William C. Stewart

 

William Cameron Stewart, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
William C. Stewart/Stuart (1827-1895)
Biographical Sketch

William Cameron Stewart/Stuart (1827-1895) was born in Enganmore, Inverness-shire in the Northwest Scottish Highlands. He sailed to the United States, immigrated to Utah and by the mid-1850s he had settled in Cedar City in southern Utah. In 1855 he married Mary Ann Clark Corlett (1838-1894) from Salford (Manchester), Lancashire, England.
In September 1857, William Stewart, 30, was 2nd Lt. in one of the Cedar City platoons. According to fellow militiaman and town herdsman Henry Higgins, around sundown on Monday, September 6, 1857, Higgins observed a detachment of approximately twenty-five armed men departed Cedar City in wagons or horseback Besides Stewart, he mentioned William Bateman, Ezra Curtis, Samuel Pollock, Alexander Loveridge and John M. Higbee. According to John D. Lee, William Stewart arrived at Mountain Meadows in a company from Cedar City. In addition, multiple witnesses mention Stewart at Mountain Meadows.
Stewart and his family remained in Cedar City and his wife bore him seven children. In 1874, following the federal grand jury indictment, naming Stewart and eight other militiamen for complicity in the massacre, a warrant was issued for his arrest. Stewart, Isaac C. Haight and John M. Higbeewent into hiding and Stewart remained a fugitive. He moved to the Mormon colony in Chihuahua, Mexico where he died in 1895, around the time the Mountain Meadows prosecutions were finally closed.
References: Lee, Mormonism Unveiled; Lee Trial transcripts; FamilySearch.org.
Further information and confirmation needed.
Please comment below or contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com. Thank you!