Jabez Durfee

Jabez Durfee, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Jabez Durfee/Durfey (1828-1884)
Biographical Sketch 

Jabez Durfee/Durfey (1828-1883) was born to Edmund Durfee and Lainey Pickle in Williamstown, Oswego County in upstate New York adjacent Lake Ontario. His father’s people were from Newport, Rhode Island; his mother’s were mostly German who settled in Montgomery County, New York.
Durfee’s family were early supporters of Joseph Smith and they moved to Kirtland, Ohio in the early 1830s. In common with many early Mormons he experienced the expulsions from western Missouri and, later, western Illinois. In the late 1840s, he was in Iowa Territory.
He immigrated to Utah in 1850. The same year, he married Celestia Curtis in Great Salt Lake City, the daughter of Enos Curtis and Ruth Franklin of Pennsylvania. They eventually had ten children, seven of whom survived to adulthood and married.
The Durfees joined the settlement in Cedar City. He engaged in farming and also contributed labor to the iron works storehouse. He owned lots in Cedar City.
In September 1857, Durfee, 29, was a private in one of the Cedar City platoons. According to John D. Lee, he was in military council on Thursday, September 10.
In the 1870s, Durfee was an early settler in Aurora, Sevier County and its first bishop. He worked as a carpenter, farmer and fruitgrower. He died in 1884 at the age of fifty-six.
References: Bishop, The History of Sevier County, 86; FamilySearch.org; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee; Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 851; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled; Lee Trial transcripts; Murphy, The History of Wayne County, 129, 236; Shirts, A Trial Furnace: Southern Utah's Iron Mission, 331, 354, 495; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C.
Further information and confirmation needed.
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