William R. Davies

William Rees Davies, his personal and family background, and his alleged involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

William R. Davies (1827-1862)
Biographical Sketch

A native of Somerset in South West England, William Rees Davies immigrated to the United States and became a pioneer and frontiersman in southern Utah.
Davies was born in Bristol, Somersetshire in South West England. He was the son of John Rees Davies. The Davies were converted to Mormonism, immigrated to Utah and by the mid-1850s William R. Davies and his family had settled at Fort Harmony in southern Utah, roughtly twenty miles southwest of Cedar City.
In 1857, William Davies, 30, was a company adjutant but that summer he was elected as adjutant toMajor John D. Lee in Lee's 4th Battalion. Davies role in the massacre is uncertain. Indian Superintendent Jacob Forney's included "Bishop Davies" in Forney's 1859 list of "persons most guilty" but that preliminary judgment does not seem to be sustained. However, historian Linda King Newell concluded that Davies and his father along with Elisha Hurd Groves were at Mountain Meadows.* (Newell, History of Piute County, 70 fn 27.)
Davies died within five years of the massacre.
*Neither Davies' father, John Rees Davies, nor Elisha Hurd Groves are included in any of the earliest lists of participants -- Judge Cradlebaugh's 1859 arrest warrant; Jacob Forney's 1859 list of the "most guilty"; the list in Rocky Mountain Saints, published in 1873; the names identified during the Lee trials of 1875-76; those listed in Lee's 1877 Mormonism Unveiled; or in the list of "assassins" appended by Lee's attorney, William Bishop, to Mormonism Unveiled.
References: (Newell, History of Piute County, 70 fn 27. Lee, Mormonism Unveiled; Lee Trial transcripts; FamilySearch.org.
Further information and confirmation needed.
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