Joseph Clews

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Joseph Clews, his personal and family background, and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre

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Joseph Thomas Clews/Clewes

1831-1894 





Biographical Sketch

Early Years in the West Midlands of England

Joseph Clews/Clewes was born in either Shropshire or Warwickshire in the West Midlands of central England. Around 1848, he and other family members joined the Mormon Church.

Immigration to America and onto Utah

In 1849, the Clews family immigrated to the United States where in St. Louis his parents and younger brother died, evidently of cholera. Later that season, Clews and his sister immigrated to Utah and he settled in southern Utah at Cedar City.

Working on the Ironworks in Cedar City

The Early Ironworks in Cedar City

A stonemason by trade, Clews used his skills in the newly-formed Iron Mission. He married English emigrant Mary Ann Bladen whose father, Thomas Bladen, was the chief engineer of the ironworks.

In moving to Cedar City, Clews 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.

The Ironworks in 1857

In April 1857, the delivery of a new steam engine from Great Salt Lake City seemed to breathe new life for the Ironworks. Working from April to June they installed the steam engine and completed the new engine house. In the first week of July, they were ready to begin smelting. They “put on the blast” and had a modicum of success. But they continued to be plagued with problems ranging from poor quality raw materials to smelting equipment that lacked technical sophistication. When in late July the steam engine seized with sand from the dirty creek water, they speedily dug a reservoir to store a supply of clean water for the boiler. They continued making smelting runs through August. All the while crews at the ironworks manned all the necessary functions there, while other crews, mainly miners and teamsters, gathered the raw materials – iron ore, coal, limestone, and wood – necessary to sustain smelting.

The smelting continued until September 13. In other words, around September 3, when a dispute arose between some settlers and several men in the passing Arkansas company, the blast furnace was running nonstop. And when Cedar City militiamen, many of them ironworkers, mustered to Mountain Meadows where they were involved in the massacre on September 11, other ironworkers in Cedar City continued the smelting runs night and day. For additional details, see Smelting at the Ironworks in 1857.

From late April to September, 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.

Clews's Role in the Ironworks in 1857

During this period of 1857, Joseph Clews was heavily involved at the ironworks. In April, he hauled the engine shaft from Great Salt Lake Valley to Cedar City. (He was credited for this in the ironworks account book in September.) In June, Clews did stone work on the new engine house for the steam engine. In July, he built up the hearth at the base of the blast furnace. Later that month, he repaired the flue and brickwork around the boiler of the steam engine. Then he spent six days as a mason adding adobe bricks to the stack of the furnace. The following week, he spent another four days on the chimney stack of the furnace. Near the end of that month, he and James Haslem spent several days as masons making a flume. In all probability, this flume conveyed water from the new reservoir to the boiler of the steam engine. He also spent a day building the reservoir.

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 Joseph Clews know those who mustered from Cedar City to Mountain Meadows, he had worked with them at the Ironworks. 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.

After the massacre at Mountain Meadows, work at the ironworks slowed for many months. However, Clews was among a small group who continued doing occasional work. Around the beginning of October, Clews did masonry work on the cupola. On October 12, he was credited with 10 days of work on the engine house. (This may have been work done the previous spring.) He was also credited with six days of work building a shanty at the coal mine in the canyon.

In the Iron Military District: Private Joseph Clews, Company F, John Higbee's 3rd Battalion, Cedar City

In 1857, the Iron Military District consisted of four battalions led by regimental commander Col. William H. Dame. The platoons and companies in the first battalion drew on men in and around Parowan. (It had no involvement at Mountain Meadows.) Major Isaac Haight commanded the 2nd Battalion whose personnel in its many platoons and two companies came from Cedar City and outer-lying communities to the north such as Fort Johnson. Major John Higbee headed the 3rd Battalion whose many platoons and two companies were drawn from Cedar City and outer-lying communities to the southwest such as Fort Hamilton. Major John D. Lee of Fort Harmony headed the 4th Battalion whose platoons and companies drew on its militia personnel from Fort Harmony, the Southerners at the newly-founded settlement in Washington, the Indian interpreters at Fort Clara, and the new settlers at Pinto.

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In the 1857 Iron County muster rolls, 25-year-old Joseph Clews was listed as a private in a platoon in Company F headquartered in Cedar City. During the events leading to the Mountain Meadows tragedy, Clews served as an express rider between Cedar City and Mountain Meadows. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.

After the first attack on Monday, September 7, Clews was assigned to carry an express to Pinto. From there he went to the cabin of Jacob Hamblin at the northeast end of the valley of Mountain Meadows.

Riding toward Cedar City the following morning, he encountered Major John M. Higbee who ordered Clews to join his detachment. So Clews returned to Mountain Meadows and remained there until Friday.

That day, sometime before the final massacre, Higbee ordered him to take an express to Cedar City. Clews left immediately, passing express riders from Cedar who bore expresses not to harm the emigrants. But Clews knew it was too late.

Later Years in San Bernardino, California

Around 1859, Clews' own personal disenchantment and the declining fortunes of the Iron Mission led Clews and his family to relocate to San Bernardino, California, where many of those disenchanted or withdrawing from Mormonism settled. There he resided for the rest of his life, raising his family and pursuing the occupations of farming and stone masonry.

Clews's 1876 Statement About the Massacre

Evidently it was near the time of the 1876 retrial of John D. Lee that Clews prepared an important statement about the massacre. It was published in a San Bernardino newspaper and, following the execution of Lee in March 1877, in several Utah newspapers. Its significance lies in the important particulars it provides and the reliable chronology of events during "massacre week," September 7-11. It also contains an eloquent expression of the blight that came into Clews's life because of his connection with the massacre:

"[O]h! what a horrible remembrance of those five days! They have been the bane of my existence, have kept me in the back ground and in the shade, have kept me out of society and away from people I should like to have associated with. Such has been my lot or strange fatality."

Clews's statement has now been published in Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Jenson and Morris Collections.

Final Years

In 1894, Clews died in San Bernardino, just short of his sixty-third birthday. He and his wife are known to have raised at least eight children.

References

Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 83, 106; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee, ; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 232, 379; Lee Trial transcripts; New.FamilySearch.org; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 163-188; U.S. Census Records; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C; Woolley, I Would to God, 99, 102.

For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.

External Links

For further information on Joseph Clews, see:

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