James Pearce (1839-1922) was born in Itawamba County, Mississippi, the son of Harrison Pearce and Henrietta Cremeans. For two generations his Scots-Irish forebears had followed a westerly migration arc from coastal South Carolina to the hill country of north-central Georgia to west-central Alabama, then to northeastern Mississippi where Pearce was born.
In the 1840s, members of the Pearce clan joined the Mormons and moved westward. From 1849, the Pearces passed several years in the Mormon settlements in Iowa and Nebraska.
Migration to Utah
They immigrated to Utah in the early 1850s. In 1853, the Pearce family was in Payson in northcentral Utah where many southerners settled initially.
The Cotton Mill in the Cotton Mission.
To Washington and the Cotton Mission
In spring 1857, members of the Pearce clan were part of a migration of southerners to the new settlement of Washington in Washington County. These southerners founded the Cotton Mission in what came to be known as Utah's Dixie. Pearce's father, Harrison Pearce, was an important early figure in Washington.
Although it eventually proved commercially unsuccessful over the long run, it did succeed in producing cotton goods for local use and export at an important stage in Utah Territory's economic development.
In the Iron Military District: Private James Pearce, Company I, John D. Lee's 4th Battalion
In September 1857, eighteen-year-old James Pearce was a private in one of the platoons in his father's company, Company I. Company I was attached to the 4th Battalion under Major John D. Lee. Harrison Pearce, his father, and others from Washington were recruited, probably on Sunday the 6th, to join an ad hoc detachment from the southern settlements of Washington and Fort Clara to muster to Mountain Meadows. James Pearce joined his father in the detachment that also included William Young, William Slade, John W. Clark and others.
While en route to Mountain Meadows they discussed the rumors that the emigrants had "killed Joe Smith" and would bring soldiers from California to drive the Mormons and take their means. On the eve of the massacre, Pearce overheard the quarreling among the leaders, some favored killing and others opposed. He observed that the Indians appeared angry because of their killed and wounded.
On the day of the massacre, Pearce remained in the militia encampment due to illness, from where he heard the volley of guns during the massacre. There is folklore that Harrison Pearce became angry at his son, evidently for lacking fighting spirit, and fired at him, grazing his face. This cannot be corroborated. Pearce is not mentioned in Judge John Cradlebaugh's 1859 arrest warrant.
In the late 1850s and early 1860s, James Pearce joined several of the winter expeditions of Jacob Hamblin in Hamblin's continuing explorations of the Hopi and Navajo in northeastern Arizona. These were the first Mormon explorations in Arizona. In 1861, Pearce acted as president of a small church branch at Tonaquint in the vicinity of the newly-founded settlement of St. George in southwest Utah. The Pearces lived in the St. George area from the early 1860s to the late-1870s. During this time, Pearce and several others acted as road contractors to improve the stretch of road from Washington to the California Road west of St. George. A "James H. Pearce" is credited with bringing 300 Shevwit Indians from the Arizona Strip to St. George where David H. Cannon performed the rite of baptism. This episode is variously dated to 1862 or the mid-1870s.
During the Black Hawk War of the mid-1860s, the Pearces were among those involved in policing and punitive actions against marauding Indians. In 1867, twenty-eight-year-old Pearce married fifteen-year-old Mary Jane Meeks (1851-19?). She was born in Pottawattomie County, Iowa, as her parents immigrated to Utah. Several preceding generations of her forebears lived in Appalachia. Over the course of their marriage, she bore Pearce eleven children, all of whom lived to adulthood.
In 1874, Pearce was among the Indian interpreters living south of the Colorado River in the outpost at Moencopi, Arizona. The threat of a Navajo uprising caused them to temporarily abandon the outpost and return to the north side of the river.
Witness in the First Trial of John D. Lee in 1875
The following year during the first trial of John D. Lee, Pearce was among several dozen witnesses who testified. Pearce described being a lad of eighteen who joined a detachment bound for Mountain Meadows. Contrary to the assertion that militia witnesses never identified other militiamen, Pearce identified William Young, John W. Clark, and William Slade. He recounted how they discussed the rumors that had originated in Cedar City that the Arkansas emigrants had "killed Joe Smith" and would bring soldiers from California who would drive the Mormons from their homes. He was not in the Thursday evening council meeting at the Meadows but he heard the bickering among the militia leaders as they sought consensus on a plan of action. He also described being ill on the morning of September 11, 1857, of remaining in camp where he heard the barrage of gunfire as the killing began. Like several others who testified in the Lee trials, James Pearce's trial testimony contains his only extant statements about the massacre.
In January, 1878, as Mormon colonization expanded in Arizona, Pearce arrived in Navajo County on the Little Colorado River. He and another pioneer in the area obtained land which later became the settlement of Taylor. They moved successively from Sunset on the Little Colorado River to Woodruff, and thence to the Showlow River near Taylor. In getting established in Arizona, Pearce was offered land at a favorable price. Instead, following backcountry custom, he located some miles away and established a squatter's claim to his land.
In the later 1880s, Pearce and other Mormon settlers came into conflict with the interests of the Aztec Land and Cattle Company, which claimed a near monopoly on thousands of acres of eastern Arizona grazing lands. Pearce was forced at gun point to abandon his claim. When John Payne, a notorious outlaw, threatened Neils Petersen, Pearce and Peterson approached the local Mormon leader, Jessie N. Smith, to inquire "if it would be right to kill him." Smith urged restraint. Eventually, things shifted more toward the Mormons when the land agent resisted the tactics of Aztec company while Payne and several of his associates died in a skirmish in the Pleasant Valley War in eastern Arizona.
The Pearces resided at different times in the new settlements of Taylor, Shumway and Snowflake. While pioneering in Arizona, Pearce was a cattleman, sheepman, farmer, storekeeper and hotelier. Pearce remained in Navajo County, Arizona, for the remainder of his life. In 1922, Pearce died at the age of eight-two and was buried in Taylor.
References
Alder and Brooks, A History of Washington County, 25-27, 28-29, 41-49, 50 fn 11; Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 120, 128, 205, 292, 326; Bradshaw, ed., Under Dixie Sun, 235 (Harrison Pearce); FamilySearch.org; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trial of John D. Lee, 125; Larson, I Was Called to Dixie, 24, 516; Larson, The Red Hills of November, 125; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 228, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; Peterson, Mormon Colonizing Along the Little Colorado River, 170-71, ; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 236; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 109, 127, 154, 173, 191, 193, 198, Appendix C, 261.
