Benjamin A. Arthur

Benjamin Arthur, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre

Benjamin Abel Arthur (1834-1883)
Biographical Sketch

Benjamin Abel Arthur was born in 1834 in Monmouthshire, South Wales toChristopher Abel Arthur (1796-1859) and Ann Jones (1793-1852). His father, a Baptist, joined the Mormons while Benjamin was in his teens. Benjamin was baptized into the Mormon Church in 1850.
Following his mother's death in 1852, he, his father, Christopher Abel, and brothers, Joshua and Christopher Jones, immigrated to America. Traveling in the Spencer company as part of a Mormon wagon train, they arrived in Utah in 1853 and settled on a farm in Great Salt Lake Valley.
In 1854, the Arthurs were among the British emigrants called to the Iron Mission in southern Utah. There they farmed and worked in the fledgling iron works.
In 1857, 23-year-old Benjamin was a sergeant in one of the 4th Platoon in the Company D of the 2nd Battalion. Major Isaac C. Haight commanded the 2nd Battalion and his adjutant was his step-son, John M. Macfarlane. Company D was led by Captain Joel White whose adjutant was Daniel Macfarlane.
When word reached southern Utah in mid-August that the U.S. Army was approaching the territory, the Arthurs and other local settlers hurriedly prepared for the rumored "invasion" of their valley. In these tense circumstances the Arkansas emigrants passed through Cedar City and beyond to Mountain Meadows. In early September 1857, after the Fancher and Baker companies had passed through Cedar City, militia major John M. Higbee (also a counselor to stake president Isaac C. Haight) ordered Benjamin Arthur, Josiah Reeves and Ellott Willden to follow the Arkansas emigrants. According to Willden, they were to find a pretext to set the local Paiutes on the emigrants. They were also to direct the wagon train to a point some miles below Mountain Meadows where the original plans called for the attack to take place.
Willden, Reeves and Arthur rode to Mountain Meadows, saw the emigrant camp and had a civil exchange with them. Evidently in the evening of Monday, September 7, or, more probably, the following evening, Arthur was with other militiamen a short distance east of Mountain Meadows. According to John D. Lee's account in Mormonism Unveiled, Benjamin Arthur was with William Stewart and Joel White during the pivotal assault in which Stewart suddenly shot and killed Tenneseean William Aden of the wagon train and White wounded Aden's companion. The injured man managed to retreat to the emigrants' besieged camp. This confirmed to the emigrants that local Mormon settlers were complicit in the "Indian" attack on their camp.
Arthur was also at the final massacre on September 11, although Ellott Willden later claimed that Arthur was unarmed. Earlier that day in Cedar City, Major Isaac C. Haight reportedly decided to halt the attack at Mountain Meadows. He sent Elias Morris and Benjamin Arthur's brother, Christopher Jones Arthur to reverse his earlier order. But they arrived too late to prevent the massacre. Joseph Clews' account implicitly confirms that they were unable to reach Mountain Meadows until all of the company except 17 small children had been massacred.
In the years after the massacre, Arthur drifted away from Cedar City. By the early 1860s, he had moved north to Beaver, Utah where, in 1863, he married Scottish emigrant, Jennette Easton. They established their home in Greenville, Beaver County where they had eight daughters and two sons. In the mid-1870s when John D. Lee was tried in the federal district court in Beaver, Arthur lived in the area and presumably followed the course of the trial although it is unknown whether he attended the proceedings. He died in 1883 at the age of 49. He was survived by his wife Jennette and eight of his children. His wife died in 1911.
References: Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, p.724; Jenson, LDS Biographical Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, 186; Seegmiller, The History of Iron County; Shirts and Shirts, A Trial Furnace: Southern Utah's Iron Mission; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows,Appendix C, New.familysearch.org.
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