Samuel Knight
Samuel Knight, his personal and family background, and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Name: Samuel Knight
Lived: 1832-1910
Biographical Sketch
Born in 1832 in Jackson County, Missouri, Samuel Knight was descended from New England Yankee stock. His grandfather, Joseph Knight, and his father, Newell Knight, had been early supporters of the Mormon founder Joseph Smith in upstate New York. They had been part of the "Colesville Branch" that moved to Jackson County in western Missouri in 1831. In 1833, conflict with the original settlers in Jackson County drove the Mormon newcomers into northwestern Missouri.
While they squatted along the river bottoms, Knight's mother died shortly after childbirth. His father married Lydia Goldthwait and the family briefly settled in Ray County in northwest Missouri but in 1836 were pressured to leave. They homesteaded in nearby Caldwell County and Knight's father participated in the militia actions around Far West in 1838.
In early 1839, after their ouster from western Missouri, they moved to Commerce, Illinois, then upriver to Nauvoo on the Illinois frontier. The Knight family departed Illinois in 1846 and were among the vanguard company that wintered on the traditional lands of the Ponca Indians in present-day Nebraska. There his father died in early 1847. To avoid possible legal claims to him from his mother's family, Knight's step-mother sent him ahead on the trail.
At the age of fourteen and traveling apart from his step-mother's family, Knight entered Great Salt Lake Valley in fall 1847. He was reunited with his stepmother and half-brothers and -sisters in 1850.
In October 1853, at the age of twenty, Knight was called as an Indian missionary to southern Utah and arrived at Fort Harmony in 1854. He was among Jacob Hamblin's Indian interpreters who founded Fort Clara on the lower Santa Clara, 1854-55. In 1856, he married Danish emigrant Carolyn Beck (1836-1869).
In 1857, 24-year-old Samue Knight was a private in company H in John D. Lee's 4th Battalion. That summer, Knight, Jacob Hamblin, David Tullis and several others were homesteading on a mountain ranch at the Mountain Meadows. In early August, Knight's wife gave birth to their child. His wife was seriously ill and they remained there for several months until she recovered. In 1858, Knight was in the patrol to southern Nevada to scout for the approach of the U. S. Army from the west coast.
In 1862, when Swiss emigrants moved to Santa Clara in southwest Utah, Knight and his family was among the few native-born Americans to remain. Except for a brief stint in eastern Nevada in 1864-65, Knight remained in Santa Clara in southwestern Utah for the remainder of his life. He accompanied Jacob Hamblin's exploring parties to the Hopi mesas and Navajo lands in Arizona in 1858, 1863 and 1873. Following the lead of Jacob Hamblin, many Indian interpreters eventually moved to Arizona to pursue their interest in the Hopi. Knight, however, remained in southern Utah and worked among the "Piedes," or Southern Paiutes.
By the time of the death of his wife Carolyn in 1869, she had borne him six children. Following her death, he married Dudley Leavitt's sister, Laura Malvina Leavitt (1851-1922), Utah born with Canadian and New England roots, who bore him ten children. His only polygamous marriage was in 1888 to a Missouri-born widow, Susan Charlotte Nanney Hunt (1832?- ?), just two years before the Mormon Church's Manifesto that officially ended the practice.
He died in 1910 and was buried in Santa Clara, survived by his second wife Laura and eleven children. At the time of his death, his obituary noted that he was known for recounting his early years in Missouri and Illinois where he and his family had been driven from their homes on four occasions, an indication of the persistence and power of these early life experiences to shape Mormon memory and identity.
Private Samuel Knight, Company H, John D. Lee's 4th Battalion
Role in and Statements Relative to the Massacre
In mid-1857, to avoid the summer heat on the lower Santa Clara, Samuel Knight, Jacob Hamblin, David Tullis and others were homesteading a mountain ranch at the Mountain Meadows. He was a private in company H of the 4th Battalion, Major John D. Lee's battalion.
Around Saturday, September 5, having received orders from Cedar City, Private Samuel Knight carried orders south to Fort Clara (and perhaps Washington) to incite Indians on the lower Santa Clara to gather at Mountain Meadows. On Monday, September 7th in the evening, following the first attack on the emigrants, he and other southern militiamen met Major John D. Lee south of the Meadows, joined him and moved up to the Meadows the following day. On Friday the 11th, Lee recruited Knight and Sergeant Samuel McMurdie to drive wagons to the emigrant wagon circle and carry away young children and wounded adults. After the final massacre these wagons carried the surviving children to Hamblin's ranch.
In 1876, Knight testified in the second trial of John D. Lee. In the 1890s and the early twentieth century he gave several important interviews and statements concerning the massacre.
References
Alder and Brooks, The History of Washington County, ; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962; Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission: Diary of Thomas D. Brown. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1972; Brooks, On the Ragged Edge: The Life and Times of Dudley Leavitt. Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1973; Brooks, Jacob Hamblin: Mormon Apostle to the Indians. Salt Lake City, Utah and Chicago, Illinois, Westwater Press, 1980; Hartley, They Are My Friends: A History of the Joseph Knight Family, 1825-1850. Provo, Utah: Grandin Books, 1986; Knight, Lydia. Lydia Knight’s History in Noble Women’s Lives Series,. Salt Lake City, Utah: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1883; Knight, Jesse William. The Jesse Knight Family. Salt Lake City, Utah: The Deseret News Press, 1940; Larson, The Red Hills of November: A Pioneer Biography of Utah’s Cotton Town. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Press, 1957; Larson, I was Called to Dixie; The Virgin River Basin: Unique Experiences in Mormon Pioneering. St. George, Utah: The Dixie College Foundation, 1961, third printing, 1992; Little, Jacob Hamblin in Three Mormon Classics. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1988; Arthur Knight Hafen, "Biographical Sketch of Samuel Knight"; Samuel Knight interview, 1895; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled; Lee Trial transcripts; New.FamilySearch.org;
External Links
For further information on Samuel Knight, see Samuel Knight's testimony in the 1876 trial of John D. Lee: http://www.mtn-meadows-assoc.com/knight.htm
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