William Bateman

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William Bateman, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre


William Bateman

1824-1867



Biographical Sketch

A native of Lancashire in the Northwest of England, William Bateman was a British emigrant to the United States and a pioneer in southern Utah who later settled in Cache Valley in northern Utah.

Early Years in the North of England

Bateman was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England to Joseph Bateman and Margaret Turner. In 1843, he married Sarah Lavender (1824-1898) from Bedfordshire, East Anglia, England. Joseph and Margaret Bateman and many of their children converted to Mormonism in the 1840s. 

Immigration to America and onto Utah

Like many British converts to Mormonism in the mid-19th century, the Batemans saved their money to immigrate to America. Joseph Bateman and his wife were among the earliest British converts to Mormonism to immigrant to the United States, sailing to America in the early 1840s. When the Mormons departed western Illinois in 1846 and moved westward, so, too, did the Batemans. It appears that they immigrated to Great Salt Lake City in 1849 or 1850.

Joining Other British Emigrants in the Iron Mission in Cedar City

The Early Ironworks in Cedar City

By 1853, William Bateman, his wife and their family were in Cedar City in southern Utah where many British Mormons with iron mining or smelting experience worked at founding the "Iron Mission." In moving to Cedar City, Bateman was settling in an area dominated by the Deseret Iron Company, known more familiarly as the Ironworks. See Summary of Deseret Iron Company for a brief summary of its early development.

In April 1857, the delivery of a new steam engine from Great Salt Lake City seemed to breathe new life for the Ironworks. 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.

During this period of 1857, William Bateman was an occasional teamster for the ironworks. In late July, he hauled nearly two tons of coal. The following week, he hauled another ton to the ironworks. He did the same the following week and at mid-August, another two tons. During the intense week at the end of the month, when the iron run was in progress, he hauled another ton of coal. On October 12, he was credited with ten days of work building the new engine house. This work was probably done the previous spring.

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 William Bateman 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: Sergeant William Bateman, Company G, John Higbee's 3rd Battalion, Cedar City

In 1857, William Bateman, 33, was listed as a sergeant of a platoon under Captain Eliezar Edwards in Company G in Major John M. Higbee's 3rd Battalion. (A William H. Bateman was a private in Company E under Captain Elias Morris in Major Isaac C. Haight's 2nd Battalion.) See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.

According to Philip Klingensmith, Samuel Pollock, William "Billy" Young, Nephi Johnson and John D. Lee, Bateman was at Mountain Meadows at the time of the massacre. According to Lee, Bateman attended the fateful military council on Thursday evening, September 10.

Also according to Lee and others, on Friday, September 11, Bateman carried a flag of truce to the emigrant camp to gain admittance to their wagon circle where Lee delivered deceptive terms of surrender to them. Later in the day, Bateman may have been among the militia guard from Cedar City who were alongside the emigrant men as they walked north from the emigrant 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 William Bateman was in this guard unit and if so, how he acted during the massacre will probably never be known with any certainty.

Like many of the massacre participants from the Cedar City area, he was listed in Judge John Cradlebaugh's 1859 arrest warranty.

Abandoning Cedar City for Cache Valley

By 1859, the Batemans had moved to West Jordan in Salt Lake County. In the 1860s, they moved to Richmond in Cache Valley where he died in 1867.

References

Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 144, 145, 325; Bigley and Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 70n, 122, 123, 235, 347, 394; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 73; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 232, 236, 238, 379; Lee Trial transcripts; FamilySearch.org; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Jenson and Morris Collections, 95, 114; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 187, 194, Appendix C, 256.

For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.

External Links

For further information on William Bateman, see:

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