Isaac C. Haight

Isaac C. Haight, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre

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Isaac Chancey Haight

1813-1886

Biographical Sketch

A native of the Catskill Mountain region in upstate New York, Isaac Chancey (alt. Chauncy) Haight moved to western Illinois, then frontier Utah where he was an early pioneer in southern Utah.

Early life in New York and Illinois

Haight was born in 1813 in Windham, Greene County, New York. During his adulthood, Haight kept extensive diaries which provide a detailed sketch of his life. From these we glean that Haight was married around 1836 at the age of twenty-three.

In 1838, he was converted to the Mormon Church and was baptized the following year. In 1841, he preached "Mormonism" and the next year he moved to the main Mormon settlement in Nauvoo on the banks of the Mississippi River in western Illinois. The next year, he proselytized for Mormonism in New York. Upon his return to Nauvoo he served on the city police.

Following the death of the Mormon leaders Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844, tensions remained high among Mormons and the original settlers of Hancock County. In 1846, the Mormons agreed to withdraw from Nauvoo and move west.

Immigration to Utah

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Haight joined in the Mormon exodus into Iowa territory. Haight enlisted in the Mormon Battalion and was elected a captain of Ten. After much hardship the Mormon Battalion arrived in California where the Mexican-American War was still on. The Battalion boys played some role in ensuring the transition of California from Mexican to American control.

After his discharge from military service Haight returned to Utah, arriving in September 1847. Haight described the difficult years of 1847–49 with its scarcity of timber, hard winters, crickets and moral backsliding.

During the fall and winter of 1849-50, Haight joined the Pratt exploration of southern Utah. In 1850 he began a mission to Great Britain. Returning in 1853 Haight acted as the Church purchasing agent in the East, acquiring wagons, teams, livestock and supplies for emigrant trains. He traveled west with a Scottish convert, Isabella Macfarlane, and her two sons. They arrived in Utah in the fall of 1853 and Haight married Isabella and her sons, John Menzies and Daniel Sinclair Macfarlane, became his stepsons.

Returning to Iron County in the south, Haight took charge of the iron works and was elected mayor of the city. Over the next years Haight and his Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English iron workers struggled to develop a blast furnace for smelting iron. These efforts eventually failed. In 1855, he was selected as president of the Cedar City stake. In 1856, he attended the legislative assembly at Fillmore and the constitutional convention in Salt Lake. From fall 1856 to spring the following year, Haight preached the Reformation in southern Utah.

In the Iron Military District: Major Isaac Haight of the 2nd Battalion

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In the June 1857 militia muster rolls, Haight, 44, was listed as a private in one of the Cedar City militia platoons. However, in the militia reorganization that summer he was elected to the position of major in command of the 2nd Battalion. Thus, by 1857, Haight held every major position in Cedar City: mayor, president of the iron works, stake president and major in the militia.

In August 1857, news arrived that a U.S. expeditionary army was approaching Utah and rumors spread that the army intended to "invade" the Mormon stronghold. Colonel William H. Dame in Parowan and Major Isaac Haight in Cedar City drilled the militia and sent scouts into the mountains to reconnoiter for the army detachment they imagined to be approaching.

In the midst of this crisis the Arkansas wagon train reached Cedar City and some explosive episode occurred between a few emigrants and Mormon settlers. The Mormons thought them impudent and "saucy." Worse, rumors spread that the emigrants were in league with the advancing army.

On Thursday evening, September 4 (or possibly the following evening) Haight summoned John D. Lee from Fort Harmony and together they laid plans to use local Paiute Indians to attack the emigrant train. Lee left Cedar City to implement the plan of attack.

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On Sunday, September 6, community leaders met in their weekly council meeting. In attendance were Isaac Haight, John Higbee, Charles Hopkins, Philip Klingensmith, Samuel McMurdie, Laban Morrill, Elias Morris, John Morris, Joseph Pugmire and several others. Haight acquainted them with their plan for the emigrant company. Laban Morrill (and possibly others) objected and extracted a promise from Haight that he seek Brigham Young’s counsel before executing the plan. Haight reluctantly agreed.

But Haight delayed until Monday afternoon to send these important couriers, one north to Salt Lake City and the other west to Mountain Meadows for Lee to delay the plan. In the meantime, however, Lee initiated the attack on the emigrants.

The initial attack was unsuccessful and a desultory siege ensued. The stalemate deepened the sense of crisis. On Wednesday evening, the 9th, Haight and his Welsh adjutant Elias Morris met in council with William H. Dame in Parowan. In the council were Jesse N. Smith, Calvin Pendleton, and Newman and Tarlton Lewis. Pendleton’s proposal to send a company from Parowan to assist emigrants was adopted, but in the later so-called "Tan Bark council" (because they squatted on the tan bark near the east gate of the fort) Haight evidently persuaded Dame to change the orders. Because the emigrants had learned of Mormon connivance in the attacks, Haight argued that the company had to be silenced.

William Barton was nearby; however, he did not overhear Haight, rather Haight later told him what happened and of his own deep regrets. Haight and Morris returned to Cedar before daylight Thursday morning. The new orders were carried by courier to Major Higbee at Mountain Meadows. At the military council on Thursday evening, Lee, Higbee, Klingensmith and the others developed a stratagem for decoying the emigrants from their defensive circle.

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On Friday, September 11, 1857, according to their plan, the militia decoyed the emigrants from their wagon circle and massacred approximately one hundred twenty men, women and children. Only seventeen small children survived.

Meanwhile in Cedar City, Col. William Dame and his party arrived from Parowan and together with Haight and his adjutants, they set out for Mountain Meadows. Traveling all night they arrived the following morning.

Reviewing the ghastly scene, Dame in particular was struck by the unforeseen number of women and children among the victims. Immediately Dame and Haight fell to quarreling about who bore the greater responsibility for massacring some many women and children. The enormity of the disaster only increased the following day when James Haslam, the express rider, returned from Salt Lake City with orders not to molest the emigrants while also maintaining peaceful relations with the Indians. Haight could only ruefully respond, "Too late!"

Later Life

By the summer of 1858, the Utah War had ended and some degree of normalcy had returned to Mormon-federal relations. In August, Mormons leaders George A. Smith and Amasa Lyman held a council in Parowan to review charges against William H. Dame. The issues and discussion are not fully known. But since Haight, Nephi Johnson and others from the environs of Cedar City were called to attend, it suggests that the massacre, and not merely questions of Dame’s ecclesiastical authority in Parowan, was among the issues under review. In the end, Smith and Lyman found that the charges were not sustained. Following Mormon custom, the entire body, including Haight, approved the decision of the council.

In 1859, Haight heard that federal officials supported by government troops from northern Utah were coming to arrest him and others for their complicity in the massacre. Haight was released as stake president and went into hiding, remaining in the local mountains until the troops had withdrawn.

Over the next fifteen years Haight strove to maintain a low profile. In 1871, Haight and George W. Adair, another militiaman involved in the massacre, were in Jacob Hamblin’s party in the remote regions of the Colorado River when they encountered Major John Wesley Powell’s expedition.

Haight is Indicted and Flees

In 1874, the federal district court in Beaver issued an indictment for murder against William H. Dame, Isaac C. Haight, John M. Higbee, Philip Klingensmith, John D. Lee and William C. Stewart plus three other low-level militiamen. Lee tried to escape but was arrested as was William Dame and several others.

But Haight, John Higbee and William Stewart fled and went into hiding. In the ensuing years, Philip Klingensmith turned State’s evidence and testified against John D. Lee and Lee was tried, convicted and executed. The charges against William Dame were dropped, evidently for lack of sufficient evidence. Meanwhile, Haight remained in hiding, reportedly passing through Utah, Arizona and Mexico. But by the 1880s, the Mountain Meadows prosecutions had stalled. The national focus had shifted from the massacre to polygamy and the national anti-polygamy crusade was in full sway. Federal energies were poured into anti-polygamy legislation and federal dollars, into unlawful cohabitation prosecutions. But the indictment against Haight hadn't yet been dismissed and he remained a fugitive from justice until his death in 1886.

References

Bitton, Guide to Mormon Diaries, 133-34; Bigler and Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 349-351, 373-75, 380-81, 384-86, 393-97, 472; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 36-37, 52-53, 63-65, 72, 86-88, 93-94, 180, 184-185, 192-93, 197-98, 212; Diaries of Isaac C. Haight; "Diary of Almon Harris Thompson," Utah Historical Quarterly, 7:1-3 (Jan., Apr., Jul., 1939), 59; FamilySearch.org; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee, 47-50, 210; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, ; Lee Trial transcripts; Seegmiller, A History of Iron County,3-4, 43-44, 64, 69, 267, 269-70; Shirts and Shirt, A Trial Furnace: Southern Utah's Iron Mission, 346-47, 371-73, 386, 388, 390-91, 394-95, 397, 416 ; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 35, 44, 48, 55, 57, 62, 68, 90, 103, 116-117, 181, 204, 211-12, 247, 248-49, 254-56, 260, 325, 330, 332-33; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows,131, 136, 139, 144, 174-75, 178-79, 180-81, 212, 226, Appendix C.

For further information on Isaac C. Haight see:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_C._Haight
• http://www.mtn-meadows-assoc.com/isaac_haight.htm

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