Joseph Clews

Joseph Clews, his personal and family background, and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre

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Joseph Thomas Clews/Clewes

1831-1894 

Biographical Sketch

Early Years in the West Midlands of England

Joseph Clews/Clewes was born in either Shropshire or Warwickshire in the West Midlands of central England. Around 1848, he and other family members joined the Mormon Church.

Immigration to America and onto Utah

In 1849, the Clews family immigrated to the United States where in St. Louis his parents and younger brother died, evidently of cholera. Later that season, Clews and his sister immigrated to Utah and he settled in southern Utah at Cedar City.

Working on the Ironworks in Cedar City

The early ironworks in Cedar City.

A stonemason by trade, Clews used his skills in the newly-formed Iron Mission. He married English emigrant Mary Ann Bladen whose father, Thomas Bladen, was the chief engineer of the ironworks.

In the Iron Military District: Private Joseph Clews, Company F, John Higbee's 3rd Battalion, Cedar City

In the 1857 Iron County muster rolls, 25-year-old Joseph Clews was listed as a private in a platoon in Company F headquartered in Cedar City. During the events leading to the Mountain Meadows tragedy, Clews served as an express rider between Cedar City and Mountain Meadows. After the first attack on Monday, September 7, Clews was assigned to carry an express to Pinto. From there he went to the cabin of Jacob Hamblin at the northeast end of the valley of Mountain Meadows.

Riding toward Cedar City the following morning, he encountered Major John M. Higbee who ordered Clews to join his detachment. So Clews returned to Mountain Meadows and remained there until Friday when, sometime before the final massacre, Higbee ordered him to take an express to Cedar City. Clews left immediately, passing express riders from Cedar who bore expresses not to harm the emigrants. But Clews knew it was too late.

Later Years in San Bernardino, California

Around 1859, Clews' own personal disenchantment and the declining fortunes of the Iron Mission led Clews and his family to relocate to San Bernardino, California, where many of those disenchanted or withdrawing from Mormonism settled. There he resided for the rest of his life, raising his family and pursuing the occupations of farming and stone masonry.

Clews's 1876 Statement About the Massacre

Evidently it was near the time of the 1876 retrial of John D. Lee that Clews prepared an important statement about the massacre. It was published in a San Bernardino newspaper and, following the execution of Lee in March 1877, in several Utah newspapers. Its significance lies in the important particulars it provides and the reliable chronology of events during "massacre week," September 7-11. It also contains an eloquent expression of the blight that came into Clews's life because of his connection with the massacre:

"[O]h! what a horrible remembrance of those five days! They have been the bane of my existence, have kept me in the back ground and in the shade, have kept me out of society and away from people I should like to have associated with. Such has been my lot or strange fatality."

Clews's statement has now been published in Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Jenson and Morris Collections.

Final Years

In 1894, Clews died in San Bernardino, just short of his sixty-third birthday. He and his wife are known to have raised at least eight children.

References

FamilySearch.org; Statement of Joseph Clewes; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 232, 379; Lee Trial transcripts; U.S. census records; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Jenson and Morris Collections, 163-188; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C.

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