Don Carlos Shirts

Carl Shirts/Shurtz, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre

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Don Carlos "Carl" Shirts/Shurtz

1836-1922

Biographical Sketch

Early Life in Ohio and Illinois

The German forebears of Don Carlos ("Carl") Shirts (var. Shurtz, Schertz, Schurtz) were from Hesse, Germany and settled in Bergen and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey, then moved on to Ohio. His Swedish forebears immigrated from Stockholm to New York County, New York, then to Bergen County, New Jersey. He also had Scot (Cameron) and Irish (Kelly) forebears who immigrated to Pennsylvania. Shirts himself was a native of rural Ohio who, like many of his fellow Mormons, moved in a westerly arc to Illinois and then to frontier Utah where Shirts along with his parents and siblings were pioneers in southern Utah. His father, Peter Shirts, was fiercely independent and tended to pioneer locales too wild and unsettled for the likes of most other folk.

In 1836, Don Carlos Shirts was born in Geauga County in northwest Ohio to Peter Shirts and Margaret Cameron. After joining the Mormons, the large family moved to Illinois.

Immigration to Utah

In 1846, the Peter and Margaret Shirts family joined the Mormon exodus from western Illinois and eventually migrated to the Great Basin. They sojourned in Iowa Territory for several years until they could gather the means to immigrate to Utah.

By 1850, the Shirts had acquired the means necessary to equip and provision an outfit to make the trek west. In the spring of that year, they joined the Benjamin Hawkins Company which departed for the trek west in early June from the outfitting post at Kanesville (present day Council Bluffs), Iowa. By then the Shirts family consisted of Peter, 41, Margaret Cameron, 41, George Washington, 18, King Darius, 16, Don Carlos (Carl), 13, Sariah Jane, 11, and Elizabeth Ann, 2.

The Mormon Trail

It was a very heavy travel season on the overland trail that year due to the California Gold Rush. Cholera was also epidemic and there were deaths due to cholera. Carl's mother succumbed to cholera during the trek and he helped bury her on the plains. Several accounts mention the important role Peter Shirts played as a hunter who supplied the company with fresh buffalo, antelope, and deer meat.

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 hardships of overland trail, they arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in mid-September.

Moving to Southern Utah

Carl Shirts and his father's family were among the original colonists who in 1850-51 went south to settle in the Little Salt Lake Valley of Iron County were they helped found Fort Louisa (later Parowan), the first Mormon settlement in the south. Also in the company were Thomas Cartwright, 36, William H. Dame, 31, Richard Harrison, 43, George Hunter, 22, Nephi Johnson, 17, John D. Lee, 39, and Robert Wiley, 41.

During that time Shirts married Mary Adeline Lee, one of John D. Lee’s daughters. But the union was not to last and they eventually separated. On August 23, 1857, on the eve of the crisis leading to the massacre, Shirts married his recently-deceased brother’s widow, Elizabeth Ann (Betsy) Williams in Parowan.

In the Iron Military District: 2nd Lieutenant Carl Shirts, 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 on 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.

During 1857, 21-year-old Carl Shirts was 2nd lieutenant in one of the platoons in Company H headquartered in Fort Harmony. Captain Alex Ingram was at the head of Company H, which was one of two companies in the 4th Battalion under the leadership of Major John D. Lee. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.

On Thursday, September 3 or Friday, September 4, Major Lee consulted with Isaac Haight in Cedar City about raising Indians to attack the Arkansas emigrant train then passing through southern Utah. Lee then returned to his home in Fort Harmony.

On Saturday, September 5, Lee gave orders to his son-in-law, Carl Shirts, to take an express to other settlements to recruit Indians to Mountain Meadows. Lee later stated that Shirts acted "cowardly," an indication of Shirts’ initial reluctance to follow Lee. But soon Shirts fell in line and carried the express as ordered. It is probable that Shirts was at Mountain Meadows later that Saturday where he observed the Arkansas emigrants as they traveled toward the southern end of the valley. Samuel Knight was ranching at Mountain Meadows that summer. Around the time of the emigrants arrival at Mountain Meadows, Knight received an express with orders to raise the militiamen at Fort Clara to take action against the emigrants. Carl Shirts is one of several couriers who may have delivered the express to Knight.

On the evening of Monday, September 7, after the first attack on the emigrant camp, John D. Lee traveled south in search of the militia contingent from the southern settlements of Washington and Fort Clara. He encountered them some miles south of the Meadows. Among them was Carl Shirts. Moving up to Mountain Meadows on Tuesday the 8th, Lee gave Shirts charge of the Paiutes.

On Friday, September 11, Shirts was expected to act as an interpreter because of his knowledge of the Paiute language. Shirts's son Ambrose believed there was another reason that Lee taunted Shirts in later years for being a coward: Lee believed that in translating commands to the Indians, Shirts conveyed orders in direct contradiction to his own. Whatever the truth of this, little else is known of Carl Shirts’ activities during the three days of siege or the final massacre.

In 1859, when Judge John Cradlebaugh issued the arrest warranty naming those allegedly complicit in the massacre, Shirts was not on the list. Nor did his name arise during either of the Lee trials in 1875 or 1876. He is only mentioned in Lee’s posthumously published memoir, Mormonism Unveiled.

Leaving Iron County for Washington County

Sometime after the massacre, Shirts and Lee’s daughter Mary separated, in no small part because of the antipathy Lee bore toward Shirts. Shirts remained with his other wife, Betsy Williams Shirts. In 1858, Shirts helped build a road to establish new settlements in the Virgin River Valley of Washington County. Shirts had some skill as a carpenter and cabinetmaker. In 1861, he built a dulcimer using lumber from red cedar and forging timing pins from iron spikes.

Moving in Succession to Kane and Garfield Counties

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Map of Garfield County, Utah.

We have an account of legendary Mormon pioneer, Peter Shirts, who always seemed to seek out lonely, isolated locales. In 1865, Peter and Margaret Cameron Shirts and their son Carl Shirts, their daughter, and Ezra Meeks settled on the banks of the Paria River at “Pahreah I” or Rockhouse, south of the later settlement. After building a home from sandstone, they planted crops and tended their herds. However, with the Black Hawk War underway, Utes, Navajos and Paiutes began appropriating their corn and livestock. Meeks retreated but the Shirts family stayed over the winter of 1865-66. In February 1866, however, they were forced to abandon their spread after Indians had stolen all their crops in the field and their livestock. It is said that before they departed Carl Shirts put a “hex” on the offending Indians. Reportedly the two hexed Indians died and the raid on Whitmore’s ranch resulting in the deaths of James Whitmore and Robert McIntyre was retaliation for the death of the cursed Indians. Or so says one source.

Also during the 1860s, perhaps after their unsuccessful start at "Pahreah I," the Carl Shirts family moved east to the upland region where the new settlement of Panguitch had been founded. Again, however, due to disturbances incident to the Black Hawk War, many abandoned Panguitch in 1867 for more secure and defensible settlements. After the unrest was over, the Shirtses were among those who resettled in Panguitch in 1871-72.

Moving to Escalante, Garfield County

In 1876, Shirts, his wife Betsy and one child relocated from Panguitch to the remote settlement at Escalante in the Potato Valley of Garfield County. Escalante is in a narrow valley, 60 difficult miles by road southeast of Panguitch. There Shirts would spend the next 47 years until his passing in 1922. Upon arriving, Shirts built a home of adobes and jerked venison to preserve for the winter. Shirts and several of his neighbors were native-born Americans but as the pioneer settlement expanded other of their neighbors had immigrated to Utah from New England, the American South, French Canada, British Canada, England, Wales, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy and Spain.

Henry Lunt in nearby Cedar City expressed the Mormon ideal of land use: "A little farm well cultivated and near homes, I know, is your doctrine and it is mine and ever was." The Shirtses and their Escalante neighbors largely lived by this ideal. The community engaged in ranching and agriculture in roughly equal measure and this pattern continued until well into the twentieth century. Like most families, the Shirtses had a small herd of livestock. They lived the usual life of early families, ranching in the mountains during the summer months. For ranching families, their dairy cows provided cheese and they soon learned to take their surplus to local markets to raise needed cash.

Shirts constructed one of the first adobe homes. Later, after they built kilns for firing brick, many homes were made from brick. In the 1880s, there was a craze for gold mining and those in Escalante mined local areas and along the Colorado River. Shirts prospected with his neighbor in a nearby vein with some success.

Shirts was a member of the first brass band and played the violin, or fiddle. The band performed on all major holidays. Soon a tradition developed of band members loading into a wagon and serenading the town in the pre-dawn hours. Dancing was a favorite recreation and there was a dance orchestra, consisting of at least one violin, one or more guitars, and a piano or organ. Shirts not only played violin or fiddle, he also made them. He also made a dulcimer that was used in the community on special occasions.

Around 1895, Carl Shirts's family discovered that they had Swiss and German ancestry which caused them to change the spelling of their name from Shirts to Shurtz. His brothers, however, elected to retain the spelling of their father, Peter Shirts.

During all these years, Betsy Shirts bore her husband twelve children. These children eventually settled throughout southern Utah.

Final Years

In 1922, Shirts died in Escalante, Garfield County, and was buried there. He was one of the oldest surviving militiamen connected to the massacre.

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References

Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 119, 120, 128, 143, 154, 166; Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 16 fn. 17, 38, 120; Carter, Heart Throbs of the West, 10:466, 12:380; Chidester, Golden Nuggets of Pioneer Days: A History of Garfield County, 20, 98; Cleland and Brooks, ed., Mormon Chronicle: The Diaries of John D. Lee, 1848-1876, I:258; Daughters of Utah Pioneers, An Enduring Legacy, 1:71; Fish, Mormon Migrations, 283; Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Latter-day Saints, 235; Larson, Erastus Snow, 389; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 220, 226, 227, 228, 237, 243, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; Newell and Talbot, A History of Garfield County, 131, 133-134, 165 fn. 6; New.FamilySearch.org; Power, ed., Utah History Encyclopedia, 175; Seegmiller, A History of Iron County, 59 fn. 13; Shirts and Shirts, A Trial Furnace, 20, 438, 497; Shurtz, "History of Peter Shirts and his Descendants," 93-94; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 145, 148, 154 169, 190, 192, 198, Appendix C, 262, 265; Woolsey, The Escalante Story: 1875-1964, 31, 36 (photo), 39, 85, 87, 88, 109, 123, 181, 302, 392.

For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.

External Links

For further information on Carl Shirts, see:

• http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen

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