieces of information, however, did not make their way into his later statement. For instance, Knight told Jenson that the Arkansas company began to filter into the Meadows on Friday or Saturday before the first attack—important information for dating their arrival. In the Jenson interview, Knight also revealed that “about 4” of the perpetrators were from Santa Clara, one of the few sources to place men from this community at the final killing.¹²⁷

David W. Tullis, Statement, circa April 8, 1892

Jenson’s travels took him to Pinto during the second week of April 1892, which dates the statement of David Wilson Tullis (1833–1902), the third man with whom Jenson spoke about the massacre during his trip.¹²⁸

Tullis was born on June 3, 1833, in Fifeshire, Scotland, to David and Euphemia Wilson Tullis. In 1851, he “emigrated to America with [his] parents” aboard the ship Olympus; he was baptized into the Church during the voyage. He stayed in St. Louis before crossing the plains to Utah in 1853. Shortly after his arrival, he was called to the Indian mission in southern Utah. He located at Harmony, then moved to Pinto, where he claimed to have “built the first log cabin there for Rufus C. Allen.”¹²⁹

In the fall of 1857, Tullis was a resident at Jacob Hamblin’s ranch, building a house and corral for Hamblin and watching livestock. Tullis spoke with members of the Arkansas company as they passed Hamblin’s ranch on their way to the south end of the Meadows. A child who survived the massacre reportedly identified him as the killer of one of her parents.¹³⁰

In 1859, Jacob Forney, superintendent of Indian affairs for Utah Territory, traveled to southern Utah to gather up the surviving emigrant children. Tullis was among those from whom Forney gleaned information during his trip. One evening after Forney and his group had made camp, “a man [Tullis] drove up near us with an ox wagon.” In the ensuing visit, Tullis told them that the Arkansas emigrants had treated him “perfectly civil and gentlemanly.”¹³¹ But Forney was not misled by Tullis’s polite words. When Forney returned to Salt Lake, he responded to a request from Washington asking him “to ascertain the names of white men, if any, implicated in the Mountain Meadow massacre.” Forney listed Tullis among “the persons most guilty.”¹³²

In truth, Tullis was more a caught-up bystander than an originating ringleader in the massacre. Because of his residence at the Meadows, he was thrust into the situation and became a participant as well as an important eyewitness. According to Tullis, Benjamin Arthur, Ellott Willden, and Josiah Reeves arrived before the Arkansas company pulled in. Tullis put Pinto missionary Amos G. Thornton at the Meadows before the first attack. Tullis’s account also included small details about the Paiutes’ camp before the Monday morning attack.¹³³ Finally, Tullis witnessed the execution of John D. Lee on March 23, 1877.¹³⁴

Tullis married two women: Alice Hardman Eccles, a widow, and, two years later, her sixteen-year-old daughter, Martha Eccles.¹³⁵ In August 1882, still living in the small community of Pinto, Tullis received a call to serve a Church mission in his native Scotland.¹³⁶ Alice passed away while he was gone.¹³⁷ He died in Pinto “of asthma and complications” on November 26, 1902.¹³⁸

Jesse N. Smith, Journal Extracts, August 8 to September 9, 1857

During his career, Jenson also collected at least two other documents about the mass killing. The first was a single page of extracts taken from the journal of Jesse N. Smith (1834–1906).

Smith, who was born on December 2, 1834, in Stockholm, New York, to Silas and Mary Aikens Smith, played an indirect role in massacre events.¹³⁹ When his Apostle cousin, George A. Smith, toured southern Utah in August 1857, the month before the massacre, Jesse Smith joined his party. Jesse remembered that the Church leader told local people not to sell their grain to feed the horses of emigrants passing through the region but to allow them flour for their personal needs. Jesse observed this advice when the Arkansas company camped near his home in Parowan: he sold them flour and salt. Later, when William H. Dame heard disturbing rumors about the besieging of the company at the Meadows, he asked Jesse to investigate. The extracts from Jesse Smith’s journal told this story, along with Isaac Haight’s response to Smith and his companion, Edward Dalton, as they traveled from Parowan to Pinto via Cedar City.¹⁴⁰

About five years after the massacre, Smith was made president of the Scandinavian Mission, and in 1887 he became president of the Snowflake (Arizona) Stake.¹⁴¹ At an undisclosed date, possibly in February 1894, Andrew Jenson copied excerpts from Smith’s journal of August 8 to September 9, 1857.¹⁴² After Smith’s death, a large volume of his autobiography and journal covering his entire life was placed in the Church Historian’s Office.¹⁴³ Internal evidence suggests that he kept an ongoing journal and later copied his entries into this large volume, occasionally adding bits of reflective information. The Jesse N. Smith Family Association published the journal in 1953.¹⁴⁴

John Chatterley, Letter, September 18, 1919

Jenson also secured two letters from John Chatterley (1835–1922), the second of which survives. John Chatterley was born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, to Joseph and Nancy Morton Chatterley. The Chatterleys immigrated to America in 1850 and spent the winter in St. Louis before crossing the plains to Utah in 1851.¹⁴⁵

John Chatterley married Sarah Whittaker on March 12, 1862.¹⁴⁶ He served in a number of civic capacities in Cedar City, including justice of the peace, postmaster, and city recorder. He also served as mayor from 1876 to 1878.¹⁴⁷

Jenson had asked Chatterley to provide him with information about the massacre, and though more than sixty years had passed since the tragedy, Chatterley remembered important events. As a twenty-two-year-old, he had carried Haight’s initial request to Dame in Parowan to call out the militia, which was refused. He reported being at Fort Harmony, southwest of Cedar City, before the initial attack when Lee, dressed in makeshift military attire, tried to rally his Indian cohort. And he was called to scout roads east of Cedar City because of the fear of approaching U.S. soldiers.¹⁴⁸

Chatterley recalled the “insane . . . religious fanaticism” in the period that preceded the massacre, and the danger he risked in standing against it. The zealots said they were to “be free of any intercourse with the Gentiles world, and . . . were just to wait the coming of our Redeemer.” Chatterley’s name does not appear on any lists of massacre participants.¹⁴⁹

Two Sets of Documents

Eventually, the Jenson collection of Mountain Meadows documents included over thirty items, about a third of them being expansions or emendations of Jenson’s field notes. During most of the twentieth century, these documents were housed at Church headquarters in two separate groups.

The First Presidency maintained most of the polished reports Jenson delivered after his January 1892 tour, some of his field notes, and two versions of John Q. Cannon’s questions. The last set of documents included questions and answers written in Jenson’s handwriting and another copy written in an unknown hand with Jenson’s insertions.¹⁵⁰

The First Presidency’s collection served as an information resource for chapter 32 in Whitney’s History of Utah, a fact to which Whitney alluded. In writing his narrative of the massacre, he maintained he had used “the most reliable sources,—some of which have never before been drawn upon.”¹⁵¹ But his claim was muted by his failure to cite his sources or even many of the names of people involved in the massacre. The First Presidency had promised anonymity, and Whitney made good on the promise.

The second part of the Jenson collection was placed in the Church Historian’s Office. These materials included the Charles W. Willden Sr. statement; several sheets of Jenson’s January 1892 field notes; an 1892 letter from Willson G. Nowers; three statements secured during Jenson’s second 1892 tour (Robinson, Knight, and Tullis); a copy of Elias Morris’s interview, conducted by Jenson on February 2, 1892 (the same day when he presented his other interview reports to the First Presidency); extracts from Jesse N. Smith’s journal; and John Chatterley’s 1919 letter. In total, these materials make up about half of the documents Jenson collected or generated regarding the massacre and the largest selection of statements from people Jenson interviewed. In the late 1960s or early 1970s, historian Donald R. Moorman used some of these documents in writing Camp Floyd and the Mormons, which was finished by Gene Sessions after Moorman’s death in 1980 and published in 1992.¹⁵²

The division of the Jenson documents into two separate collections reflected how they had been secured. The First Presidency received those items used in the writing of the History of Utah; this collection remained closed until the documents were made available for the writing of Massacre at Mountain Meadows. The Historian’s Office received Jenson’s rough draft “leftovers” and his later collecting. Until the late 1970s or early 1980s, many of these documents were housed in collections according to subject, including the Mountain Meadows subject file. Some documents were then filed elsewhere in an effort to reconstitute collections based on authorship. Several documents were placed in a to-be-catalogued Andrew Jenson collection, which was then set aside and largely forgotten.

In 2002, the Jenson material again resurfaced when employees combed through collections looking for massacre references. One of the authors of Massacre at Mountain Meadows spent several days closely examining the field notes before realizing their full importance.

We hope readers will recognize Jenson’s significant contribution, as well as the First Presidency’s foresight in sending him south to gather information on the massacre in January 1892. We are pleased to bring Jenson’s Mountain Meadows collection back together again for the first time and to make this rich resource available for further study.¹⁵³