Samuel Knight
Samuel Knight, his personal and family background, and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Samuel Knight
1832-1910
Biographical Sketch
Early Life in Missouri and Illinois
Born in 1832 in Jackson County, Missouri, Samuel Knight was descended from New England Yankee stock. His grandfather, Joseph Knight, and his father, Newell Knight, had been early supporters of the Mormon founder Joseph Smith in upstate New York. They had been part of the "Colesville Branch" that moved in 1831 to Jackson County in western Missouri. In 1833, conflict with the original settlers in Jackson County drove the Mormon newcomers into northwestern Missouri.
While they squatted along the river bottoms, Knight's mother died shortly after childbirth. His father married Lydia Goldthwait and the family briefly settled in Ray County in northwest Missouri but in 1836 were pressured to leave. They homesteaded at Far West in nearby Caldwell County where in 1838 more armed conflict ensued between the original settlers and the Mormon newcomers. Knight's father participated in the militia actions around Far West. In early 1839, after their ouster from western Missouri, they moved to Commerce, Illinois, then upriver to Nauvoo on the Illinois frontier.
Migration to Utah
The Knight family departed Illinois in 1846 and were among the vanguard company that wintered on the traditional lands of the Ponca Indians in present-day Nebraska. There his father died in early 1847. To avoid possible legal claims to him from his mother's family, Knight's step-mother sent him ahead on the trail.
At the age of fourteen and traveling apart from his step-mother and his half-brothers and -sisters, Knight entered Great Salt Lake Valley in fall 1847. He was reunited with his stepmother and siblings in 1850.
Indian Interpreter in the Southern Indian Mission
In October 1853, at the age of twenty, Knight was called as an Indian missionary to southern Utah and arrived at Fort Harmony in spring 1854. He was among Jacob Hamblin's Indian interpreters who founded Fort Clara on the lower Santa Clara, 1854-55. In 1856, he married Danish emigrant Carolyn Beck (1836-1869).
In the Iron Military District: Private Samuel Knight, Company H, John D. Lee's 4th Battalion, Fort Clara
In 1857, the Southern Indian Mission were headquartered at Fort Clara on the lower Santa Clara River near modern-day St. George, Utah. It was part of the IIron 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.
Samuel Knight, 24, was a private in company H in John D. Lee's 4th Battalion. Other Indian interpreters in Lee's geographically sprawling battalion were Dudley Leavitt, Oscar Hamblin, and Amos Thornton (Fort Clara), Carl Shirts (Fort Harmony), and David Tullis (Pinto).
In mid-1857, to avoid the summer heat on the lower Santa Clara, Samuel Knight, Jacob Hamblin, David Tullis and others were homesteading a mountain ranch at the Mountain Meadows. In early August, Knight's wife Caroline gave birth to their first child. His wife was seriously ill and they remained there for several months while she recuperated from her difficult delivery.
Around Saturday, September 5, having received orders from Cedar City, Knight carried orders south to Fort Clara (and perhaps Washington) to incite Indians on the lower Santa Clara to gather at Mountain Meadows. A militia contingent from these southern communities was also to muster to Mountain Meadows. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.
On Monday, September 7th in the evening, following the first attack on the Arkansas emigrants at Mountain Meadows, Knight and other southern militiamen met Major John D. Lee south of the Meadows, joined him and moved up to the Meadows the following day.
They arrived at Mountain Meadows around noon on Tuesday, September 8. Knight went back to the northern end of the valley to Jacob Hamblin's cabin where his wife was convalescing in their wagon box. The rest of the militiamen from the southern settlements camped in a separate encampment from the Cedar City detachment which had already arrived and set up their own encampment.
On Friday the 11th, Major John D. Lee recruited Knight and Sergeant Samuel McMurdie to drive their wagons to the emigrant wagon circle and carry away young children and wounded adults. As the emigrants filed out of their wagon circle, John D. Lee with McMurdie and Knight carrying the small children and several injured adults were in the lead. Some distance behind trailed the women and children. Bringing up the rear were the emigrant men, shadowed by a militia guard unit from Cedar City.
What occurred in the final massacre at the head of the line is contested. Samuel McMurdie and Samuel Knight testified in Lee's second trial in 1876 that Lee shot the injured adults in McMurdie's wagon. Knight said he was calming his fractious horses which were unnerved by the shooting. When McMurdie was questioned about his role, he invoked his right against self-incrimination. In Lee's later published statements he denied any killing, saying his gun had jammed and that McMurdie and Knight had shot the injured adults. But before his execution, Lee was more forthcoming; his gun had jammed after he had shot several of the adults. After the final massacre these two wagons carried the seventeen surviving children to Hamblin's ranch where Rachel Hamblin tried to calm them as best she could.
Scouting to Encounter the U.S. Army in 1858
In 1858, Knight was in the patrol to southern Nevada with Jacob Hamblin, Dudley Leavitt, Ira Hatch and others to scout for the approach of the U. S. Army from the West Coast.
In Hamblin's Expeditions to the Hopi Mesas
He accompanied Jacob Hamblin's exploring parties to the Hopi mesas and Navajo lands in Arizona in 1858, 1863 and 1873. Following the lead of Jacob Hamblin, many Indian interpreters eventually moved to Arizona to pursue their interest in the Hopi. Knight, however, remained in southern Utah and worked among the "Piedes," or Southern Paiutes.
Later Life in Santa Clara
In 1862, when Swiss emigrants moved to Santa Clara in southwest Utah, Knight and his family was among the few native-born Americans to remain.
In the mid-1860s, Knight, Dudley Leavitt and others moved their families to Clover Valley and Meadow Valley in modern Lincoln County, Nevada. There they remained for several years. However, the outbreak of the Black Hawk War in 1865 eventually caused Mormons to abandon many unprotected outposts. Knight and his family returned to Santa Clara in southwestern Utah where he resided for the remainder of his life.
By the time of the death of his wife Carolyn in 1869, she had borne him six children. Following her death, he married Dudley Leavitt's sister, Laura Malvina Leavitt (1851-1922), Utah born with Canadian and New England roots, who bore him ten children. Over the years, Laura Knight made a notable contribution to the community as a midwife and nurse.
Testifying in John D. Lee's Second Trial, 1876
In 1876, Knight, along with Nephi Johnson, Joel White, Samuel McMurdie, and Jacob Hamblin, were called as prosecution witnesses in the second trial of John D. Lee. Knight's testimony can be found here.
His only polygamous marriage was in 1888 to a Missouri-born widow, Susan Charlotte Nanney Hunt (1832?- ?), just two years before the Mormon Church's Manifesto that officially ended the practice.
Later Statements about the Massacre
In the 1890s and the early twentieth century he gave several important interviews and statements concerning the massacre. With the exception of some statements contained in third-party journals, all of Samuel Knight's written statements and affidavits have now been published in Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Jenson and Morris Collections. His trial testimony in the 1876 trial of John D. Lee is available online.
Final Years
He lived on in Santa Clara, earning his livelihood as a farmer and rancher and continuing to work with the local Paiutes. He spent more than 50 years in Santa Clara. He died in 1910 and was buried there, survived by his second wife Laura and eleven children (see photo of his second family, below).
At the time of his death, his obituary noted that he was known for recounting his early years in Missouri and Illinois where he and his family had been driven from their homes on four occasions, an indication of the persistence and power of these early life experiences to shape Mormon memory and identity.
References
Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 12, 34, 119, 126, 128, 146, 149, 153-54, 158, 170, 212, 304; Bigley and Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 111, 259, 314, 347-48, 419-21 (statement), 457, 467; Bradshaw, ed., Under Dixie Sun, 25, 30, 36, 62, 130, 146, 148, 150, following 152 (photo), 158, 172, 214; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 74, 83, 107, 121, 123, 197; Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 2, 7, 67, 78, 118, 120; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee, 215-16, 218-19; Hartley, They Are My Friends, 6, 86, 117; Hartley, Stand by My Servant Joseph, 154, 195, 332-33, 355; Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Latter-day Saints, 776 (Santa Clara Ward); Knight, Lydia Knight’s History, 35, 72, 90-91, 100; Larson, I Was Called to Dixie, 38, 44, 52, 102, 159, 161, 541; Larson, Diary of Charles Lowell Walker, Vol. II, 835, 872; Larson, Erastus Snow, 315, 384; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 228, 238, 241, 242, 243, 250, 252, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; Little, Jacob Hamblin, ; Moorman and Sessions, Camp Floyd and the Mormons, 133-34, 136; New.FamilySearch.org; Robinson, ed., History of Kane County, 3; Solomon, Joseph Knight, 1, 20, 23, 59, 78, 89, 95, 115; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 97, 115, 202, 220, 262-64 (biographical sketch), 265-66, 270, 296, 320-322 (affidavit); Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 6, 140-41, 150-51 (brief sketch), 152, 161-62, 193, 195-98, 204, 213, Appendix C, 254, 259, Appendix D, 265; Whittaker, History of Santa Clara, Utah, 24-25, 26, 32, 43, 46, 58, 85, 89, 120, 122, 133, 134-39 (biographical sketch), 211, 281, 370-71, 560.
For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.
External Links
For further information on Samuel Knight, see:
- Samuel Knight's testimony in the 1876 trial of John D. Lee is at: http://www.mtn-meadows-assoc.com/knight.htm
- http://records.ancestry.com/Samuel_Knight_records.ashx?pid=17695609
- http://www.geni.com/people/Samuel-Knight/6000000000875614129
- http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=42044
- http://earlylds.com/getperson.php?personID=I17113&tree=Earlylds
- http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
- http://wchsutah.org/people/samuel-knight.php
- http://wchsutah.org/people/samuel-knight1.pdf
- http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~knight57/direct/knight/aqwg578.htm#11101
- For the early Southern Indian Mission, see http://wchsutah.org/miscellaneous/indian-mission.php
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