Anthony J. Stratton
Anthony J. Stratton, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Anthony Johnson Stratton
1824-1887
Biographical Sketch
[edit]Early Life in Tennessee and Illinois
[edit]Anthony Johnson Stratton was an American frontiersman and early pioneer to Utah and Arizona.
Anthony Stratton was born in Nashville, Bedford County, in central Tennessee. His father and mother had New England forebears but they had followed the westering arc of many early nineteenth-century Americans. Stratton later moved to western Illinois where he affiliated with the Mormons, then joined them in their forced relocation to Utah Territory.
Journey to Utah
[edit]In 1845, he married a native of Kentucky, Martha Jane Layne. Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah states that Stratton came to Utah In 1849. However, the Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel website states, "Proof that [the] Stratton family traveled to Utah in 1848 is the fact that Anthony Stratton's name appears on the list of lots distributed to those in Salt Lake in 1848. This is counter to the note in Esshom's Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah which mistakenly states he came in 1849."
However, it is not know which company the Strattons joined to travel the overland trail to the Great Basin. They must have remained around Kanesville, Iowa (later Council Bluffs) from 1846 to 1848 while they gathered the means to immigrate to Utah Territory. The Stratton family consisted of Anthony, 24, his wife, Martha Jane, 20, and their newborn, Martha Jane who had been born on March 30, 1848.
Having acquired an outfit and necessary provisions for the journey, the Strattons would have joined one of the companies on the Mormon Trail in 1848. They would have 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 late summer or early fall 1848.
Pioneering in Provo in Utah County
[edit]In 1852, the Strattons moved fifty miles south to Utah Valley to the settlement of Provo on the Provo River above where it empties into Utah Lake. The Strattons joined a settlement that had been founded in 1850 so living conditions were still raw. The first inhabitants of Utah Valley constructed a fort for protection from Timpanogos Utes who frequented Utah Valley and Utah Lake. With their neighbors, the Strattons built cabins, cleared land, planted crops and tended their livestock.
In 1849-50, conflict erupted between Timpanogos Utes, whose traditional territory included Utah Lake, and the new settlers. In summer 1853, the Walker War erupted and the conflict was particularly intense in Utah County. Throughout the county, settlers abandoned exposed settlements, made fortifications, guarded settlements and livestock. During the 1849-50 conflict, Provo settlers had built Fort Utah. In the beginning of the Walker War, they determined that their walls were inadequate and each lot owner began constructing a higher and more substantial walls. Anthony Stratton would have assisted in some of these urgent activities. Perhaps the intensity of the Walker War conflict played a role in the Strattons' decision to relocate to the south, outside the traditional lands of the Ute Indians.
To Cedar City and the Ironworks
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By 1854 the Strattons were in Cedar City in southern Utah. Stratton was listed as a lot owner in the early Cedar City land records in both Plat A and Plat B. Plat A was the temporary relocation site after they moved from the original fort. Plat B was a larger section of land located southeast of Plat A, at the base of the foothills. Modern Cedar City occupies all of Plat B and extends beyond it.
In moving to Cedar City, Anthony J. Stratton was settling in an area dominated by the Deseret Iron Company, known more familiarly as the Ironworks. See Summary of Deseret Iron Company for a brief summary of its early development.
The Ironworks in 1857
[edit]In April 1857, the delivery of a new steam engine from Great Salt Lake City seemed to breathe new life into the ironworks. Working from April to June they installed the steam engine and completed the new engine house. In the first week of July, they were ready to begin smelting. They “put on the blast” and had a modicum of success. But they continued to be plagued with problems ranging from poor quality raw materials to smelting equipment that lacked technical sophistication. When in late July the steam engine seized with sand from the dirty creek water, they speedily dug a reservoir to store a supply of clean water for the boiler. They continued making smelting runs through August. All the while crews at the ironworks manned all the necessary functions there, while other crews, mainly miners and teamsters, gathered the raw materials – iron ore, coal, limestone, and wood – necessary to sustain smelting.
The smelting continued until September 13. In other words, around September 3, when a dispute arose between some settlers and several men in the passing Arkansas company, the blast furnace was running nonstop. And when Cedar City militiamen, many of them ironworkers, mustered to Mountain Meadows where they were involved in the massacre on September 11, other ironworkers in Cedar City continued the smelting runs night and day. For additional details, see Smelting at the Ironworks in 1857.
The 1857 Ironworkers
[edit]From late April to September, those working up the canyon in mining or hauling wood, coal, limestone, rock, sand or “adobies” to the ironworks were Isaac C. Haight, James Williamson, George Hunter, Joseph H. Smith, Ira Allen, Ellott Wilden, Swen Jacobs, Alex Loveridge, Joel White, Ezra Curtis, Samuel McMurdie, Samuel Pollock, John Jacobs, John M. Higbee, John M. Macfarlane, Samuel Jewkes, Nephi Johnson, Thomas Cartwright, William Bateman, Elias Morris, Benjamin Arthur, Joseph H. Smith, Robert Wiley, and Philip Klingensmith. Those working at the ironworks on the furnace, engine, coke ovens or blacksmith shop included Elias Morris, John Humphries, Ira Allen, John Urie, Benjamin Arthur, James Williamson, Joseph H. Smith, Samuel Jewkes, Joseph Clews, Richard Harrison, William C. Stewart, William Bateman, John M Macfarlane, John M. Higbee, John Jacobs, George Hunter, Samuel Pollock, William S. Riggs, Alex Loveridge, Ellott Wilden, Ezra Curtis, Eliezar Edwards, Swen Jacobs, Joel White, and Thomas Cartwright. (The two lists overlap because some worked both in the canyon and at the Ironworks.) Other prominent figures at the ironworks who were not later involved at Mountain Meadows were Samuel Leigh, George Horton, James H. Haslem, Laban Morrell, John Chatterley, Thomas Gower, Thomas Crowther and others.
Although Anthony Stratton was in Cedar City at this time, he is one of the few settlers who had not been working in the Ironworks before being sent to Mountain Meadows. There are several entries in the Deseret Iron Company ledger between 1856 and 1858 for Anthony Stratton. However, they are for very small transactions. Further, the only transactions in mid-1857 involve a donation that he and other community members made in May for "Land & the Indians" and several purchases of foodstuffs from the company store in June. He appears to have done little work directly or indirectly for the ironworks. Perhaps he was farming or raising livestock, two other vitally necessary occupations in the settlement.
In the Iron Military District: 2nd Lieutenant Anthony Stratton, Company E, Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion
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In 1857, the Iron Military District consisted of four battalions led by regimental commander 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 September 1857, the 33-year-old Stratton was a 2nd Lt. in the 2nd Platoon in Company E, Captain Elias Morris's company. It was one of two companies in Major Isaac Haight's 2nd Battalion. Samuel McMurdie was the platoon sergeant of the 2nd Platoon while Samuel Jewkes was among its privates. Of the other platoons in Company E, those who went to Mountain Meadows included second lieutenants Ezra H. Curtis, Richard Harrison, Swen Jacobs, and Ira Allen; sergeants Samuel Pollock and Robert Wiley; and privates William Riggs and Jabez Durfee. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.
According to John D. Lee, Stratton arrived at Mountain Meadows sometime between Tuesday, September 8 and Thursday, September 10.
On Thursday evening, according to Lee, Stratton and many others from Cedar City attended the war council held on the grounds of Mountain Meadows.
On Friday, September 11, many members of the militia contingent from Cedar City acted as guards alongside the emigrant men as they marched northward from their fortified position inside the wagon circle. As the massacre commenced, the duty of the guards was to wheel and fire on the emigrant men, quickly dispatching them. Yet during the actual massacre, reactions varied among the guards. Some shrank from their duty, others fired over the heads of their victims, while others still undertook their bloody duty with zeal. Within minutes, members of the Cedar City unit had killed all but three of the emigrant men. However, whether Stratton was in this guard unit and if so, how he acted during the massacre will probably never be known with any certainty.
In 1859, federal judge John Cradlebaugh issued an arrest warrant naming three dozen Iron County militiamen for their role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Even though many militiamen in Cedar City were named in the warrant, Stratton was not. Nor was he mentioned during the Lee trials of 1876-76. However, Lee and his counsel, William Bishop, mention Stratton in Lee's posthumously published autobiography, Mormonism Unveiled.
Moving From Cedar City
[edit]In 1858, Anthony Stratton and his family left Cedar City and moved southwest to the Virgin River Valley. Stratton, Nephi Johnson and his brother Seth, Carl Shirts and his brother Darius, and others constructed a wagon road over the Hurricane Fault so they could explore the upper reaches of the Virgin River. This difficult road was called Johnson Twist. Stratton and the Johnsons helped found a colony at Virgin City, situated on the upper Virgin River about 20 miles west of present-day Zion National Park. Using homemade surveying instruments they had fashioned, Stratton, Nephi Johnson and others surveyed the new township. For the better part of the next two decades the Strattons lived in Kane or Washington counties.
In 1860, the community built a schoolhouse. Stratton had a good education for his time and was a school teacher in his community. He also acted as a counselor to the bishop of the local church congregation.
In 1864, Stratton went east to act as a guide for some of the emigrant trains traveling west to Great Salt Lake City. He and his wife had eleven children, ten of whom survived to adulthood.
In the mid-1870s, Stratton and his sons helped in the construction of the St. George temple.
Relocating to Arizona
[edit]In 1877, Stratton accepted a call to help expand Mormon settlements in Arizona Territory. They departed in mid-November 1877 and arrived in early January 1878 at Brigham City on the Little Colorado River, east of modern Winslow. There they remained for fourteen months.
But life on the lower Little Colorado was vexing, with its droughts, flash floods, dam collapses, and field washouts. Stratton and his family pulled up stakes and moved up the Little Colorado where they stayed briefly at Woodruff. However, hearing that things appeared more promising on Silver Creek, a tributary to the Little Colorado farther south, they pushed ahead until they came to Snowflake in Navajo County. In spring 1879, he and his family including three of his grown sons settled in Snowflake on the banks of Silver Creek surrounded by rolling hills. Raw pioneer living conditions prevailed for several years until dams, canals, fields, orchards and homes could be established.
In 1880, the Mormons had obtained a contract to build the road grade on a stretch of the railroad from New Mexico to eastern Arizona. When Joseph Fish encountered Anthony Stratton, he was in a gang of Mormon laborers near the Zuni River, south of Gallup in west-central New Mexico. They worked on the grade for the railroad. Jesse N. Smith also noted Stratton's presence apparently as foreman of a Mormon railroad gang.
His son William Ellis Stratton recalled how hard his father worked, yet "his theory was to 'Work while you work, and play while you play.'" He took a half-day "holiday" on Saturdays during which he indulged in "some sport such as marbles or [base]ball."
Final Years
[edit]Anthony J. Stratton died in Snowflake, Arizona in 1887. He was survived by his wife Martha and numerous children. Martha Jane Stratton died in 1906 at age 79.
References
[edit]Alder and Brooks, History of Washington County, 50, fn. 13; Bradshaw, ed., Under Dixie Sun, 268-69, 275-77; Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 106, 110; Clayton, Pioneer Men of Arizona, 484 (biographical sketch); Clayton, Pioneer Women of Arizona, 609-11 (biographical sketch of Martha Jane Layne Stratton); Huff, Utah County Centennial History, 42, 43; Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Latter-day Saints, 683; Krenkel, ed., Life and Times of Joseph Fish, 213; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 232, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; New.FamilySearch.org; Shirts and Shirts, A Trial Furnace, 331, 478, 485, 495; Smith, ed., Journal of Jesse N. Smith, 236, 247; Stratton, A Life of Love, 1-7 (biographical sketch of William Ellis and Minnie Kartchner Stratton); Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 236; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C, 263.
For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.
External Links
[edit]For further information on Anthony Johnson Stratton see:
- http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=lgardner3&id=I6
- http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
- Deseret Iron Company Account Book, 1854-1867: http://www.footnote.com/document/241905844/
- For information from the Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel website on Anthony J. Stratton, see: http://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/pioneerDetail?lang=eng&pioneerId=49729
Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact 1857_militia@roadrunner.com.
