Dudley Leavitt: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 00:55, 12 November 2013
Dudley Leavitt, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre
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.
In 1850, 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.
Indian Interpreter in the Southern Indian Mission
In 1855, the Leavitts joined the Hamblins in migrating to southern Utah. There Leavitt became an Indian missionary/interpreter in the Southern Indian Mission encompassing southern Utah and, later, Arizona and Nevada. In the mid-1850s, the Indian interpreters were headquartered at Fort Clara (modern Santa Clara) on the Santa Clara River 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 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.
In summary 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.
Later LIfe
Leavit and his family continued on at Fort Clara in 1858. Leavitt and fellow Indian interpreter Ira Hatch made a dangerous journey to the Iyat in Nevada in 1857-58. In early 1858, Leavitt accompanied Jacob Hamblin on the reconnaissance of Nevada during the Utah War. In fall 1858, he traveled with Hamblin on the first of Hamblin's many journeys to the Hopi Mesas in eastern Arizona.
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.
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 southern Nevada. He died in 1908, survived by four of his wives and his many descendants.
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; Ivins, "Free Schools Come to Utah, Utah Historical Quarterly, 22/4 (Oct. 1954), 338; Krenkel, ed., Life and Times of Joseph Fish, 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
- 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.
