George Washington Adair
George W. Adair, his personal and family background, and his involvement in and statement about the Mountain Meadows Massacre
George Washington Adair
1837-1909
Biographical Sketch
[George Washington Adair (1837-1909) should not be confused with George Washington Adair (1818-1897) of Orderville, Kane County, Utah; the father of the latter was Thomas Jefferson Adair, Sr.]
George Washington Adair was a native of rural Pickens County in western Alabama. He became an American frontiersman and pioneer of southern Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.
Early Life
George W. Adair was born in 1837 to Samuel Jefferson Adair and Gemima Cathrine Mangum. His maternal grandfather, John Mangum, was a Revolutionary War soldier. Later Adair moved with the Adair clan to Mississippi, then to the Iowa and Nebraska territories en route to Utah. While living in frontier conditions on the Iowa prairie, Adair lost his grandmother, mother and three of his siblings.
Journey to Utah
They immigrated to Utah Territory in 1852 and initially settled in Payson. In 1857, the Adair clan was among the Southern families that settled Washington, Washington County, in southwestern Utah. They had been called to grow cotton in Utah's "Dixie."
The Iron Military District: Private George Adair, Company I, John D. Lee's 4th Battalion, Cedar City
In the summer of 1857, 20-year-old George Adair was a private in one of the Washington platoons in Company I that was attached to Major John D. Lee's 4th Battalion of the Iron County militia. Jabez Nowlin and James Pearce were also privates in the same platoon. James Pearce's father, Captain Harrison Pearce, led Company I.
In September 1857, after the Fancher-Baker company was attacked at Mountain Meadows, John D. Lee left the Meadows to find the militiamen he was expecting to join him. He met those from Washington and Fort Clara, including George Adair, some miles to the south on Monday evening, September 7. They arrived at the Meadows around mid-day on Tuesday, the 8th. During the week while the wagon train was beseiged, Adair may have acted as a courier, carrying an express between Cedar City and the Meadows. On the day of the final massacre, September 11, Adair's exact role is no known with certainty.
In the 1859 arrest warranty issued by Judge John Cradlebaugh, "John W. Adair" is likely George W. Adair.
Later Life
Late in 1858, Adair married Ann Catherine Chestnut. They remained in southern Utah and she bore him two children. But in 1863, during her second childbirth, she died from complications. Not able to care for the newborn, Jemima Ann, Adair allowed relatives to take the baby and raise her. In 1864, Adair married Emily Prescinda Tyler, the daughter Mormon Battalion veteran Daniel Tyler.
In the mid-1860s, the Black Hawk War broke out. In 1866, Adair was among a militia party that recovered the bodies of two whites killed by Navajos. They killed the Paiute Indians caught in possession of belongings of the two dead white men.
With Jacob Hamblin's permanent departure from Santa Clara, he was appointed as the president of the Indian Mission to the southeast of the Virgin River. In 1870, Adair joined Jacob Hamblin and others in the newly-founded settlement of Kanab in Kane County. George Adair was one of Hamblin's Indian missionaries/interpreters.
In 1871, Adair and Isaac C. Haight were with Jacob Hamblin’s party on the Colorado River when they encountered the second Colorado River expedition of John Wesley Powell. Helping Hamblin transport supplied to the Paria River, Adair became acquainted with the Powell party and they hired him as a horse wrangler, packer and "man-of-all-trades." In 1873, Adair assisted the Powell party with mapping. It was there that Adair became acquainted with western writer Frederick S. Dellenbaugh. Hearing Adair's accounts of what happened at the massacre, Dellenbaugh later concluded that Adair was not one of the "real perpetrators."
Indicted for Role in the Massacre
In the mid-1870s, George W. Adair was in Marysvale, Piute County. For reasons no fully known, Adair, who had only been a militia private in 1857, was indicted for murder along with eight other Iron County militiamen in the 1874 federal indictment stemming from the massacre. Late in 1875, Adair was arrested and held in jail in Beaver. According to John R. Young, he was offered bribes to testify against Brigham Young. After a six month confinement, Adair along with John D. Lee and William H. Dame were admitted to bail in the respective sums of $10,000, $15,000 and $20,000. The charges against Adair were eventually dropped and he returned to his family in Kanab. But John D. Lee was tried in two separate trials, convicted in the second trial, and executed by firing squad at Mountain Meadows early in 1877, nearly twenty years after the massacre.
Move to Arizona
In 1879, the Adairs were among those called to Arizona to establish new Mormon colonies. They settled in Nutrioso, Apache County, Arizona. They remained their for the next two decades. His wife Emily bore him three more children while his older children married and started families of their own.
In 1900, the Adairs moved to the San Juan River valley in northwestern New Mexico. According to the 1900 census, George Adair was engaged in farming.
Later Statements about the Massacre
In 1907, Mormon leader David O. McKay interviewed Adair who disclosed some important particulars about the massacre which McKay recorded in his diary. According to Adair, John M. Higbee threatened him with a knife as a warning against ever saying a word about the massacre.
Final Years
In 1909, two years after making his last recorded statement about the massacre, Adair died at the age of 72. He was survived by his second wife, Emily, and many children. Emily died in 1917.
References
Alder and Brooks, A History of Washington County, 28-29, fn. 11; Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 120, 128, 149, 150, 157, 298, 300; Bigler and Bagley, eds., Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives," 411, 417, 422; Bradley, A History of Beaver County, 159; Bradley, A History of Kane County, 78; "Diary of Almon Harris Thompson," Utah Historical Quarterly, 7/1-3 (Jan., Apr., Jul., 1939), 59, 69, 75-77, 88, 101,111-114; "Capt. Francis Marion Bishop’s Journal, 1870-1872," Utah Historical Quarterly, 15:4 (Oct. 1947), 221, 223; and other journals of the Powell expedition; Crampton, "F. S. Dellenbaugh of the Colorado," Utah Historical Quarterly, 37:2 (Spring 1869), 242-43; and "Reminiscences of John R. Young," Utah Historical Quarterly, 3 (July 1930), 85; Dellenbaugh, A Canyon Voyage: The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedition, 153, 196-97, 213, 241, 250, 252-53 fn. 1; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee, 203, 207, 237; Gregory, "Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones, 1871-1872," Utah Historical Quarterly, 17 (1949) fn. 94; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 228, 229, 379; Lee Trial transcripts; Robinson, ed., A History of Kane County, 48, 51, 54, 63, 72, 74, 100, 391, 559; Smith and Smith, George Washington Adair (1837-1909) Ancestry and Descendants: The History of a Mormon Pioneer Family, ; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 171, 207, 230, Appendix C, 256.
External Links
For additional information on George W. Adair see:
- http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
- http://home.att.net/~dtadair/georgewashingtonadair.html
- http://home.att.net/~dtadair/georgewadairfamily.html
Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.
