Ira Hatch
Ira Hatch, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Ira Hatch
1835-1909
Biographical Sketch
A native of rural Cattaraugus County in southwest New York, Ira Hatch and his parents' family moved to western Illinois, then frontier Utah, where Hatch pioneered and acted as Indian interpret in southern Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Hatch was an American frontiersman and Indian interpreter.
Early Life in New York
Hatch was born in Farmerville, Cattaraugus County, New York, the son of Ira Stearns Hatch and Welthea Bradford. Members of the Hatch family joined the Mormons as early as 1832. In the early 1840s, they joined the large Mormon settlement in Hancock County in western Illinois.
Immigration to Utah
In 1849, the family immigrated to Utah, settling initially in northern Utah.
Indian Interpreter in the Southern Indian Mission
In 1853, Ira Hatch was called as an Indian missionary to southern Utah and he was among those who moved there in early 1854. In 1855, he helped found Fort Clara on the Santa Clara River in southwestern Utah. He spent many years in service as an Indian missionary/interpreter under the leadership of Jacob Hamblin.
In the Iron Military District: Private Ira Hatch, Company H, John D. Lee's 4th Battalion
In 1857, 22-year-old Ira Hatch was a private in one the militia platoons attached to Company H in Major John D. Lee's 4th Battalion in the Iron Military District. During the massacre at Mountain Meadows, it is not clear that Hatch was on the scene although he may have been. Rather, Hatch's alleged involvement was in leading a band of Indians to track down several emigrants who reportedly escaped the fusilade at the Meadows and were fleeing across the Nevada desert toward southern California. In Rocky Mountain Saints, published by T.B.H. Stenhouse in 1873, Hatch is alleged to have tracked several escaping emigrants and to have played some role in killing them.
Later Life
In late 1857 and 1858, while helping Mormon settlers return from southern California to Utah, Hatch explored along the Muddy River in (modern-day) southern Nevada. Hatch and Dudley Leavitt met a band of Iyats who proved to be hostile. When they threatened to kill Hatch and Leavitt, Hatch requested the privilege of praying to the Great Spirit to softened their hearts. Ultimately, they released Hatch and Leavitt unharmed and they returned to Fort Clara in southern Utah. Several years later, Mormon settlers moved into the region explored by Hatch, Leavitt and others to found the settlements of St. Thomas, St. Joseph and Overton on the Muddy River.
In 1858, Hatch and many others joined Jacob Hamblin's first expedition across Navajo lands to the Hopi mesas in northeastern Arizona. Hatch accompanied Hamblin on a number of the latter's expeditions or diplomatic missions into Arizona. At the end of the 1862 expedition, when Hamblin and the expedition returned north to Utah, Hatch was one of three interpreters left behind to become better acquainted with Hopi ways.
By 1859, Hatch had married Amanda (Mandy) Melvina Pace (1842-1861). She died before reaching the age of 20 and there were no children from this marriage. His second marriage, also in 1859, was to Sarah (Marahboots) Dyson (1843-1873). The place of birth of their children reflect their frequent moves during the 1860s and 1870s, back and forth several times between southern Utan and southern Nevada and finally to Kanab in Kane County, Utah. Their children were:
- Ira Stearn, May 8, 1862, St. George, Washington, Utah;
- James Henry, August 18, 1864, Meadow Valley, Lincoln, Nevada;
- Amanda Mariah, June 25, 1867, St. George, Washington, Utah;
- Joseph Wilford, January 9, 1870, Panaca, Lincoln, Nevada; and
- Sarah Rhoana, August 16, 1872, Kanab, Kane, Utah.
In 1866, during Utah's Black Hawk War, Hatch led a group that visited the Shivwits and Kaibab bands of Paiutes.
Beginning in the late 1870s, Hatch accompanied Mormon colonizers as they moved from Utah into Arizona, moving upstream on the Little Colorado River in search of suitable locations to settle. Hatch later worked with Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, and other tribes in Arizona and New Mexico.
In 1882, he married Nancy Julia Pipkin Pipkin Kirk (1842-1922) of Hardin County, Tennessee, the daughter of Aser Pipkin and Margaret Foster. Twice widowed, Nancy and her children had accompanied her family west to a Mormon colony where she met Ira Hatch. Hatch became the father figure to Nancy's young children and she would bear Hatch two more children in Ramah, McKinley County, in northwest New Mexico.
Final Years
Ira Hatch died in 1909 at Fruitland, San Juan County, New Mexico and was buried there. Juanita Brooks offered a summation of Ira Hatch's life work: "Always he lived on the frontier, moving as he was called to places where tact in Indian relations was needed." (Brooks, Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 21-22, fn. 22.)
References
Alder and Brooks, A History of Washington County, 132; Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 34, 142, 160-69,183-84, 219; Bigler and Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 36, 39, 111, 147, 149-50, 155, 240, 242, 258, 468; Bradley, A History of Kane County, 67; Bradshaw, ed., Under Dixie Sun: A History of Washington County, 25, 30, 36, 62, 130, 132, 146, 214, 220; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 98-99, 117, 130-32, 136, 142, 231; Brooks, On the Ragged Edge: The Life and Times of Dudley Leavitt, 79-80; Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission: Diary of Thomas D. Brown, 2, 6, 21, 22, 28, 38, 67, 76, 78, 82, 83, 86, 93; Carter, Heart Throbs of the West, 10:456; Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Enduring Legacy, 12:389-90; Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 924; FamilySearch.org; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trails of John D. Lee, 32; Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Church, 554, 572, 776; Larson, I Was Called to Dixie, 10, 23, 38, 44, 161; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 270; Lee Trial transcripts; Robinson, ed., History of Kane County, 3, 14, 17, 32, 39, 59, 60, 67, 72, 224; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 14; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 223-25, Appendix C, 258; Whitaker, History of Santa Clara, Utah, 81-115. See Bibliography.
External Links
For further information on Ira Hatch, see:
- http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Hatch
- http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=17832459
- Nancy Julia Pipkin Hatch: http://www.pipkinusa.org/nancyjulia.txt
Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.
