John M. Urie
John M. Urie, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre
John Main Urie
1835-1921
Biographical Sketch
John Main Urie was a Scottish Lowlander who immigrated to American and became a pioneer in southern Utah.
Early Years in Scotland
Urie was born in Airdrie, Lanackshire in the English-speaking Scottish Lowlands. In the 1840s, Urie converted to the Mormon Church.
Immigration to America and onto Utah
In ____, Erie immigrated to America and traveled to Utah to join the Mormon gathering there.
To the Ironworks in Cedar City
By the mid-1850s he was living in Cedar City in southern Utah. He assisted in the many tasks involved in mining iron ore and coal and smelting iron in the new-formed Iron Mission. In 1855, Urie was among the many who owned a lot in what was to become the permanent location for the Cedar City settlement. In 1856, he married Elizabeth Hutcheson (1839-?), in a Reformation-era marriage.
In moving to Cedar City, John Urie was settling in an area dominated by the Deseret Iron Company, known more familiarly as the Ironworks. Here is a brief summary of its development. After iron ore and coal deposits were discovered in the region, Cedar City was founded. In the first years of 1851-52, they investigated whether the region had the necessary raw materials – iron ore, limestone, wood, coal, and waterpower – to support smelting on a large scale. After confirming the presence of the necessary materials and relying heavily on the British Isles immigrants who had worked in iron-related industries in Great Britain, they set to building an iron manufacturing plant. They sited the ironworks at the mouth of Coal Creek near the present location of Cedar City. They mined the coal up canyon and transported it by team and wagon to the furnace located on the stream bank below the mouth of the canyon. The iron ore was transported from nearby Iron Springs by wagon. In 1852, after a small test furnace produced a low quality pig iron, they set about building a full-scale blast furnace.
Progress was impeded, however, in 1853-54 during the Walker War. They shifted their energies from iron making to “forting up” to increase their safety. After a peace treaty was reached with the Ute chief Wakara in 1854, they returned to improving the ironworks. By 1855, they had achieved their greatest success with a sustained run of the furnace producing several tons of pig iron. But most of the runs both before and after failed to achieve a sustained run producing good quality iron. One problem was the fickle nature of Coal Creek, which continued to alternate between flooding and droughts. They determined to develop a more dependable source of power.
In April 1857, the delivery of a new steam engine from Great Salt Lake City seemed to provide the answer. After its arrival, they built a new room to house the engine, connected its boiler to a steady water supply and modified the furnace to accommodate the engine. In early June they started an iron run using the steam engine. However, the new machinery created its own set of problems. Through the end of July, they experimented with different configurations of furnace, engine and piping, attempting to optimize the blast furnace.
From late April through July, those working up the canyon in mining or hauling wood, coal, limestone, rock, sand or “adobies” to the ironworks were Isaac C. Haight, James Williamson, George Hunter, Joseph H. Smith, Ira Allen, Ellott Wilden, Swen Jacobs, Alex Loveridge, Joel White, Ezra Curtis, Samuel McMurdie, Samuel Pollock, John Jacobs, John M. Higbee, John M. Macfarlane, Samuel Jewkes, Nephi Johnson, Thomas Cartwright, William Bateman, Elias Morris, Benjamin Arthur, Joseph H. Smith, Robert Wiley, and Philip Klingensmith. Those working at the ironworks on the furnace, engine, coke ovens or blacksmith shop included Elias Morris, John Humphries, Ira Allen, John Urie, Benjamin Arthur, James Williamson, Joseph H. Smith, Samuel Jewkes, Joseph Clews, Richard Harrison, William C. Stewart, William Bateman, John M Macfarlane, John M. Higbee, John Jacobs, George Hunter, Samuel Pollock, William S. Riggs, Alex Loveridge, Ellott Wilden, Ezra Curtis, Eliezar Edwards, Swen Jacobs, Joel White, and Thomas Cartwright. (The two lists overlap because some worked both in the canyon and at the Ironworks.) Other prominent figures at the ironworks who were not later involved at Mountain Meadows were Samuel Leigh, George Horton, James H. Haslem, Laban Morrell, John Chatterley, Thomas Gower, Thomas Crowther and others.
By the time reports reached them in early August of a threatened “invasion” of U.S. troops into Utah, they had decided on further changes to the ironworks. They determined that a reservoir was necessary so as to provide a steady supply of filtered water to the steam engine. Immediately, they set to work, digging, lining and filling the reservoir. From late August to early September, shortly before the crisis involving the passing Arkansas emigrant company, they began a new furnace run. But it, too, ended in failure, probably around the time that a dispute arose between some community members and several of those in the passing Arkansas wagon train.
In 1857, John Urie's main occupation at the ironworks was as a blacksmith in the blacksmith shop, fashioning various iron implements for the ironworks and community use. During times of intense activity at the ironworks, Urie appears to have been occupied full time as a blacksmith.
The majority of the southern Utah militiamen at Mountain Meadows were from Cedar City. Of these, nearly all of them had worked at the Ironworks or supplied raw materials to it. Indeed, in the weeks before the Mountain Meadows Massacre, they had worked intensely together, hauling materials, building a new water reservoir, and making the latest run of the blast furnace. One perennial mystery of the massacre has been why the militiamen mustered to Mountain Meadows in “broken” militia units; that is, from different platoons and companies, none of which had a full compliment of its members. Perhaps the reason lies with the Ironworks. Those in the Ironworks knew each other and had worked alongside one another. Not only did John Urie know those who mustered from Cedar City to Mountain Meadows, he had worked with them at the Ironworks as recently as the week before. Perhaps the answer is that the men of the Ironworks were on hand and available and Isaac Haight, who himself had worked closely with them, assigned them to muster to Mountain Meadows.
In the Iron Military District, John Urie, Adjutant to Major John Higbee, 3rd Battalion, Cedar City
In September 1857, Urie, 22, was adjutant to Major John Higbee in the 3rd Battalion in Cedar City. Since he was adjutant to Major Higbee, he may have departed Cedar City with the Higbee contingent on Monday evening, September 7. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.
According to Nephi Johnson and John D. Lee, Urie was at Mountain Meadows and attended the military council on Thursday evening, September 10.
On Friday, September 11, many members of the militia contingent from Cedar City acted as guards alongside the emigrant men as they marched northward from their fortified position inside the wagon circle. As the massacre commenced, the duty of the guards was to wheel and fire on the emigrant men, quickly dispatching them. Yet during the actual massacre, reactions varied among the guards. Some shrank from their duty, others fired over the heads of their victims, while others still undertook their bloody duty with zeal. Within minutes, members of the Cedar City unit had killed all but three of the emigrant men. However, whether John Urie was in this guard unit and if so, how he acted during the massacre will probably never be known with any certainty.
Following the massacre, Urie helped transport emigrant property to Cedar City.
Since he was adjutant to Major Higbee, who played a very prominent role in the siege and massacre of the Fancher-Baker party, it seems surprising that Urie was not listed in Judge John Cradlebaugh's 1859 arrest warrant.
Urie Remains in Cedar City
In 1858, he married Sarah Ann McMillan (1826-1891), a native of Waterford, Waterfordshire, in southern (Catholic) Ireland. (However, both her parents were from County Down in Ulster Ireland, indicating they were likely Scots-Irish Protestants, probably Presbyterians.)
In 1873, Urie married Priscilla Klingensmith (1855-1942), a daughter of Philip Klingensmith. Writer Anna Backus claimed that Priscilla was a Fancher child from the slaughtered emigrant party, adopted by the Klingensmith family after the 1857 massacre. Thus far, however, DNA evidence has not supported this claim.
Historian of Cedar City
Urie was a long-time resident of Cedar City whose history chronicles the successes and failures there. Around 1886, he also provided his life story to the history project of American historian Hubert Howe Bancroft.
Final Years
Urie remained in the Cedar City area for more than six decades and died in nearby Hamilton Fort, survived by his third wife and many children.
References
Ellsworth, "A Guide to the Manuscripts in the Bancroft Library . . ., " Utah Historical Quarterly, 22/3 (July 1954), 224, 228; Garner, "Book Review: "Mountain Meadows Witness: the Life and Times of Bishop Philip Klingensmith," Utah Historical Quarterly, 64/3 (Summer 1996), 288; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 232, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; New.FamilySearch.org; Seegmiller, A History of Iron County, 70; Shirts and Shirts, A Trial Furnace, 147-48, 164, 396, 485, 492; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C.
For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.
External Links
For further information on John Main Urie, see:
- http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
- Deseret Iron Company Account Book, 1854-1867: http://www.footnote.com/document/241905844/
Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.
