Amos G. Thornton
Amos G. Thornton, his personal and family background, and his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Amos Griswold Thornton
1832-1902
Biographical Sketch
[edit]A native of Ontario, Canada, Thornton became a westering American who pioneered in western Illinois, then moved to frontier Utah where he was a pioneer in southern Utah.
Forebears
[edit]Amos Griswold Thornton's forebears were in Canada, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and before that, Yorkshire in the North of England; Cheshire in the North West; Wales in the West; Shropshire, Warwickshire and Northhamptonshire in the West Midlands; Lincolnshire and Derbyshire in the East Midlands; Devonshire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, Glouchestershire and Wiltshire in the South West; Hertfordshire and Essex in East Anglia; and London, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, and Kent in the South East. In other words, Thornton's forebears were from all over England and Wales. What they have in common is that they all immigrated to Massachusetts and Connecticut and, most probably, were Puritans, religious dissenters from the Church of England.
Early Life
[edit]Thornton was born on December 30, 1832, in Pickering, Ontario, Canada, the second of fourteen children born to Oliver E. Thornton (1806-1891) and Mary Griswold (1812-1858). In 1837, when young Amos was not yet five years old, Mormon elders proselitized in Ontario and Oliver and Mary Thornton converted to Mormonism and were baptized. Within a year they emigrated from Canada to the United States to join the Mormon migration from Kirtland, Ohio to western Missouri and then to western Illinois where they settled in the Mormons' central gathering place.
Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, was killed in summer 1844 when young Thornton was eleven. During 1845, unrest among the original settlers of western Illinois and the Mormon newcomers increased until armed conflict ensued.
Journey to Utah
[edit]In 1846, the Thornton family joined the Mormon exodus from western Illinois and eventually migrated to the Great Basin. They sojourned in Iowa Territory for several years until they could gather the means to immigrate to Utah.
In 1852, having gathered the necessary outfit and provisions, the Thorntons joined the Edward Wimmer Company which had 230 individuals and about 130 wagons when the company began its journey from the outfitting post at Kanesville, Iowa (present day Council Bluffs) in early July. In the Thornton family were Oliver and Mary Griswold Thornton, Lydia, 21, Amos, 19, Joseph, 17, Alice 12, Oliver, 4, Joseph, 2, Some member of the company died from cholera. They passed the usual milestones on the trail: Fort Kearney, the South Fork of the Platte River, Chimney Rock, Fort Laramie, the Sweetwater River, Independence Rock, Devil's Gate, Green River, Fort Bridger, Bear River, and Weber River. After suffering the usual hardships of overland trail they arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in mid-September.
Pioneering in American Fork in Utah Valley
[edit]The Thornton family moved thirty-five miles south to join the fledgling settlement at Lake City, soon to be renamed American Fork, in Utah Valley. American Fork was located about 15 miles northwest of Provo, the county seat. It was situated several miles west of American Fork Canyon and a mile north of Utah Lake. The Thorntons were joining a settlement that had been founded in 1850 so living conditions were still raw. With their neighbors, they built cabins, cleared land, planted crops and tended their livestock.
There had been some conflict between the Timpanogos Utes, whose traditional territory included Utah Lake, and white settlers in 1849-50. There would be more beginning in 1853. That summer the Walker War erupted and the conflict was particularly intense in Utah Valley. The pioneering settlers abandoned exposed settlements, made fortifications, guarded settlements and livestock and after their stock had been raided by Utes, went in pursuit of it. General Daniel Wells ordered that the settlers of American Fort "fort up" so during July and August most of the scattered log cabins were moved to form a square fortification, large enough to enclose 37 acres. They constructed a log and board wall between cabins and filled behind it with a combination of adobes and earth. Oliver Thornton and twenty-year-old Amos Thornton, his oldest son, would have assisted in some of these urgent activities.
In the following year, Amos Thornton would leave Utah County for southern Utah where he would live the rest of his life. His parents, however, remained in Utah County. His mother died prematurely in 1858. But his father stayed on in American Fork where he became more established and comfortable as pioneering gave way to more settled conditions. In later years, Oliver Thornton served has a city councilman.
Indian Interpreter in the Southern Indian Mission
[edit]In fall 1853, Amos Thornton was called as an Indian missionary/interpreter and in spring 1854 he moved to southern Utah with the other young Indian interpreters, Samuel Knight, Ira Hatch, Thales Haskell and others. Later, Jacob Hamblin, Dudley Leavitt, Carl Shirts, Nephi Johnson, James Pearce, and others joined them and Hamblin became their leader. Some like Thornton and Knight remained in southern Utah. But others such as Hamblin, Hatch, Haskell and Ammon Tenney moved to adjoining territories and states. For the next nearly half century, these men provided service in southern Utah and in the settled portions of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. They were Indian missionaries, but they were also interpreters, ambassadors, and peace brokers.
In June 1854, Jacob Hamblin, Amos Thornton, Rufus Allen, Lorenzo Roundy, Thomas Brown, Gus Hardy, Thales Haskell, and others set out on an expedition to the Santa Clara Creek to explore its environs. They traveled down Ash Creek until they encountered Chief Toquer and established favorable relations with his bands. They continued to the Virgin River where they found the Paiute headman Tutsegabits and the Santa Clara Indians. Those on the Santa Clara were known as Tonaquint-its. The future Indian missionary headquarters was called Tonaquint Station, Fort Clara, or Santa Clara. Then they returned to Harmony.
By 1855, Thornton was among the Indian interpreters who moved to the Santa Clara River to build a small fort, a dam and an irrigation canal. When not farming, building or tending irrigation ditches and tending their livestock, they interacted with the local Paiute Indians whose traditional lands were along the Santa Clara.
In December 1856, in one of many marriages contracted during the Mormon "Reformation" of 1856-57, Thornton married Mary Whitaker (1838-1914) in Cedar City. She was an English emigrant from Lancashire.
In spring 1857, after six months of marriage, Thornton and Mary, age 18, followed Rufus C. Allen, the then president of the Southern Indian Mission, to Pinto Creek in Pinto Valley, Washington County, about 30 miles west of Cedar City. The headwaters of Pinto Creek were to the south of their settlement on the northern flank of the Pine Valley Mountains. Some of the other Indian missionaries in the pioneering party included David W. Tullis, Richard Robinson, and Benjamin Knell. The land along Pinto Creek abounded in tall grass and it looked promising for raising livestock. They lived in a dugout while they built a log cabin. In pioneering at Pinto Creek, they cleared land and enclosed it with fences, plowed their land, sowed their fields with grain, and tended their livestock.
During the summer of 1857, Indian missionaries Jacob Hamblin, Samuel Knight and David Tullis were ranching at the northern end of the nearby Mountain Meadows.
In the Iron Military District: Sergeant Amos Thornton, Company H, John D. Lee's 4th Battalion
[edit]
In 1857, the Iron Military District consisted of four battalions under the command of 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.
In 1857, the 24-year-old Amos Thornton was a sergeant of a militia platoon in Pinto, which was midway between Cedar City and Mountain Meadows. His platoon was attached to Captain Alexander Ingram's Company H in Major John D. Lee's 4th Battalion. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.
On Sunday, September 6, Thornton and two other unidentified militiamen visited the emigrants at Mountain Meadows. According to Richard Robinson, Amos Thornton delivered an express to Pinto shortly after the emigrants had passed.
Joseph Clews recollected that on Monday, September 7, he carried an express from Cedar City to Pinto which he delivered to Richard Robinson or Amos Thornton. That afternoon, Thornton rode southwest along the trail from Pinto to Mountain Meadows, intent on delivering a "cease and desist" order to John D. Lee. However, upon arriving at the Meadows that evening, Thornton failed to encounter Lee. Unbeknownst to Thornton, Lee had ridden south in search of the militia detachments from the "southern settlements," Fort Clara and Washington.
Thornton's other activities, if any, during the four-day siege and the final massacre are not known.
"___ Thornton" was named in the Judge John Cradlebaugh's 1859 arrest warrant. Thornton was also identified in T.B.H. Stenhouse's Rocky Mountain Saints whose list of participants followed the 1859 arrest warranty. However, Thornton was not mentioned during the 1875-76 Lee trials nor in Lee's posthumous memoir, Mormonism Unveiled.
Setting Down Roots in Pinto
[edit]In her later remembrances, Mary W. Thornton noted the insecurity they felt in the early years at Pinto Creek (later shortened to Pinto) because of some degree of unrest among the local Native Americans. This may have been in the aftermath of the massacre at Mountain Meadows when relations with local Paiutes deteriorated. In 1859, seven or eight families had settled in Pinto and it was organized as a settlement with Richard Robinson was president or first elder. Amos Thornton was his first counselor. In 1860, he was elected pound keeper of the settlement. During their lengthy marriage, Mary bore Thornton six children, four girls and two boys.
In Jacob Hamblin's Expeditions to the Hopi Mesas
[edit]
Meanwhile, Pearce had joined several of the winter expeditions of Jacob Hamblin in Hamblin's continuing explorations of the Hopi and Navajo in northeastern Arizona. In 1858, Jacob Hamblin decided to visit the Indians who intrigued him so much, the Hopi. Over the years he would make many trips to the Hopi Mesas and Navajo lands.
In fall 1860, Hamblin made his third crossing of the Colorado River. Amos Thornton, Ira Hatch, his Indian wife Sarah, James Pearce, and others accompanied Hamblin on this third crossing of the Colorado to visit the Hopi Mesas. George Smith, Jr., the son of Mormon leader George A. Smith, was along on the journey. They hauled a boat in a wagon as far as the Vermillion Cliffs but failed to find a passable wagon road to the river. Leaving the wagon and boat to use on another occasion, they proceeded to the river’s edge where they made a raft and crossed to the other side. Unfortunately, they were unable to ford their animals so they retreated to the north side of the river and continued east to the Ute Ford. Crossing to the south of the river, they journeyed to Quichintoweep near Moenkopi Wash. There hostile Navajos fatally wounded George Smith Jr. and he died within hours. The party was forced to abandon his body and retreat without reaching the Hopi Mesas. After crossing the Colorado they returned to southern Utah.
In February 1861, Hamblin returned to Arizona to recover the remains of George Smith, Jr. Amos Thornton, Sam Knight, Bill Stewart, and others accompanied him on this fourth crossing of the Colorado River. Following their previous route they arrived at the Ute Ford and crossed to the south of the river. Traveling generally southeast, they passed the Inscription House ruins. Fearing to go farther into Navajo lands, they sent their Paiute companions ahead to retrieve what they could of Smith’s remains. Then they returned to Utah via the Ute Ford without going to the Hopi Mesas. This was Thornton's last time to accompany Hamblin on his expeditions across the Colorado River.
Thornton Takes a Second Wife
[edit]By the 1860s, Thornton's dairy cows were producing sufficient milk, butter and cheese to allow him to sell the surplus for much needed cash. Traveling to northern Utah, he visited Spanish Fork in Utah County where he renewed his acquaintance with John Lowe Butler, Caroline Skeen Butler, and their daughter Charity Artemesia Butler. A Kentuckian, John Lowe Butler had been a Mormon frontiersman of some renown in the early years in Missouri, Illinois and Utah. According to family lore, Thornton and Butler's daughter Charity had been fond of each other as teenagers back in Illinois. The Butlers had immigrated to Utah and settled in Spanish Fork where John Lowe was the bishop. Charity had gone to San Bernardino, California, but had since returned to Spanish Fork in the midst of the Utah War of 1857-58 which had caused Mormons to withdraw from settlements in Nevada and California. Amos and Charity soon renewed their friendship and in 1862, Thornton took Charity Artemesia Butler (1834-1908) as a plural wife. Over the course of their marriage, Charity bore Thornton ten additional children.
In 1867, when a Mormon ward was organized in Pinto and Richard Robinson was made its first bishop, Thornton continued as Robinson's first counselor. In 1874, Mormon leader Erastus Snow organized the United Order, a Mormon community cooperative, in Pinto and Amos Thornton was appointed vice-president of the co-op. Later, he was elected its general business manager.
Thornton and his two wives remained in Pinto the rest of their lives. His two wives bore him a total of sixteen children, nine of whom survived into the twentieth century. He also adopted an Indian boy whom he named Alma.
Final Years
[edit]In the 1900 census, Amos Thornton was still living in southern Utah with his wife Mary and their 16-year-old son, James. He could not have legally cohabited with both his wives and so we would expect Charity to be living somewhere nearby. The census confirms this: Charity lived several homes away, with her daughter and two grandchildren. Some of Thornton's grown children and their families were also in the neighborhood as was his former associate in the Indian mission and the militia, David Tullis.
Amos Thornton died in Pinto in 1902 at the age of 69. Charity, his Kentucky wife, died in 1908, and Mary, his Lancashire wife, in 1914.
References
[edit]Alder and Brooks, The History of Washington County, 20, 49 fn. 4; Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 128; Bradshaw, ed., Under Dixie Sun, 25, 36, 130, 146, 214, 215, 217; Brooks, "Indian Sketches from . . . Brown and Hamblin," Utah Historical Quarterly, 29/4 (October 1961), 357; Brooks, "Indian Relations on the Mormon Frontier," Utah Historical Quarterly, 12/1-2 (Jan.-Apr. 1944), 34; Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 3, 5, 7, 42, 459, 64, 76, 78, 103; Compton, A Frontier Life, 51, 73, 173-74, 189-92; Huff, Memories That Live: Utah County Centennial History, 226, 227; Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Latter-day Saints, 656-57 (Pinto Ward), 776 (Santa Clara Ward); New.FamilySearch.org; Shelley, Early History of American Fork; Statement of Joseph Clews, in Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 168, 170, 184, 187, Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 152, 164, 214, 217, Appendix C, 263; Woodbury, "The Cotton Mission," Utah Historical Quarterly, 29/3 (July 1961), 201-202.
For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.
External Links
[edit]For further information on Amos G. Thornton, see:
- http://www.lofthouse.com/USA/Utah/washington/wpa/pinto.html
- http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
- http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Amos_Thornton_(1)
- Mary Whitaker Thornton: http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Mary_Whittaker_%284%29
- http://brentprince.blogspot.com/2008/11/amos-g-thorton.html
- Deseret Iron Company Account Book, 1854-1867: http://www.footnote.com/document/241905844/
Further information and confirmation needed. Please comment below or contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.
