Nephi Johnson

Nephi Johnson, his personal and family background, and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre

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Nephi Johnson

1833-1919

Biographical Sketch

Early Days in Ohio and Illinois

Nephi Johnson was born at Kirtland, Ohio, to Joel Hills Johnson and Anna Pixley. His parents were New Englanders who with other members of the extended family were early believers in Joseph Smith's restoration movement and followed him from New York to Ohio and later to western Illinois. By 1839, members of the extended Johnson family were in Carthage, Illinois and Johnson was baptized in 1842.

Migration to Utah

The Johnson family departed Illinois in 1846 and immigrated to Utah in 1848.

Moving to Southern Utah

Nephi Johnson, 17, and his family were among the original colonists who in 1850-51 went south to settle in the Little Salt Lake Valley of Iron County. Also in the company were Thomas Cartwright, 36, William H. Dame, 31, Richard Harrison, 43, George Hunter, 22, John D. Lee, 39, Carl Shirts, 15, and Robert Wiley, 41. The Johnson family settled in Parowan in 1850 but by 1851, they had relocated to Johnson's Springs (modern Enoch) seven miles north of Cedar City and a dozen miles south of Parowan. From an early age, Johnson began learning the local Indian languages and became a proficient interpreter.

Members of the Johnson family including Nephi also provided labor or materials to the Deseret Iron Company in Cedar City, especially in the times leading up to a sustained run of the blast furnace. The DIC ledger book notes Nephi Johnson's labor in connection with the ironworks. See Summary of Deseret Iron Company for a brief summary of its early development.

In April 1857, the delivery of a new steam engine from Great Salt Lake City seemed to breathe new life for the Ironworks. Working from April to June they installed the steam engine and completed the new engine house. In the first week of July, they were ready to begin smelting. They “put on the blast” and had a modicum of success. But they continued to be plagued with problems ranging from poor quality raw materials to smelting equipment that lacked technical sophistication. When in late July the steam engine seized with sand from the dirty creek water, they speedily dug a reservoir to store a supply of clean water for the boiler. They continued making smelting runs through August. All the while crews at the ironworks manned all the necessary functions there, while other crews, mainly miners and teamsters, gathered the raw materials – iron ore, coal, limestone, and wood – necessary to sustain smelting.

The smelting continued until September 13. In other words, around September 3, when a dispute arose between some settlers and several men in the passing Arkansas company, the blast furnace was running nonstop. And when Cedar City militiamen, many of them ironworkers, mustered to Mountain Meadows where they were involved in the massacre on September 11, other ironworkers in Cedar City continued the smelting runs night and day. For additional details, see Smelting at the Ironworks in 1857.

From late April to September, those working up the canyon in mining or hauling wood, coal, limestone, rock, sand or “adobies” to the ironworks were Isaac C. Haight, James Williamson, George Hunter, Joseph H. Smith, Ira Allen, Ellott Wilden, Swen Jacobs, Alex Loveridge, Joel White, Ezra Curtis, Samuel McMurdie, Samuel Pollock, John Jacobs, John M. Higbee, John M. Macfarlane, Samuel Jewkes, Nephi Johnson, Thomas Cartwright, William Bateman, Elias Morris, Benjamin Arthur, Joseph H. Smith, Robert Wiley, and Philip Klingensmith. Those working at the ironworks on the furnace, engine, coke ovens or blacksmith shop included Elias Morris, John Humphries, Ira Allen, John Urie, Benjamin Arthur, James Williamson, Joseph H. Smith, Samuel Jewkes, Joseph Clews, Richard Harrison, William C. Stewart, William Bateman, John M Macfarlane, John M. Higbee, John Jacobs, George Hunter, Samuel Pollock, William S. Riggs, Alex Loveridge, Ellott Wilden, Ezra Curtis, Eliezar Edwards, Swen Jacobs, Joel White, and Thomas Cartwright. (The two lists overlap because some worked both in the canyon and at the Ironworks.) Other prominent figures at the ironworks who were not later involved at Mountain Meadows were Samuel Leigh, George Horton, James H. Haslem, Laban Morrell, John Chatterley, Thomas Gower, Thomas Crowther and others.

During this period of 1857, Nephi Johnson was an occasional teamster for the ironworks. In April, he was among the teamsters who hauled steam engine parts from Great Salt Lake City to Cedar City. He did no other work for the ironworks until the end of July when he hauled three-quarters of a ton of coal from the mines to the ironworks. In the intense period of activity in mid-August, Johnson hauled nearly two tons of coal to the ironworks. That is the extent of his work at the ironworks in 1857.

In the Iron Military District: 2nd Lieutenant Nephi Johnson, Company D, Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion, Fort Johnson

In 1857, Johnson was 2nd lieutenant in a platoon in Company D of the Iron Military District. Joel White was the captain of Company D and Daniel Macfarlane was his adjutant. Company D was attached to Major Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion. However, the members of Johnson's platoon were from Johnson's Springs, not Cedar City, and none of them, except Johnson, were at Mountain Meadows. The reason Johnson was singled out was because of his skill as an interpreter: Haight specifically sent for Johnson because Haight needed someone with Johnson's linguistic skills to deal with the Paiutes whom he and John D. Lee had unleased at Mountain Meadows. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.

Johnson rode to Mountain Meadows on Thursday, September 10. The following day, he delivered orders to the Indians to disburse and hide. At the time of the massacre he probably translated the orders to attack the women and children.

He was listed in the 1859 arrest warrant issued by Judge John Cradlebaugh for those suspected of complicity in the massacre.

Later Life

In 1858, he was in the exploring party into western Utah and Nevada, scouting for new areas for possible settlement. He also helped found the colony at Virgin City, where he lived for fourteen years and acted in succession as presiding elder, acting bishop, and bishop's counselor.

Johnson explored the upper Virgin River drainage and he along with his brothers were the first whites to enter Zion Canyon. In 1862-63, he traveled with Jacob Hamblin to the Hopi mesas in northeast Arizona.

In 1856, he had married Mandana R. Merrill who bore him ten children; in 1860, he had married Conradina A. Mariger, who bore him sixteen children; in 1889 he married a widow with six children, who bore him one additional child.

Move to Kanab, Kane County

He moved to Kanab, Kane County in 1871, where he fulfilled a series of positions including first counselor to the bishop, county commissioner, town president, superintendent of waterworks and road commissioner. Evidently, he and other Johnson family members assisted their father, Joel Hills Johnson, in founding the settlement of Johnson, some miles northeast of Kanab.

In the early 1870s, Johnson was also employed for a time by John Wesley Powell in Powell's 1872 Colorado River expedition.

By 1874, Johnson had moved north into the Sevier River Valley where his father established a sawmill at Hilldale south of Panguitch. His brother Seth Johnson was also there. In that year, Nephi Johnson was appointed presiding elder of the small church congregation there. He was also an early mail contractor and merchant in Kane County. (Note: A Nephi Johnson served as a city attorney in Garfield County.)

Testifying in Lee's Second Trial in 1876

In 1876, Johnson testified in the second trial of John D. Lee.

Later Life

In the early 1880s, the history of Kane County reflects that Johnson had some involvement in the Kanab Irrigation Company. In the rare moments available for entertainment in their frontier setting, Johnson and other members of his family participated in some early theatrical productions.

One account states that Johnson and his brothers continued to hold mercantile interests in Kanab in Kane County into the early 1890s. Another account states that late in the period of the anti-polygamy raid, Johnson moved to Colonia Juarez in Mexico to avoid prosecution for unlawful cohabitation. He was there from 1889 to 1894.

At any rate, in the 1890s Nephi Johnson relocated to Bunkerville in southeast Nevada where he lived his remaining years. He served in the church in the office of patriarch to the Mormon community there.

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Final Statements about the Massacre

As the years passed and the threat of criminal prosecutions receded, he made several other important statements about the massacre. Part of the importance of Nephi Johnson was that in his later years he became more forthcoming about lesser known aspects of the massacre.

His later statements have now been published in Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Jenson and Morris Collections, 324-36.

Final Years

Nephi Johnson died in 1919, survived by many children and descendants. On his deathbed, a young schoolteacher witnessed his tortured, delirious recollections of the massacre more than six decades before. The experience prompted her in later life to write The Mountain Meadows Massacre. She was Juanita Leavitt, the granddaughter of massacre participant, Dudley Leavitt. Later, she was better known by her married name, Juanita Brooks.

References

Alder and Brooks, A History of Washington County, 32, fn. 13; Bagley and Bigler, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 406-411; Bitton, Guide to Mormon Diaries, 183; Bradley, A History of Kane County, 151; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, Appendix I, 224-226; Chidester, Golden Nuggets of Pioneer Days: A History of Garfield County, 37, 57; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 7/1-3 (1939), 79; Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 970; Fielding, The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee, ; Goodman, “New Look at Old Treasures,” Utah Historical Quarterly 26/3 (July 1958), 283; Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Latter-day Saints, 230 (Virgin Ward); Jenson, LDS Biographical Encyclopedia III: 131-132; Larson, Diary of Charles Lowell Walker, 587; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 220, 232, 237, 242, 243, 270-272, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; Newell, A History of Garfield County, 109; Robinson, ed., History of Kane County, 112. 126, 127, 138, 148, 280, 363, 487, 518 (brief bio); Seegmiller, A History of Iron County, 366; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 324-34; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C.

For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.

External Links

Nephi Johnson's testimony in the 1876 trial of John D. Lee:

• http://www.mtn-meadows-assoc.com/johnson.htm
• http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
• Deseret Iron Company Account Book, 1854-1867: http://www.footnote.com/document/241905844/

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