Ezra H. Curtis
Ezra Curtis, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Ezra Houghton Curtis
1823-1915
Biographical Sketch
Early Life in Pennsylvania, Missouri and Illinois
Ezra Houghton Curtis was born in 1823 in western Pennsylvania to Enos Curtis and Ruth Franklin. He was the tenth of fourteen children. His father was an early convert to Mormonism and one of its earliest missionaries. In 1831, Enos Curtis had a role in the eventual conversion of future Mormon leaders Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball.
In 1835, 12-year-old Ezra Houghton was baptized a member of the Mormon Church. During the mid-1830s, the Curtis family lived in the Mormon settlements in western Missouri. In the difficulties known in Missouri history as the “Mormon Wars,” they and their fellow Mormons were expelled during the winter of 1838-39 and eventually relocated in the newly-founded Mormon settlements in western Illinois.
Immigration to Utah
Following the assassination of Mormon founder Joseph Smith in 1844 and the continuing unrest between the original settlers of western Illinois and the Mormons, the Curtis family joined the Mormon hegira from western Illinois beyond the Mississippi River into the Iowa and Nebraska territories. In the early winter of 1846, 22-year-old Ezra Curtis married Lucinda Carter (1831-1904), who was nearly 16. A native of Maine, Lucinda was the daughter of Dominicus Carter and Lydia Smith. Their first two children were born in the Mormon settlements in western Iowa, near modern-day Council Bluffs. She would eventually bear him twelve children.
In 1851, after accumulating sufficient means, the extended Curtis family joined a Mormon wagon company and immigrated to Utah Territory. By the mid-1850s, Curtis and his wife and children had moved to southern Utah and settled in Cedar City.
In the Iron Military District: 2nd Lieutenant Ezra Curtis, Company E, Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion
For 1857, Curtis, 35, was listed in Iron County militia records as a 2nd Lieutenant in one of the militia platoons in Company E. Irishman Samuel Pollack was sergeant in the same platoon. The platoons in Company E were led by Captain Elias Morris, a Welch emigrant, and that company was attached to the 2nd Battalion under the leadership of Major Isaac C. Haight.
Multiple sources attest to Ezra Curtis’s presence at Mountain Meadows during the week of the massacre. Mormon herdsman Henry Higgins observed Curtis among the militia detachment departing Cedar City for the Meadows on the evening of Monday, September 7. John D. Lee mentioned Curtis as among those in the area on Thursday evening when the final militia council was held, the one that led to the deceptive ploy to trick the Arkansas company into abandoning their defensive wagon circle. Curtis’s exact role in the final massacre on Friday, September 11 is not known with certainty but it seems probable that he was among the Cedar City militiamen who accompanied the emigrant men away from the wagon circle in their northward line of march.
Curtis’s name is included in the 1859 arrest warrant issued by Judge John Cradlebaugh. In 1875, during the first trial of John D. Lee, Samuel Pollock identified Curtis as among those who mustered to Mountain Meadows early in the week. Lee also mentioned Curtis in his posthumously-published autobiography, Mormonism Unveiled.
Later Life
After the dual disasters of the massacre and the failure of the iron works in Cedar City, Curtis and his family joined the exodus from that troubled settlement. They moved north to Provo where he pursued farming.
During the late 1860s, Curtis was in the militia and played some role in the Mormon-Native American conflict known as the Black Hawk War. In the Centennial History of Sevier County published in 1947, Ezra Curtis was remembered as a noted veteran of that conflict.
In 1875, they moved back to southern Utah to pioneer at Willow Bend, now Aurora, in the high broad valley drained by the Sevier River. It is not known whether this move from Provo to the more remote mountainous region in southern Utah was prompted by the indictment and prosecution of former Iron County militiamen for their complicity in the massacre or by other considerations.
Eventually, Curtis took a plural wife, Juliaette Everett, who bore him seven more children. His first wife, Lucinda, died in 1904. In 1915, Curtis died in Aurora, Sevier, Utah where he had lived for four decades. He was survived by his second wife and his many children.
Our thanks to John Warnke for further background on Ezra Curtis.
Note: The histories of Emery County refer to an Ezra Curtis, or E. Curtis, Sr., who was an early settler in Emery County in 1878j. This Ezra Curtis was a militiaman in Sanpete County in the mid-1860s who first ventured into what would later become Emery County in pursuit of marauding Ute Indians during the Black Hawk War. In 1905, his wife Mary Ann filed for divorce against him claiming that he was "an habitual drunkard" who swore at her and the children, according to a story in the local newspaper. This does not appear to be the same individual as Ezra Houghton Curtis, 1823-1915.
References
Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 12; Bigler and Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 235; Bishop, A History of Sevier County, 85; Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 832; FamilySearch.org; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 232, 276, 379; Lee Trial transcripts; Shirts and Shirts, A Trial Furnace, 495; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C, 257; Warnke, "Biographical sketch of Ezra Houghton Curtis, 1823-1915"; and Warnock, Through the Years: A Centennial History of Sevier County, 107, 108 (photo), 110, 122.
External Links
For more information on Ezra Houghton Curtis see:
- http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
- http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9055559
Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.
