|
<<
Previous
1
2
3 4
5
6
Next >> |
|
 Samuel Jukes
- A private, Second
Platoon, Company F of the
Iron County
Militia, Jukes was indicted in the
massacre in 1874 and he went into hiding. However, like Elliott Willden,
there is no information as to why the private
was singled out and indicted when so many
others were not. Though the indictment was handed down, the charges were
never followed-through. We could find no further information on Samuel
Jukes.
 Philip
Klingensmith (1815-1881?) - Born in Pennsylvania, Philips family
moved first to Ohio then to Indiana. In 1841 he married Hannah Henry
Creemer in Tippecanoe County, Indiana and joined the Mormon Church. Later
they moved to the main church center in Nauvoo,
Illinois.
After persecution in Illinois, they left
Illinois and
arrived in
Utah in 1849.
In 1851, they moved to southern
Utah where
Klingensmith became one of the first settlers in Iron County and lent his
blacksmithing skills to the newly-formed Iron mission and by the
mid-1850's had three wives, Hannah, Margaretha and Betsy, who bore
him fifteen, four and five children respectively. From 1852 to 1859, he
served as the bishop of Cedar City. Because of his "rank" within the
church, he is listed among the "leaders" of the massacre and was known to
have carried orders and other messages between the various militia
officers and was present at the massacre. However, unlike the other
principal participants, neither Klingensmith nor his counselor, Samuel
McMurdie were listed in the 1859 arrest warrant, leading to conjecture
that one or both of these men might have been informants in the federal
investigation.
It is known that Klingensmith was tormented in the aftermath of the
massacre and in the early 1860s he
moved to Nevada and, except for a brief return to Parowan later that
decade, he resided outside
Utah for the
remainder of his life, working in the ranching and mining industries.
In 1874, Klingensmith was among
the nine militiamen named in the federal murder indictment, but was the
first to confess complicity
in the massacre the following year. He gave testimony at the first trial
of John Doyle Lee in 1875 and was in Beaver,
Utah in 1876 for Lee's retrial but did not testify. Afterwards, he
reportedly moved to
Arizona, then to Sonora, Mexico. He died sometime
around 1881, some say violently, while other sources claim he died of
natural causes some time later.
|
|
|
|
 John Doyle Lee (1812-1877) - The only man
to ever be punished for the 120 people slaughtered at the
Mountain Meadows Massacre, Lee was born in Kaskaskia,
Illinois on September 12, 1812. On
July 24, 1833, he married Aggatha Ann Woolsey,and a
few years later, the pair joined the Mormon Church as early converts. He
was a friend of the founder, Joseph Smith, Jr. In 1839, he was preaching
in
Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. A "dedicated" member, he took
the church seriously, especially the polygamy policies, marrying another
18 wives during his lifetime and fathering more than 60 children. However,
his choice of wives were evidently not so "dedicated" as eleven of them
would eventually leave him. Lee became a member of the Danites, a
secret fraternal order that was pledged to defend the rights of Mormons;
however this has been disputed.
After Joseph Smith's
murder, Lee joined the the rest of the Mormons who were headed to
Utah,
where he became a successful farmer and rancher. In 1856, he became a US
government
Indian Agent in the Iron County area, assigned to help
Native
Americans establish farms. Because of this role, Lee became the central
figure in the tragic Mountain Meadows Massacre which occurred in September
1857.
When the
Fancher wagon
train was attacked in the four day siege, Lee and William Bateman met with
members of the wagon train and arranged for the surviving members to be
escorted to safety under a flag of truce by the Mormon militia. The party
surrendered their weapons, but as they were led away from their wagons,
every single male member of the party were killed by Mormon militiamen,
including Lee. The women and the older children were killed by the
Paiute
Indians. Only 17 small children were spared.
Though the government
began an investigation the following year, Lee continued to be an active
leader in Mormon affairs in southern
Utah, so much so, that he served a
term in the
Utah Territorial Legislature that year. Unfortunately,
investigations into the terrible tragedy were interruputed by the
Civil War and the Mormons went on with their lives. However, by the late 1860s,
questions about the massacre became more and more difficult to avoid, and
in October, 1870
Brigham Young excommunicated Lee from the Mormon Church
for his role in the affair. Though excommunicated; the church was still
giving him orders and in 1872 they sent him from Iron County and to
Arizona to establish a ferry crossing on the Colorado River.
Finally, the government continued their
investigation and in 1874, Lee was arrested. The first trial ended in a
hung jury, but he was tried again in 1877 and sentenced to death. During
his trial and in his written memoirs, Lee never denied his own complicity,
but consistently maintained he had acted under orders from his military
leaders, under protest. Though he initially maintained that Mormon President
Brigham Young had no knowledge of
the event until after it happened, he would later say: "I have always
believed, since that day, that General
George A.
Smith was then visiting
southern
Utah to
prepare the people for the work of exterminating
Captain Fancher's train of emigrants, and I now believe that he was sent for that
purpose by the direct command of
Brigham Young."
On March 23, 1877,
Lee was taken to the
massacre site, where he was executed by a firing squad. His last words
included a reference to Young: "I do not believe everything that is now
being taught and practiced by
Brigham Young. I do not care who hears it.
It is my last word... I have been sacrificed in a cowardly, dastardly
manner." His body was buried in the Panguitch Cemetery.
Though more than fifty Mormon men
participated in the massacre, many of whom held high level military roles
and were admittedly aware of the attack plan, Lee was the only person to
have ever been punished by the U.S. Government.
In April 1961, The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints posthumously reinstated Lee's
membership in the church.
Continued Next Page
|
Bumper
Sticker Madness
