Dudley Leavitt

Dudley Leavitt, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre 

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Dudley Leavitt

1830-1908

Biographical Sketch

Early Life in Canada and Eastern U.S.

Dudley Leavitt was born in 1830 to Jeremiah Leavitt (1796-1846) and Sarah Sturdevant (1797-1878) in Harley, Lower Quebec, Canada. His father’s family was from Rockingham, New Hampshire; his mother, from Plymouth, Massachusetts. They had long been New Englanders before their foray into Canada. In the 1830s, the family heard of Joseph Smith's message of a restored gospel. Dudley and several other family members were baptized in 1838. In the 1840s, they settled in Nauvoo, the central Mormon gathering place in western Illinois.

Journeying to Utah

The Mormon prophet was murdered in 1844 and the Leavitts were among those who departed Illinois in 1846 bound for parts west. Leavitt's father died that summer while crossing the Iowa prairie, leaving his mother, Sarah Sturdevant Leavitt (1798-1878), to fend for her six children.

They remained for several years around Council Bluffs, Iowa, gathering the means to immigrate to Utah Territory. In spring 1850, having acquired the necessary outfit and provisions, the Leavitt family joined the Milo Andrus Company. Besides Sarah Sturdevant Leavitt, 51, there were Nathaniel, 26, his wife, Nancy, and their infant son, Dudley, 20, Mary, 18, Thomas, 16, Betsy, 12, and Sarah, 9. In the same company were Thomas Henry Cartwright, Joseph Fish, and Robert Wiley, each of whom would eventually settle in southern Utah.

The Mormon Trail

They departed in early June from the outfitting post at Kanesville, Iowa (modern Council Bluffs). The Andrus Company had about 200 in more than 50 wagons. It was a very heavy season on the overland trail that year. More than 50,000 bound for the California Gold Rush or Oregon had already departed, leaving the trails heavily overgrazed. Cholera was epidemic that season and Horace Fish (Joseph Fish's father) counted more than a thousand graves before he gave up counting. However, the Andrus Company only sustained one death. They passed the usual milestones on the trail: Fort Kearney, the South Fork of the Platte River, Chimney Rock, Fort Laramie, the Sweetwater River, Independence Rock, Devil's Gate, Green River, Fort Bridger, Bear River, and Weber River. After suffering the usual hardships of overland trail they arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake at the end of August.

Settling in Tooele Valley

Immediately upon arriving, Leavitt and his brothers Lemuel and Thomas settled in Tooele Valley, Tooele County, on the western edge of Great Salt Lake Valley where they became acquainted with Jacob Hamblin.

Conflict with local Native Americans caused the settlers around Tooele to form a militia. Jacob Hamblin, his brother, Oscar, their friend Dudley Leavitt, and the other adult males of the community were members of the militia. March 13, 1852 was the notable day in which Jacob Hamblin led a party that included Oscar Hamblin, Dudley Leavitt and others against the Goshute Indians. Confronting a Goshute, Hamblin fired at him while his adversary shot arrows at Hamblin. However, Hamblin's weapon misfired while the arrows of the Goshute went astray. Thus, despite their most strenuous efforts, neither was able to harm the others.

Later, as Jacob Hamblin reflected on this experience he came to see it as providential and interpreted it as a sign from God that he should abandon militaristic solutions against Native Americans and instead use pacific means in dealing with them. Jacob Hamblin was later the leader of the Southern Indian Mission and he had a powerful influence on his fellow Indian missionaries, including his brother Oscar, Dudley Leavitt, Ira Hatch, Samuel Knight and many others. For example, during the Indian unrest around Tooele, Dudley Leavitt captured an Indian prisoner but refused to allow him to be shot. Later, Brigham Young said the Indian should be fed and let go.

Jacob Hamblin journeyed to southern Utah in 1854 as an Indian missionary and helped found a settlement along the Santa Clara Creek among the Southern Paiutes. In 1855 he returned north for his family. In September, Jacob Hamblin with his father and brothers including Oscar Hamblin, their friend Dudley Leavitt and their respective families departed Tooele for Harmony in southern Utah.

Indian Interpreter in the Southern Indian Mission

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A Reconstruction of Fort Clara, 1855-1862.

In March 1856, Jacob Hamblin, Ira Hatch, Thales Haskell, Sam Knight and Dudley Leavitt began building a stone fort on the banks of the Santa Clara Creek and soon began planting cotton which proved successful. Soon they brought their families from Harmony to join them at Fort Clara. News of their success in raising cotton would soon lead to the founding of the Cotton Mission in nearby Washington and St. George.

At Fort Clara, Leavitt became an Indian missionary/interpreter in the Southern Indian Mission encompassing southern Utah and, later, Arizona and Nevada. From the mid-1850s to the late 1860s, the Indian interpreters were headquartered at Fort Clara (modern Santa Clara) in southwestern Utah.

In the Iron Military District: Private Dudley Leavitt, Company H, John D. Lee's 4th Battalion

In 1857, the Iron Military District consisted of four battalions led by regimental commander Col. William H. Dame. The platoons and companies in the first battalion drew on men in and around Parowan. (It had no involvement at Mountain Meadows.) Major Isaac Haight commanded the 2nd Battalion whose personnel in its many platoons and two companies came from Cedar City and outer-lying communities to the north such as Fort Johnson. Major John Higbee headed the 3rd Battalion whose many platoons and two companies were drawn from Cedar City and outer-lying communities to the southwest such as Fort Hamilton. Major John D. Lee of Fort Harmony headed the 4th Battalion whose platoons and companies drew its militia personnel from Fort Harmony, the Southerners at the newly-founded settlement in Washington, the Indian interpreters at Fort Clara, and the new settlers at Pinto.

In summer 1857, Leavitt, 27, was a private in one of the two militia platoons located in Fort Clara. They were attached to Company H headed by Captain Alex Ingram in Fort Harmony. This and another company were in Major John D. Lee's 4th Battalion of the 10th Regiment, or Iron Military District. In August 1857, Jacob Hamblin, the newly appointed president of the Southern Indian Mission selected Leavitt and Samuel Knight as his counselors.

In early September -- probably Sunday, September 6 -- Samuel Knight, who had passed the summer with his pregnant wife at Mountain Meadows to avoid the torrid heat of Fort Clara, brought orders to the Indian interpreters at Fort Clara and the Southerners at nearby Washington to muster the militia to Mountain Meadows. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.

On Monday, September 7 (the day of the first ambush on the wagon company at Mountain Meadows), Leavitt, Samuel Knight, Carl Shirts, and other Indian interpreters from Fort Clara and a contingent of Southerners from Washington traveled northward toward Mountain Meadows, meeting John D. Lee that evening some miles below the Meadows.

The next day they moved up to the Meadows and encamped in the "southern" camp, separate from the Cedar City detachment. Leavitt's exact role on the day of the final massacre is not known.

Immediate Aftermath of the Massacre

Having induced local Indians to join them in massacring the Arkansas company, the Iron County militia now found that they had lost control of them. Following behind the Arkansas train was the Dukes-Turner Company which fell under attack at Beaver. After arriving in Cedar City, Dukes and Turner hired Ira Hatch, Oscar Hamblin and Nephi Johnson to guide them through. Meanwhile, Jacob Hamblin sent Dudley Leavitt and Samuel Knight to conciliate the Paiutes in Nevada. When the Dukes-Turner Company arrived near the Muddy River in Nevada, Leavitt convinced Dukes and Turner to release stock to the Paiute Indians. Controversy still swirls around this episode. Had Leavitt and Knight used the Paiutes to rob the train of its livestock, or, by appeasing the Paiutes with cattle, did they save the lives of those in the Dukes-Turner train?

Explorations in Nevada

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In October 1857, Hamblin sent Dudley Leavitt and Ira Hatch to the Iyats, or Mohaves near the Colorado River below Las Vegas. They received a friendly reception from the Chemehuevis they encountered, but they arrived at the Mohaves on the lower Colorado River at a very dangerous time. The Mohaves repeatedly threatened to kill them. In response, Hatch requested the privilege of praying to the Great Spirit to spare their lives. Somehow the Mojaves were impressed Hatch’s vocal prayer and he and Leavitt were released unharmed. Surviving on lizards, snakes, and chipmunks, they made it to Las Vegas where they met Jacob Hamblin and then returned to Ft. Clara.

Later that year and in early 1858, while helping Mormon settlers return from southern California to Utah, Leavitt and Ira Hatch explored along the Muddy River in (modern-day) southern Nevada. Several years later, Mormon settlers moved into the region explored by Dudley Leavitt, Ira Hatch and others to found the settlements of St. Thomas, St. Joseph and Overton on the Muddy River.

Scouting to Encounter the U.S. Army in 1858

Lt. Joseph Ives steaming of the lower Colorado River in 1858 in the midst of the Utah War. Mormon Indian missionaries Jacob Hamblin, Thales Haskell, Ira Hatch, Sam Knight, and Dudley Leavitt surveilled them.

In March 1858, Dudley Leavitt was in the patrol to southern Nevada with Jacob Hamblin, Sam Knight, Ira Hatch and Thales Haskell to scout for the approach of the U. S. Army from the West Coast.

Arriving on the lower Colorado River, they reconnoitered the progress of Lt. Joseph Ives’s historic steamboat voyage up the river. They encountered Paiutes and Mohaves and Thales Haskell made contact with the steamer. Occurring at the height of the Utah War when distrust was high, each side spied on the other and harbored mutual suspicions.

In Jacob Hamblin's Expeditions to the Hopi Mesas

Map of the Hopi Mesas.

In fall 1858, Jacob Hamblin decided to visit the Indians who intrigued him so much, the Hopi. Departing in October, Hamblin undertook his first historic crossing of the Colorado River to travel though Navajo lands to the Hopi Mesas in northeastern Arizona. Dudley Leavitt, Ira Hatch, and Sam Knight were with Hamblin in a party of fourteen on this first journey. Arriving at the Colorado River, they scouted the area at the mouth of the Paria River (later Lee’s Ferry) but were unable to cross. Traveling some miles farther east, they forded at the Ute Ford, or Crossing of the Fathers.

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Walpi on First Mesa. The Indian interpreters first visited there in 1858.

Traveling up Navajo Canyon they emerged and crossed the plateaus and arrived at Old Oraibi on Third Mesa in Hopi land. Next, they visited Sichomovi and Walpi at First Mesa. Returning, they passed through Mishongnovi at Second Mesa. Trading for what supplies the Hopis could afford to part with, they retraced their steps and crossed the Colorado. Running short of supplies north of the river, they nearly starved to death. Feeling weak and ill, Sam Knight was left behind and nearly froze to death. In desperation, they killed and ate Dudley Leavitt’s horse to stay alive. They made it back to Ft. Clara on the Santa Clara stream without loss of life.

Later LIfe

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Map of Washington County, Utah.

After the Great Flood of 1862, Leavitt and others Indian interpreters assisted the new Swiss emigrants in Santa Clara. In 1853, Leavitt had married Mary Huntsman (1836-1922) and in 1855, he married her sister Mariah (1841-1922). In 1859, he married Thirza Hale Riding (1843-1927). The next year, at the urging of George A. Smith, Leavitt married an Indian girl named Janet (Jeanette) Smith (1845-1911) who later bore him eleven children. (Dudley Leavitt was the only man she could be convinced to marry, she is reported to have said.) Leavitt's final marriage was to a widow, Martha Hughes Pulsipher (1843-1907) in 1872. All together his wives bore him more than forty-five children.

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Map of Clark County, Nevada.

In the mid-1860s, Leavitt, Samuel Knight and others moved their families to Clover Valley and Meadow Valley in modern Lincoln County, Nevada. There they remained for several years. However, the outbreak of the Black Hawk War in 1865 eventually caused Mormons to abandon many unprotected outposts. Leavitt, Knight and their famiies returned to Santa Clara in southwestern Utah.

Leavitt became presiding elder at Hebron in 1868 or 1869. While in Gunlock, for lack of money, Leavitt was forced to withdraw his eighteen children from school. In the late 1880s, Leavitt like most polygamists hid from federal marshals during the period of the Raid.

Final Years

In his final years, Leavitt and his families lived in Bunkerville in the northeastern corner of Clark County in southern Nevada. He died in 1908, survived by four of his wives and his many descendants.

In Todd Compton's excellent new biography of Jacob Hamblin, he concluded that Ira Hatch, Thales Haskell, Samuel Knight, Ammon Tenney, and Dudley Leavitt were Hamblin's "irreplaceable supports on these forays into unknown, unmapped, and often inhospitable places.” (Compton, A Frontier Life, 480.)

Dudley Leavitt flanked by his wives, c. 1900.

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His Granddaughter, Juanita Brooks, as Historian of the Massacre

In 1919, Juanita Brooks, Leavitt's granddaughter, witnessed the tortured scene at the deathbed of Leavitt's longtime acquaintance, Nephi Johnson. Like Dudley Leavitt, Johnson had been involved as a young man in the 1857 massacre. Its memory still haunted him more than a half century later.

Piqued by this experience, Juanita Brooks eventually revealed the story of the massacre in her monumental work, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, published in 1950. It had never been out of print. Later historians may have uncovered new source material, but Brooks's history is still a valuable contribution to our understanding of the massacre.

References

Alder and Brooks, A History of Washington County, 22 fn. 7, 31, 161; Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 34, 119, 126, 128, 142, 167, 183, 212, 247, 250, 255, 369; Bigley and Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 147, 148, 259, 399, 411, 461; Blanthorn, A History of Tooele County, 360; Bradshaw, ed., Under Dixie Sun, 31, 123, 150, following 152 (photo), 153, 220, 222, 225; Brooks, "Indian Relations on the Mormon Frontier," Utah Historical Quarterly, 12/1-2 (Jan.-Apr. 1944), 38-39, 44; "The Land That God Forgot," Utah Historical Quarterly, 26/3 (July 1958), 209; "The Cotton Mission, Utah Historical Quarterly, 29/3 (July 1961), 313; "Indian Sketches from . . . Brown & Hamblin," Utah Historical Quarterly, 29/4 (Oct. 1961), 360; "Jest a Copyin’ – Word fr Word," Utah Historical Quarterly, 37/4 (Fall 1969), 384; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 42, 121-25, 130, 179; Brooks, On the Ragged Edge: The Life and Times of Dudley Leavitt; Compton, A Frontier Life, xv, 36-37, 77-78, 79, 81, 102-104, 107, 111-13, 119-22, 133-47, 237, 480, 502 fn. 84; Ivins, "Free Schools Come to Utah, Utah Historical Quarterly, 22/4 (Oct. 1954), 338; history.lds.org/overlandtravels/; Krenkel, ed., Life and Times of Joseph Fish, 25-30, 91; Larson, Erastus Snow, 384, 391; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 228, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; Moorman and Sessions, Camp Floyd and the Mormons, 133-34; New.familysearch.org; Papanikolas, The Peoples of Utah, 286; Reeve, "Cattle, Cotton, and Conflict: . . . Hebron, Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly, 67/2 (Spring 1999), 168; Reeve, Making Space on the Western Frontier, 105, 108, 148; Robinson, ed., History of Kane County, 3; Smith, "Colorado River Exploration and the Mormon War," Utah Historical Quarterly, 38/3 (Summer 1970), 212; "Forces That Shaped Utah’s Dixie: Another Look," Utah Historical Quarterly, 47/2 (Spring 1979), 118; "Vignettes," Utah Historical Quarterly, 29/3 (July 1961), 295-96; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 234, 236, 275; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 161-62, Appendix C, 259-60.

For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.

External Links

For more on Dudley Leavitt, see:

• Wikepedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Leavitt
• Juanita Brooks's Dudley Leavitt, Pioneer of Southern Utah: http://www.archive.org/stream/dudleyleavittpio00broo
• http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
• For the Milo Andrus pioneer company of 1850, see http://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/companyDetail?lang=eng&companyId=51
• For the early Southern Indian Mission, see http://wchsutah.org/miscellaneous/indian-mission.php
• See also On the Ragged Edge: The Life and Times of Dudley Leavitt by Juanita Brooks.

Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.