Leaving Texas

Trails West
Map by Frederick Smoot
see http://www.tngenweb.org/tnletters/usa-west.htm

Brigham Young called James Gammell on a mission to Texas in September 1856, and gave him a specific assignment:  he was to remain “until he got all the Mormons in Texas out to Utah.”  The three-month journey across the plains gave James plenty of time to consider how he might accomplish such a daunting task.  As soon as he arrived in Texas, he went to work locating the new Mormon converts and compiling a list of their names.  Since land was cheap, he advised them not to try to sell their farms,(1) but to keep them and sell everything else, including any slaves, and to invest the money “in young cattle, adding them to the cattle they already had.”  He “assured them they could sell their cattle in Utah at a price that would make more for them than they could make in Texas in three years.”  Supposedly, he also informed them that if they didn’t like Utah once they arrived, they could sell everything, except the teams required to take them back to Texas.  He instructed them to sell, buy, and barter to acquire just the outfit that he advised for the journey to Great Salt Lake City.  For the next few months, he continued to visit them and to give them directions.  By May 1857, “he had them all on the road.”(2)

On March 4, 1857, James left his brother William’s home in Houston, accompanied by Eleanor Pratt(3) and her two children, his brother-in-law Captain Andrews,(4) and a Mr. Stanfield [or Standifird?].  He traveled to Ellis County, Texas, (south of present-day Dallas), where the Mormon emigration group was fitting out for a trip across the plains.(5)  Homer Duncan, presiding elder of the Texas conference, was assigned as captain of the company of Texas Saints.  The group started the trip to Salt Lake Valley in May 1857.  Besides the animals used for drawing the wagons, the company brought with them over thirteen hundred head of cattle.  “They trailed their herd northward up the Old Shawnee Trail across the Red River past Preston.  Reaching Fort Gibson in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, they trailed northeastward on the Old Military Road to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory [on the Missouri River.]”(6)

Near Fort Leavenworth, James crossed the river to Independence, Missouri, which was, at the time, a hotbed of hatred towards Mormons.  There he encountered an anti-Mormon mob led by W.M.F. Magraw.(7)  Magraw was particularly angry because he had just lost his federal contract for the Salt Lake City mail delivery to a group of Mormons.  Elder John Taylor recorded the story of the mob assault and James’ narrow escape:

At Independence, Mo., brother James Gammell, who was with a company of Texians on their way to the valley, was mobbed by a band of ruffians in front of the public square, at the instance of Mr. Magraw, the former mail contractor, who told him “if he was not gone in fifteen minutes he should hang on that tree,” pointing to one in the vicinity.  Gammell immediately fled, as he saw a number of ruffians armed with revolvers; they followed him on foot and on horseback, firing at him as he ran; by leaping fences he, however, evaded them, although he had as many as fifty shots fired at him; he afterwards swam the Missouri River, and escaped, and is now with us.(8)

John Henry Standifird, a new Mormon convert traveling with the Homer Duncan Company of Texas Saints, wrote in his diary that in March 1857 he started overland to Missouri and was also threatened by the mob at Independence:

[I] Fell in company with some Latter-day Saints who were emegrating (sic) to Utah.  I investigated their doctrines and was baptized by William C. Moody and 20 miles west or southwest of Independence, confirmed by Homer Duncan on June 14.  The next day [I] started with the Saints for Utah where I arrived 9 September 1857…Thro the unwise course of Sister Pratt in publishing me as having assisted her with means, the mob were looking for me; but thro the overruling hand of God their eyes were blinded so that the mob did not recognize me and I escaped their clutches.(9)

The mob had also threatened Elder Erastus Snow, prompting John Taylor to enlist a group of brethren to guard them:

In consequence of this and other appearances of hostility, we selected a guard of our own brethren who have accompanied us to this place [Elm Creek].  We expected here to join the mail en route for Utah, but the river is impassable, and we can only correspond through the medium of two or three good swimmers.  We were informed that this said Mr. Magraw is superintendent for the construction of the military road, and acting as government agent on said road; that twenty men were going on as an advance surveying party, and that about one hundred were to follow them.  Brother Gammell says that some of those in the advance party were the men who fired at him; but as he is preparing a statement of the affair, and will forward it with the next mail, I must leave this matter with him.(10)

Sidetracked by his narrow escape from the mob and his swim across the Missouri River, James became separated from his Texas wagon company.  He was fortunate, though, to meet up in Nebraska with John Taylor and Erastus Snow’s twelve-man company, headed back to Salt Lake City.  John Taylor kept a detailed trail journal, and we are fortunate to have a record of his personal insights into James’ personality.   After recording some of the interesting events of James' early life, John Taylor noted that "he [James] seems to have possessed a strong predilection to put the world right."   Taylor must have been amused that Gammell was more concerned about the horses he lost than he was about his own life:

[James] joined the Mormons at Salt Lake—was there what is termed a Winter Mormon: but as he has wintered and summered seven years, he calls himself a regular out and out Mormon.  He is a pretty decent, thorough going fellow, goes it strongly for equal rights, complains bitterly of McGraw taking his horses, and seems to think more of them than of being shot at by him and his ruffians in Independence.  My private opinion, from the twinkle of his eye, when speaking on the subject is, that it would not be very good for McGraw’s health to meet him on equal grounds.  He is now acting as outrider, hunter and assistant cook…(11)

John Taylor’s letter, written at Elm Creek, Nebraska, indicates that James was on the trail about midway through Nebraska by July 9, 1857.  On July 21, Ira Hinckley(12) recorded in his diary that James spent the night at Horseshoe Creek, a Mormon way station, located west of Fort Laramie, Wyoming, on the pioneer trail:

In the morning Brothers J Taylor Er Snow W. Martindail J Gamell come up About 2 P.M. making there way to GSL City to get out of the way of there Enimiys.  They staid till 9 A.M. I sent them on to Dear Creek in [?} crags with [?] 2 more men 5 horses. they spoke to us [?} few minutes give us good instructions they blessed us and went on thare way rejoysing.(13)

The John Taylor and Erastus Snow wagon company arrived in Salt Lake City on August 7,(14) but apparently James and another man named Stewart had parted with the rest of the company at the Green River cutoff on August 2.(15)  Walker reported years later that at Green River James “got aboard the stage coach and went into the city to see the wives and babies.” (16) James must have arrived home sometime between August 7 and September 10.  His original Texas Company, trailing a huge herd of cattle, arrived a month later.  Part of the company, led by William Moody, arrived in Salt Lake City on September 14, and Homer Duncan’s group on September 20.(17)

John Henry Standifird, who arrived in Salt Lake City on September 9, 1857, reportedly saw James Gammell on September 10:

I, J.H. Standifird, walked into Salt Lake City, Utah without any money in my pocket, put up at S. L. Hotel on the 10th met Jim Gammel who took me to his home where I remained several days, then I went to Bountiful and worked on the Bountiful Tabernacle as Carpenter until the latter part of the month (Sept) when with other men we were sent east to Fort Bridger to hedge up the way of U.S. troops from coming into S.L. City until the U.S. could investigate the situation in Utah which they did in the Spring of 1858.  I was in Lott Smith Co. of raiders on government trains of Supplies. 3 trains were destroyed by fire.(18)

James’ joyful homecoming didn’t last long; dark clouds loomed on the horizon.  On August 18, Brothers Richards and Stringham, traveling in one of the last wagon companies of the season, reported passing two companies of government supply wagons loaded with freight for the federal troops, and headed for Salt Lake City.  The military march to Utah Territory was conducted under great secrecy, without any official advance notice to Territorial Governor Brigham Young.(19)  This period of Mormon history became known as (President James) Buchanan’s Blunder or the Utah War.

________________________________

1. Land could be purchased from territory of Texas at $1 an acre on a ten-year payment plan at low interest.
2. Joseph C. Walker, History of the Mormons in the Early Days of Utah, pp. 53-56.
3. Because she knew that her estranged husband, Hector, was in pursuit of her, Eleanor decided to travel from Ellis County with a non-Mormon named Mr. Clark, and his wife and children.
4. Captain James B. Andrews was married to James’ sister, Margaret Jane.
5. Steven Pratt, p. 235.
6. Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847–1868, narrative of Homer Duncan Company (1857).
7. It is possible that Magraw may also have been one of Hector McLean’s henchmen, since he specifically targeted James Gammell.
8. Taylor, John, “Editorial Correspondence from the Plains,” The Mormon, 8 August 1857, 3. (Written at Elm Creek, 15 miles above Fort Kearney, Nebraska, on July 9, 1857.)
9. Diary of John Henry. See Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847-1868, Trail excerpts.
10. Taylor, John, “Editorial Correspondence from the Plains,” The Mormon, 8 August 1857, 3. (Written at Elm Creek, 15 miles above Fort Kearney, Nebraska, on July 9, 1857.)
11. Scott, Stuart, Australasian Canadian Studies, Vol 25, No. 2, 2007, p. 77. (Quoted from John Taylor, “Mormon Life on the Plains—On the way to Utah,” New York Times, September 30, 1857.)
12. Hinckley was a blacksmith at the Horseshoe Creek, Wyoming station from May-July 1857.
13. Ira Nathaniel Hinckley Diary, 1857 Mar-1858 June, (MS 13687), Church Archives. (See description of the stations on the trail in Great Basin Kingdom, by Arrington, p. 168.)
14. Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, Vol. 4, p. 83.
15. Scott, Stuart, Australasian Canadian Studies, Vol 25, No. 2, 2007, p.77. (Quoted from George John Taylor’s diary.)
16. Walker, Joseph C., manuscript “History of the Mormons,” p. 53-56.
17. “Immigration,” Deseret News (Weekly), 16 Sep 1857, 224; and 23 Sep 1857, 229.
18. John Henry Standifird Papers, 1857-1909.
19. Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847-1868, S.W. Richards and Briant Stringam, trail excerpt, Aug. 18, 1857.

The Murder of Parley P. Pratt

Apostle Parley P. Pratt was a prominent and towering figure in 19th century Mormonism.  His accomplishments as a theologian, missionary, author, poet, and historian were unparalleled.   He endeared himself to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the world as a prophet, seer, and revelator.

  
Several of Pratt's poems were set to music.  The hymn “The Morning Breaks” remains a favorite among Mormons today. Click on the following link to hear the hymn sung by the world renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir:

http://lds.org/general-conference/music/2010/10?lang=eng&session=1&song=13&media=video

The morning breaks, the shadows flee;
Lo, Zion's standard is unfurled!
The dawning of a brighter day,
Majestic rises on the world.

The clouds of error disappear
Before the rays of truth divine;
The glory bursting from afar,
Wide o'er the nations soon will shine.

The Gentile fulness now comes in,
And Israel's blessings are at hand.
Lo, Judah's remnant, cleansed from sin,
Shall in their promised Canaan stand.

Jehovah speaks! Let earth give ear,
And Gentile nations turn and live.
His mighty arm is making bare,
His cov'nant people to receive.

Angels from heav'n and truth from earth
Have met, and both have record borne;
Thus Zion's light is bursting forth,
To bring her ransomed children home.

Text: Parley P. Pratt, 1807-1857
Music: George Careless, 1839-1932

When Parley P. Pratt left Salt Lake City on a mission to the eastern States, his wife Eleanor accompanied him as far as St. Louis.  From there she made her way to her father’s home in New Orleans to reclaim her children and take them to Utah.  James Gammell, one of twenty missionaries traveling in the Pratt wagon train, helped Eleanor arrange lodging for her return trip to Salt Lake City the next spring.  This simple act of kindness drew James into a series of events that endangered his life, as well as Eleanor’s, and ended in the tragic death of Parley P. Pratt.  The beloved Mormon apostle was murdered near Van Buren, Arkansas,(1) on May 13, 1857, around the same time James was preparing to leave Texas.  The story involves Eleanor and her estranged husband Hector McLean, the man who killed Parley.

Hector and Eleanor McLean were married in 1841 near New Orleans.  Soon afterwards Hector started drinking heavily, and they separated.  The couple reunited and later moved to San Francisco with their three children, hoping for a fresh start.  While living in San Francisco they were introduced to Mormonism.  Eleanor soon expressed a desire to join the Church, but Hector not only forbade it, he threatened to kill her and the minister who baptized her, if she did.  Eleanor continued to attend meetings, and with Hector’s written permission, she was baptized in May 1854.(2)  Later, after Eleanor had taken their two oldest children to be baptized, Hector put all three children on a ship bound for New Orleans to live with their grandparents.  It wasn’t until that evening that he informed Eleanor, “Now they are where you and the cursed Mormons can never see them again!”  Hector then locked her in her room for several hours, and she cried inconsolably. Two weeks later Hector finally allowed her to leave and join the children in New Orleans.(3)

Eleanor spent three months at her father’s home in New Orleans, but was unable to gain his permission to take her children away.  She finally decided to travel to Salt Lake City alone and hoped to regain the children after she was established there.  At this point in time, having left Hector for good, Eleanor considered herself an unmarried woman, though she had not obtained a legal divorce.  Arriving in Salt Lake in September 1855, she visited the Pratt home and obtained a position as the schoolteacher to their children.  In November 1855 Eleanor became Parley’s plural wife in a ceremony performed by Brigham Young in the Endowment House.(4)

In September 1856, Eleanor traveled with Parley by wagon train across the plains via Fort Kearney, arriving in St. Louis on November 18th.(5)  Records show that “Bro. James Gemmel”, also part of the Pratt wagon company, arrived at St. Louis at the same time.(6)  From there Eleanor traveled on a Mississippi River boat to New Orleans.  After spending a week at her father’s home, she escaped, taking her two youngest children without her father’s permission, and boarded a steamer bound for Galveston, Texas, on December 18.  From there she and the children traveled via the steamer Captain Pierce to Harrisburg, Texas, where they stayed the night in a hotel owned by James Gammell’s brother-in-law, Captain James Andrews.(7)  The next morning Andrews took them to the home of James’ brother William Gammell in Houston.  Eleanor wrote that she and her children were treated very well:(8)

Two miles from Houston we found a home at the house of Mr. William Gambell (sic), who is a man of no religion, lives well, has plenty of servants, and no children.  His wife [Jane] was like mother to us.  The three first weeks I made a change of clothing, and then sought for something to do.  Found employment in a dress-making establishment, Mrs. Stanbury’s, where I worked five weeks, spending two days with my children, Sunday to rest, and Monday to wash and mend.  On the 4th of March I left Houston with Captain Andrews, Mr. Stanfield, and James Gammel (sic) (the latter being a Mormon Elder), to journey to Ellis County, where the Mormon emigration was fitting out for a trip across the plains.(9)

While still in Houston, Eleanor had received a letter informing her that Hector was in pursuit of her.  As a result she decided to travel instead with a non-Mormon named Mr. Clark, and his wife and children, in a “poor wagon and three yoke of good oxen.”  Hector McLean found them anyway on the trail just west of Arkansas.(10)

McLean was relentless in his search for Pratt.  From December 1856 to March 1857, Parley visited various eastern states, and much of the time Hector McLean was not far behind.  Hector managed to learn about Parley’s itinerary from Mormon apostates, and to enlist the help of the police to search the homes of the Saints.  He nearly caught up with Parley in St. Louis.  Parley knew of the approaching danger, and for several months he managed to elude McLean.  By May, McLean determined that both Parley and Eleanor were on their way west.  At Fort Gibson he filed a formal charge against Eleanor, "a charge of larceny of clothing belonging to Albert and Annie McLean [his two children] to the amount of ten dollars.”  The names Parley P. Pratt, James Gammell, and Elias J. Gammell,(11) appeared on the same charge.  Finally, on May 6 an armed military escort approached Parley on the trail near Fort Gibson.  The captain rode up to Parley and said, “Parley P. Pratt, I arrest you in the name of the United States of America.”(12)  On the same day Hector and his friends caught up with Eleanor’s wagon and took the children.  The marshal arrested Eleanor three hours later.  The prisoners were taken to Fort Gibson and then on to the courthouse in Van Buren, Arkansas.  After questioning her, the judge dismissed all charges against Eleanor.

At the trial Hector McLean was allowed to read the charges and to state all his grievances against Pratt, successfully stirring up the crowd of five hundred spectators against the defendant.  When Parley stood to answer the charges, McLean pulled out his pistol and aimed it at Parley’s head.  The officers stopped him from firing, and the judge postponed the trial till later that afternoon.  Parley was locked in jail for his own protection, and the angry crowd returned to the courthouse well before the appointed time of four o’clock.  The judge postponed the trial again, this time until the next morning.  This second postponement was only an effort to deceive McLean.  The judge had already decided to acquit Pratt and to release him as soon as it was safe to do so.(13)  Very early the next morning, Wednesday, May 13, Parley was released:

…Judge Ogden brought Parley’s horse to him at the jail.  He released Parley, put him on his horse and offered him his knife and pistol, but Parley refused by saying, “Gentlemen, I do not rely on weapons of that kind, my trust is in my God.  Good-bye Gentlemen.”  He rode off in a southerly direction .(14)

When Hector came back to Van Buren for the morning trial and learned that Parley had escaped, he and two other men “mounted their horses and started in pursuit.”  They caught up with him about twelve miles away near the Winn farm.  McLean fired his pistol six times but missed.  He then rode up close to Parley and stabbed him twice in the chest.  Parley fell to the ground motionless.  The three men rode off, but Hector came back ten minutes later, got off his horse, and shot Parley in the neck.  Mr. Winn had witnessed the entire episode and thought that Parley was dead.  Winn raced off for help and when he returned with a few neighbors an hour later, Parley was still alive.  Parley asked for a drink of water and told them his name.  He requested that they notify his family at Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, and send them his gold watch and personal effects, and finally that they ask a Mormon wagon train to take his body back to Utah.  Parley bore his dying testimony to the men who comforted him in his final hour: “I die a firm believer in the Gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith, and I wish you to carry this my dying testimony. I know that the Gospel is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the living God, I am dying a martyr to the faith.”(15)


Monument near Parley P. Pratt's grave.
Inscription includes his poem
"The Morning Breaks."
Photo by Reed Russell, March 2011.

When Eleanor learned that Parley was dead, “she asked Marshal Hays if she and George Higginson (Parley’s missionary companion) might go prepare the body for burial.”  At the Winn farmhouse they found the body lying on a board.  Mr. Winn took them to the scene of the murder.  He told them that Parley had died from the loss of blood about two hours after being attacked.  From Winn’s examination of the body and clothing, he learned that Parley had “six bullet holes around the skirt of his coat and two knife marks in the front.”  A knife that penetrated directly to the heart inflicted the fatal wound.  At the farmhouse Winn had already washed the body and prepared clean clothing.  George and the marshal dressed the body, and “Eleanor wrapped it from head to foot in white linen.”  Higginson placed Parley’s body in a white pine box, and late that night (May 14), under cover of darkness, buried him in an unmarked grave.(16)

P. P. Pratt monument, Alma, Arkansas
Photo by Reed Russell, March 2011.

The tragic death of Elder Pratt was not the end of the ordeal.  Eleanor Pratt and James Gammell still had reason to fear for their lives.
________________________

1. Van Buren is located in the northwest corner of Arkansas near Fort Smith and the Oklahoma border.
2. Pratt, Steven, “Eleanor McLean and the Murder of Parley P. Pratt,” BYU Studies, 1975, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 225-228.
3. Pratt, Steven, pp. 228-231.
4. Pratt, Steven, pp. 232-234.
5. Pratt, Steven, p. 234.
6. Erastus Snow’s letter to Brigham Young. (Church History Library, CR1234/1, Box 42, Folder 16.
7. James’ sister, Margaret Jane Gammell, married James B. Andrews on September 18, 1837, in Lowell, Massachusetts
8. Steven Pratt, pp. 234-5.
9. Eleanor J. McLean (Pratt), letter to the Van Buren [Arkansas] Intelligencer, May 18, 1857, published in The Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star, Liverpool, July 4, 1857.
10. Steven Pratt, p. 235.
11. Elias J. Gammell has not been identified as part of the Gammell family. (Perhaps McLean made a mistake.)
12. Steven Pratt, pp. 238-9.
13. Steven Pratt, p. 245.
14. Steven Pratt, p. 245.
15. Steven Pratt, pp. 246-48.
16. Steven Pratt, pp. 48-49.

Mission to Texas

The year 1856 was an eventful one for James, beginning with the birth of two babies.  Maria’s fourth child, James, was born on February 14, and Hannah Jane’s third child, Francelia, was born on May 13.  The Utah territorial census of 1856 indicates that James, his two wives, and seven children were living in the Salt Lake 19th Ward.(1)

On Sunday morning, February 24, 1856, James Gammell heard his name read from the pulpit of the Old Tabernacle(2) in Great Salt Lake City.  He was called to go on a mission.  In the early days of the Mormon Church most missionaries were called in this same way.  They often had no notice until they heard their names and their assigned missions announced.  If a man didn’t happen to be in attendance on the morning his name was called, we can assume that his neighbors or family members relayed the message in a hurry!  James Gammell, along with other men from Great Salt Lake City, was assigned “To the North.”(3)   Other missionaries called on that Sunday morning were assigned to Green River, Las Vegas, Europe, Australia, and the East Indies.(4)   When the announcement was printed in the Deseret News a few days later, it included these instructions: “The brethren who cannot go without leaving their families upon the hands of the Bishops, had better stay and provide for their families before they leave—By order of the First Presidency.”(5)

Heber C. Kimball gave specific instructions to those missionaries called to go to the North.  He asked them “not to take their families, but gather up their teams, seeds, etc., and go as soon as practicable.”(6)  It is possible that James left immediately and spent a few months in Montana, a region that he knew well.(7)   But if he did actually go north, he had definitely returned by August, when he was assigned to go to Texas.  Years later a business associate, Joseph C. Walker, wrote that James “suspicioned [sic] that Brigham Young was down on him when he appointed him to go to Texas and remain there ‘till he brought all of the Mormons from there to Utah.”(8)

A letter to George A. Smith, one that James was not privy to, reveals a possible reason for the rift that James detected in the relationship between himself and Brigham Young.  In July Brigham wrote to Smith concerning an application to Congress for statehood, “…we have recently learned that some of our very good friends have gotten up and signed remonstrances, affidavits, and other documents designed to be used against us …Enclosed you will find the names of those said to have signed such documents.”(9)  James Gammell’s name was on that list, giving Brigham reason to question James’ loyalty.  Surely James must have anticipated that his signature on a public document such as the one described would not have gone unnoticed by Brigham Young.

James began to worry about his standing with Brigham, ”for upon that knowledge his future actions and efforts depended, and he brooded over the matter ‘till he decided he would know.”  He went to Brigham’s office and had a long talk with him, and “on his part he endeavored to make it the sweetest talk of his life…”(10)  The respectful and submissive tone of his letter to Brigham Young, dated August 20, 1856, seems to reveal James’ eagerness to repair his tarnished image in the eyes of the Prophet.  Addressing President Young as “Honored Sir,” he requested counsel and advice about traveling to Michigan on business and to see his son Orlin, who was living there with his grandparents.  He wrote that he planned to visit his relatives in Texas, and then mentioned that he hoped to rid himself of some of his questionable associates.  James concluded, “But in all this I place myself entirely in your hands, for it is very far from my feelings to stir a foot without your blessing and faith.”(11)  Coincidently or not, James was called to go to Texas, where he most likely visited his sister, his brothers, and maybe even his mother, who moved from Michigan to Texas sometime in the late 1850’s.

James left Great Salt Lake City on September 10, 1856, in a wagon company of more than twenty missionaries traveling to the United States(12) and to England.  The company included Elder Parley P. Pratt, called to the States, and assistant Church Historian Thomas Bullock, called to England.(13)  As they traveled slowly eastward, they met many companies of Saints, some from England, Wales, Denmark, and St. Louis, and returning missionaries and supply wagons, all headed for the Salt Lake Valley.  On October 2 they passed the Willie handcart company encampment, and then on October 4, they spotted wagon tracks along the Platte River trail that were made by Elder Edward Martin’s handcart company of 700 Saints, but they missed seeing them.  The next day (Oct. 5) they camped while James Gammell and Thomas Pierce set out to find them and to deliver letters to Elder Martin.  Gammell and Pierce, unable to find the Martin Company, returned to their wagon train.(14)  (Two weeks later the Willie and Martin companies encountered an unexpected blizzard in mountains of Wyoming. Halted by the deep snow and bitter cold, nearly seventy of the emigrants died of exposure and starvation. If the rescue party and supply wagons from Salt Lake City had not reached them, they all would have perished.)

By October 17, James’ company had reached Fort Kearney, Nebraska.  From there they “pursued [the] long and wearisome journey through Iowa and Illinois.  On the way [they] saw Nauvoo and the ruins of the Temple in the distance.”(15)  In late November they arrived in St. Louis, where James and the other missionaries dispersed to their various destinations.

___________________________

1. Hannah Jane’s children, Hannah and Isaac Brown, are listed. Maria’s son Samuel has probably died, and Francelia was not born until May.
2. The building known as the Old Tabernacle was "erected [on Temple Square] in 1852 to replace the first boweries. This south-facing, all-weather, rectangular building with a half-dome apse at its north end was built of adobe. It was razed in 1877 to make way for the present Assembly Hall."  (C. Mark Hamilton, The Salt Lake Temple: A Monument to a People, 1983.)
3. “North” probably refers to northern Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana.
4. On this same day two of my Crandall ancestors were called on missions: Myron Crandall to Green River and Martin Crandall to the East Indies. EGH
5. Deseret News, February 27, 1856.
6. Ibid.
7. “The Pioneers”, author unknown. This article relates the history of James Gammell in Montana. It states that James, with a party of five men, came into the Ruby Valley with pack horses in the summer of 1856, and traded with the Indians.
8. Joseph C. Walker, History of the Mormons in the Early Days of Utah, pp.62-64.
9. Brigham Young, Letter to George A. Smith, July 1856.
10. Walker, pp. 62-64.
11. James Gemmell, Letter to Brigham Young, Aug. 20, 1856, from Brigham Young Papers, Church Archives.
12. In 1856 there were thirty-one states in the United States. Utah was only a territory.
13. The Mormon, November 15, 1856:2.  See also Parley P. Pratt Autobiography, pp. 400,419.
14. Ibid.   (My gr. gr. grandmother Mary Lawson Kirkman was part of the Martin Handcart Company. Her husband and baby are buried in Wyoming. EGH)
15. Parley P. Pratt Autobiography, p.401.

Making a Living and Rearing a Family

Drusilla Hendricks with her granddaughter Elizabeth Gammell
and Elizabeth's husband, Eli Harris
c. 1868

After the death of his wife Elizabeth in October 1851, James Gammell left his daughter Elizabeth (Libby), just three months old, in the care of her grandparents, James and Drusilla Hendricks.  Drusilla reared her daughter’s two children, James Bainbridge and Elizabeth Gammell, as her own.(1)  The Hendricks moved to Springville in 1858 when Johnston’s army arrived in the valley, then later returned to Salt Lake.  In 1860, when Libby was nine years old, they moved to Richmond, Cache Valley, Utah.  James Hendricks died July 8, 1870, and Drusilla on May 20, 1881.  Both are buried in Richmond.

James Gammell continued to be involved in various business pursuits in order to support his growing family.  Seven children were born within the next five years - four to his wife Maria and three to Hannah Jane.  James often left home for months at a time on trading expeditions, not leaving much time for family matters.  But a letter written to his sister, Jane, gives us a rare glimpse of his tender feelings for his children: 

When this old hulk is layed away, there will be a lot [of children] left to laugh or cry as they may feel…  Jane, I am proud of them.  They are all smart and will pass in a crowd.   My oldest daughter. whose mother died in Salt Lake is married and got one child.   She has done well… My other children with their mother home I left in Utah are all well.   I have not saw [sic] them for seven years but hear oft from them. [During an 1869 expedition in Cache County, Utah,] I made my home at Liby’s [sic] and had a great time with my Grand daughter.(2)

Earning a living in the Salt Lake Valley during the early 1850’s was a challenge for James, as it was for most Mormon families in those early years.  Most were dependent on their own labor and ingenuity for food, clothing, soap, and other supplies, which they had to produce at home.  Ready-to-wear clothing, like men’s pants and broadcloth coats, was simply not available.  Products shipped overland from St. Louis were too expensive for most families, who had little or no money.  In this cashless economy, commodities and labor were the typical currency.  Farming was another challenge in this arid climate.  Some years the agricultural surplus wasn’t sufficient to yield a profit.  The harvest of 1855 was especially poor.  Another grasshopper infestation, like the one in 1849, plus a late season drought, reduced the harvest by one-third and even by two-thirds in some counties—all this in a year when the influx of new emigrants was more than 4,000.(3)

When he first settled in the Salt Lake Valley, James found employment as a contractor on public works projects like roads and bridges.  Fortunately he had useful skills that were desperately needed, and he made a good living, reportedly as much as $10,000 a year.(4)  In between working on public projects, he was involved in freighting and Indian trading.  He regularly traveled beyond the Salt Lake Valley on business ventures, bringing back supplies to sell or trade. Despite his considerable entrepreneurial skills, James had financial struggles.  Early Salt Lake County Court records reveal that at times he found himself at the mercy of his creditors, his customers, and even the tax assessor.  A summary of the next five years includes several lawsuits connected with his business dealings, as well as the births of seven children.

1852 – James’ wife Maria bore her first child, Jeannette, on September 25, 1852. Jeannette was James’ third child, but she was the first one that he would raise to maturity.  (Their maternal grandparents raised his first two children.)  The family was living in the Salt Lake 17th Ward, where records show that the baby was blessed on December 28, 1852.

On April 21, 1853, James Gammell, plaintiff, filed a lawsuit against James Bridger for trespassing and for seizing “upon the above named goods ($500) without due process of law.  Settled by the Partys [sic] May 2, 1853.  The plaintiff is to pay the cost to Sheriff.”(5)  This case was most likely related to the animosity between Bridger and the Mormons that festered in the summer of 1853.  (At that time the Mormons had jurisdiction over Fort Bridger, which was a part of the Territory of Utah.)  “Mormon leaders were convinced that Bridger was engaged in illicit trade with the Indians, especially guns and ammunition, and that he had stirred hostility among the Native Americans against the Mormons.  Mormon leaders revoked Bridger's license to trade and issued a warrant for his arrest; however, before the posse's arrival Bridger had fled.”(6)

1853 – William Andrew was born to Hannah Jane on July 25, 1853 according to Salt Lake 19th Ward records.  (At this time James was also stepfather to Hannah Jane's two children, Isaac Davis Brown, age five, and Hannah Jane Brown, age three.)  Maria’s second child, Samuel, was born on September 26,1853.(7)

Notice in the Deseret News, December 22, 1853

On July 4, 1854, James Gammell sued John H. Bleazard for $424 worth of beer at seventy-five cents per gallon.  James demanded per written agreement $364 and the costs of the suit.  Bleazard paid for eighty gallons ($60), but refused to pay the rest of the money.  On February 21, 1855, the two men appeared in court again. This time James Gammell was the defendant, and John H. Bleazard the plaintiff.  Bleazard demanded $366 “for goods sold and delivered and labor performed.”(8)  Finally on September 29, 1855, James Gammell, plaintiff, demanded payment from John H. Bleazard, who still owed $368 for the beer from July 1854.  (Sorry, I don’t know what happened to the money or the beer!)

1854 - Maria’s third child, Avis Josephine, was born on April 17,1854, and blessed in the Salt Lake 19th Ward on April 19, 1855.  James and Hannah Jane’s second child, Mary Edith, was born on October 11, 1854, and blessed on Nov 11, 1854.(9)

In the fall of 1854, James must have been gone on a trading expedition.  From Hosea Stout’s diary entry of January 23, 1855, we learn that James had just returned to Salt Lake: “Mr. James M (sic) Gammell returning from a trading tour some 600 miles S.E. reports that a small party of Whites have been killed by the Indians near the Devil’s Gate [Wyoming], as he learns from the Indians.”

Another lawsuit was filed on May 25, 1855, by Plaintiff , C.A. Perry of C.A. and E.H. Perry, merchants, vs. James Gammell, Benjamin Simms, and James Simms, demanding $2,035.54 for goods delivered.  The list of goods included whiskey, eggs, shoes, socks, brandy, matches, tin buckets, four guns, four yards of red flannel, tea, a bushel of oats, sugar, shoeing horses, flour, bullets, lead, coffee, blankets, robes, and tobacco.

1856 – Maria’s fourth child was born on February 14, 1856. He was named James after his father. Francelia, third child of James and Hannah Jane, was born on May 13, 1856.

Several years later on June 6, 1859, James Gammell was named as the defendant in another lawsuit brought by the County Assessor for delinquent taxes.(10)  In August of that same year James was named in another court case, which will be discussed later.

_______________________________

1. 1860 U. S. Census, Cache, Utah Territory, Post Office – Brigham. Jas. Hendricks, age 52, Drucilla Hendricks, age 50, Jas. W. Bainbrage, age 11, Elizabeth Bainbrage, age 9.
2. James Gammell, letter to his sister, Jane, January 1, 1870. (James refers to his granddaughter, Drusilla Elizabeth Harris, one year old.)
3. Arrington, Leonard J., Great Basin Kingdom, pp. 148-150.
4. Walker, Joseph C., manuscript “History of the Mormons,” p. 42.
5. Salt Lake County Court records, 1853.
6. Despain, S. Matthew and Gowans, Fred R., “Jim Bridger”, Utah History Encyclopedia.
7. Salt Lake 19th Ward Records, pp. 9 and 11, FHL film #0026706. Samuel apparently died in early childhood. He did not appear in the 1860 Census.
8. Salt Lake County, Utah, Probate Court, civil and criminal case files, series 373, entries 623, 828, 482.
9. For both births see Salt Lake 19th Ward records, p.11, film #0026706.
10. Salt Lake County Probate Court, civil and criminal case files, series 373, entry 1741.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

The Hedquist family
Descendants of James Gammell and Hannah Jane Davis
taken June 2010 at Bear Lake, Utah

It has been an amazing and productive year of research on the life of James Gammell.   I thank those of you who have been so helpful with your contributions of information and photos. 

Looking forward to another year of research on James Gammell/Gemmell and his siblings......

Have a Happy New Year!

Maria and Hannah Jane Brown

James Gammell was married five times.  His first wife, Harriet Fitzgerald, died in Michigan in 1848.  His very short marriage to Mrs. Editha Clark of Michigan in November 1849 ended in early 1850.  In October 1851 his third wife, Elizabeth Hendricks, died.  His fourth wife was Susan Maria Brown, and the fifth was Maria's sister-in-law Hannah Jane Davis Brown.


Susan Maria Brown

Maria and her family lived for a time in the Ambrosia Branch of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near Montrose in Lee County, Iowa, where she was baptized in the Mississippi River.  At age nineteen (1850) she crossed the plains with her widowed mother, Avis Hill Brown,(1) and her two brothers, George Washington Brown, age twenty-three, and Sidney William Brown, age thirteen.  Her oldest brother, Isaac Hill Brown, and his wife, Hannah Jane Davis, had entered the Salt Lake Valley three years earlier on September 25, 1847, as part of the Daniel Spencer/Perrigrine Sessions Company.(2)



Hannah Jane Davis

Hannah Jane and her family became members of the Mormon Church while living in West Township, Columbiana, Ohio.  A few years later her father, Isaac Davis, moved the family to Lee County, Iowa, about four miles from Nauvoo, where he bought nine hundred acres of farmland.  At this time many members of the Church had fled the persecutions in Missouri to settle in Illinois and Iowa. Although Nauvoo, located across the Mississippi River in Hancock County, Illinois, became the center of Church, there were also several Mormon congregations organized in Lee County, Iowa, under the direction of Stake President John Smith, the uncle of Joseph Smith.



At the time of the martyrdom of Joseph Smith in June 1844, nineteen-year-old Hannah Jane was living in close proximity to Nauvoo.  Here she met Isaac Brown, and they were married in the Nauvoo Temple in spring 1846, before being driven out of their beloved city by intense persecution.  They made the 300-mile journey across Iowa along with hundreds of other Latter-day Saints.  The following spring, while they were camped at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, Hannah Jane gave birth to her first child, Emily Jane.  On May 20, two days after the birth, Hannah Jane’s father, Isaac Davis, died of bilious fever.(3)  Emily Jane died six days later and was buried in a tiny grave next to her grandfather and her aunt Sabina Ann Davis Harrison, who had also died in Winter Quarters in February 1847.(4)



Leaving behind the graves of loved ones, Hannah Jane and Isaac Brown began the trek across the plains with the Spencer/Sessions Company consisting of 185 individuals and 75 wagons.  Although Perrigrine Sessions was a captain of fifty, his company was called “Parley's Company” after Parley P. Pratt of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, who was a member of the company.  Parley was traveling to the Great Salt Lake Valley for the first time, having just returned from a mission in England.  An excerpt from one of the trail journals recorded this incident, “I recollect one day that a large heavily loaded wagon ran over one of Bro. Pratt's little boys, about two years old; he took up the child and laid hands on him, and the child never complained, and soon was as well as before to all appearance.”(5)

For the most part the company followed the trail on the north bank of the Platte River, “sometimes leaving the river some miles, crossing streams and sand hills and passing long reaches without a single tree to relieve the sameness of the river valley.”  Along the way they had access to plenty of buffalo meat and other game.  As the journal stated, “…one Isaac Brown [husband of Hannah Jane Davis Brown] of our fifty was an excellent hunter and kept the camp supplied with fresh antelope meat.”  On the trail they met Willard Richards and other Church leaders from the Salt Lake Valley who were headed back to Winter Quarters to give support to the continuing exodus of Mormon pioneers.  Richards assured them that “they had found the place for the gathering of the saints, that they had laid off a city and named it Great Salt Lake City, Great Basin, North America."  The company arrived in the valley on September 25, 1847.(6)

By 1851 the Browns were settled in Utah County.  The widow Avis Brown was living with her children, Maria, Sydney, and George, and according to the census, her son Isaac H. Brown’s family was living in the house next door.  Hannah Jane Davis Brown, twenty-five years old, is listed, along with her three-year-old son, Isaac, and year-old daughter Hannah Jane.(7)  Isaac Brown, who worked as a freighter and could have been traveling at the time of the census, was not listed.  The more logical explanation is that he had already died or was missing.  Isaac was reportedly killed by Indians while building railroads in Nevada.  Another version of the story claims that Isaac was actually killed by his partner, and it was blamed on the Indians.  It is estimated that Isaac died sometime between 1850 and 1852.  The actual date and specific circumstances of his death are unknown. Even his wife didn’t know the full story. Hannah wrote that she “lost her husband sometime in the 50's.”(8)

On August 11, 1851, James Gammell married Susan Maria Brown as a plural wife.  (In the early days of the Mormon Church men who had the financial means to support more than one wife were sometimes asked by Brigham Young or other Church leaders to enter into plural marriage.  The practice was formally discontinued in 1890.)   On this same day James was also sealed to Elizabeth Hendricks, his third wife, and to his deceased wife, Harriet Fitzgerald.  One year after the death of Elizabeth Hendricks, James married Hannah Jane Davis Brown as a plural wife on October 7, 1852.(9)

____________________________

1. Avis Brown was converted to Mormonism and baptized in 1838 in Chautauqua County, New York. Maria was baptized in 1840 in Ambrosia.  (See “Ambrosia Iowa Branch Register”, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.)
2. See lds.org , Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel (1847-1868). Avis Brown and her children traveled in an unidentified wagon company (1850).
3. Bilious fever is an archaic medical term that could refer to malaria or typhoid.
4. “Biography of Elisha Hildebrand Davis”. (Elisha is the brother of Hannah Jane Davis.)
5. Source of Trail Excerpt: Smith, Jesse Nathaniel, Journal of Jesse Nathaniel Smith, The Life Story of a Mormon Pioneer, 1834-1906 [1953], 11-12.
6. Ibid.
7. U.S. 1850 Census, p. 127, image 256. (This is actually an April /May 1851 enumeration.)
8. Hannah Jane Brown, letter to the Daughters of Utah Pioneers.
9. IGI Extracted Marriage Records.

Funeral at the Bowery

Less than one year later the same guests who attended her marriage at the Bath House gathered on Sunday morning, October 19, 1851, in the Bowery for the funeral of Elizabeth Hendricks Gammell.  The mother of a three-year-old son and an infant daughter, she was just twenty-three years old.  Orson Pratt preached the funeral sermon.(1)



The Old Tabernacle and Bowery
as it appeared in the heart of Salt Lake City between 1847-54
Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
In public domain



In the above photograph the Bowery is the crudely built structure on the right.  The street in the foreground is South Temple Street.  On the square now known as Temple Square “an immense shed had been erected upon posts, which was capable of containing three thousand persons.”  It served as a temporary place for religious worship and public gatherings.(2)  The Old Bowery, as it came to be known, measured one hundred feet by sixty feet:

It consisted of posts set up at convenient intervals around the sides of a quadrangle, the tops of the [one hundred and four] posts being joined by poles held in place by wooden pegs or lashed in position by rawhide thongs, and upon this skeleton-roof, willows, evergreens, sagebrush, and other shrubs were piled, resulting in a covering which was a partial protection from the sun, though but a poor barrier against wind and rain.(3)

That first winter (1847-48) in the Salt Lake valley, nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Hendricks married Frederick Nantz Bainbridge, age twenty-three, who had crossed the plains at  the same time in the Edward Hunter/Jacob Foutz Company.(4)  Not long after their marriage, Bainbridge grew disenchanted with the hard labor required to survive in the Salt Lake Valley.  As Drusilla Hendricks wrote, he had his heart set on greener pastures:

When hard times came on and he had to irrigate, he could not stand it so he wanted his wife to go back to the States with him or to California.  But she knew too much to do either.  He did not think that the Lord required him to stay here (Salt Lake Valley) without bread or to irrigate and he would not stand it.  I told him we would have to stand up to our rack, hay or no hay, and if he could not do it, he would have to start and take himself off, but that he could not take my daughter, so he left.(5)

Frederick Bainbridge went to California at the time of the Gold Rush (1849), and for the next twenty years he moved from mining town to mining town.  He was never heard from again.  Some sources say that he died in 1877.(6)

In contrast, four discharged veterans of the Mormon Battalion who were already in the Sacramento area and were working at Sutter’s Mill when gold was discovered on January 24, 1848,(7) ignored the chance to make a fortune and returned to their destitute families in the Salt Lake Valley.  However, they did take home with them $17,000 in gold dust, which they freely contributed to the economy of the State of Deseret.  Instead of being circulated as coin, most of the gold was kept in a reserve fund and paper currency was issued.(8)

It is interesting to note that James Gammell, as far as we know, never ventured to the gold fields of California.  Instead, he seemed content to stay in the Salt Lake Valley to carve out a life for himself and his family there, in spite of the lure of gold just eight hundred miles away.  In 1849 and 1850 an estimated ten to fifteen thousand gold seekers passed through Salt Lake City and provided an economic windfall for the Saints.

When Fred Bainbridge and Elizabeth Hendricks (or Libby, as she was called) separated, Libby returned to live with her family and helped them run the Warm Springs Bath House.  She and her son, James Wesley Bainbridge, lived there until she met and married James Gammell.


James Wesley Bainbridge, born October 21, 1848,
son of Frederick Nantz Bainbridge and Elizabeth Hendricks
Courtesy of Karen Bainbridge DeBow



Elizabeth Gammell, born July 23, 1851,
daughter of James Gammell and Elizabeth Hendricks



In April 1851,(9) James Gammell, living with his wife, Elizabeth, and two-year-old stepson, James Bainbridge, was the supervisor of roads and actively employed in the building of the new city.  On July 23, 1851, one day before the fourth anniversary of entry of the first group of the Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley, Elizabeth Harriet Mahala Gammell was born.  Apparently Libby, whose health was fragile, did not recover from the birth of her daughter, and she died three months later.  She was likely buried in Block 49, the first pioneer cemetery in the Salt Lake Valley.(10)  The remains of nine adults and adolescents and twenty-three infants were unearthed during the excavation for an apartment complex on this site in summer 1986.  Plans were to re-inter the remains in the Pioneer Trails State Park at the mouth of Emigration Canyon and to reconstruct the old pioneer cemetery faithful to the original configuration.(11)

___________________________

1. Journal History of the Church, October 19, 1851.
2. Edward W. Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City, pp. 56, 59, 737.
3. James E. Talmage, The House of the Lord, pp. 201-2.
4. Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847-1868. No other members of Fred Bainbridge’s family were traveling with this company, which arrived on October 1, 1847.
5. Robert Raymond, ed., Historical Sketch of James Hendricks and Drusilla Dorris, chapter 9.
6. See Karen Bainbridge DeBow’s website: http://www.karensarchives.com   Frederick Bainbridge married Elizabeth Almira Pond on 25 Feb 1849. She was possibly a plural wife, but this marriage ended as well when he left Salt Lake City.
7. One of the men was Henry Bigler, who recorded the discovery of gold in his diary on that day. The diary is now on display at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
8. Jean S. Greenwood, The State of Deseret, pp. 67-71.
9. Utah became a territory in September 1850. Its federal census began in April 1851, taking two months. The 1850 census, therefore, is actually an 1851 enumeration.
10. The cemetery was located between Third and Fourth South and Second and Third West.
11. Deseret News, Section B, page 1, Sunday, March 8, 1987.