The murders committed during the "Reformation" which attracted most
attention, both because of the parties concerned, the effort made by a
United States judge to convict the guilty, and the confessions of
the latter subsequently obtained, have been known as the Parrish, or
Springville, murders. The facts concerning them may be stated fairly as
follows:--
William R. Parrish was one of the most outspoken champions of the Twelve
when the controversy with Rigdon occurred at Nauvoo after Smith's death,
and he accompanied the fugitives to Salt Lake Valley. One evening, early
in March, 1857, a Bishop named Johnson (husband of ten wives), with two
companions, called at Parrish's house in Springville, and put to him
some of the questions which the inquisitors of the day were wont to
ask--if he prayed, something about his future plans, etc. It had been
rumored that Parrish's devotion to the church had cooled, and that
he was planning to move with his family--a wife and six children--to
California; and at a meeting in Bishop Johnson's council house a
letter had been read from Brigham Young directing them to ascertain the
intention of certain "suspicious characters in the neighborhood,"* and
if they should make a break and, being pursued, which he required, he
'would be sorry to hear a favorable report; but the better way is to
lock the stable door before the horse is stolen.' This letter was over
Brigham's signature.** This letter was the real cause of the Bishop's
visit to Parrish. At a meeting about a week later, A. Durfee and G.
Potter were deputed to find out when the Parrishes proposed to leave the
territory. Accordingly, Durfee got employment with Parrish, and both of
them gave him the idea that they sympathized with his desire to depart.
One morning, about a week later, Parrish discovered that his horses had
been stolen, and efforts to recover them were fruitless.
* "There had been public preaching in Springville to the effect
that no Apostles would be allowed to leave; if they did, hog-holes
in the fences would be stopped up with them. I heard these
sermons."--Affidavit of Mrs. Parrish; appendix to "Speech of Hon. John
Cradlebaugh".
** Confession of J. M. Stewart, one of the Bishop's counsellors
and precinct magistrate.
Meanwhile, Parrish, unsuspicious of Potter and Durfee,* was telling them
of his continued plans to escape, how constantly his house was watched,
and how difficult it was for him to get out the few articles required
for the trip. Finally, at Parrish's suggestion, it was arranged that he
and Durfee should walk out of the village in the daytime, as the method
best calculated to allay suspicion.
* Durfee's confession, appendix to Cradlebaugh's speech.
They carried out this plan, and when they got to a stream called Dry
Creek, Parrish asked Durfee to go back to the house and bring his two
sons, Beason and Orrin, to join him. When Durfee returned to the house,
at about sunset, he found Potter there, and Potter set off at once for
the meeting-place, ostensibly to carry some of the articles needed for
the journey.
Potter met Parrish where he was waiting for Durfee's return, and they
walked down a lane to a fence corner, where a Mormon named William
Bird was lying, armed with a gun. Here occurred what might be called
an illustration of "poetic justice." In the twilight, Bird mistook his
victim, and fired, killing Potter. As Bird rose and stepped forward,
Parrish asked if it was he who had fired the unexpected shot. For a
reply Bird drew a knife, clenched with Parrish, and, as he afterward
expressed it, "worked the best he could in stabbing him." He "worked"
so well that, as afterward described by one of the men concerned in the
plot,* the old man was cut all over, fifteen times in the back, as well
as in the left side, the arms, and the hands. But Bird knew that his
task was not completed, and, as soon as the murder of the elder Parrish
was accomplished, taking his own and Potter's gun, he again concealed
himself in the fence corner, awaiting the appearance of the Parrish
boys. They soon came up in company with Durfee, and Bird fired at Beason
with so good aim that he dropped dead at once. Turning the weapon on
Orrin, the first cap snapped, but he tried again and put a ball through
Orrin's cartridge box. The lad then ran and found refuge in the house of
an uncle.
* Affidavit of J. Bartholemew before Judge Cradlebaugh.
The outcome of this crime? The arrest of ORRIN and Durfee as the
murderers by a Mormon officer; a farcical hearing by a coroner's jury,
with a verdict of assassins unknown; distrusted participants in the
crime themselves the object of the Mormon spies and would-be assassins;
the robbery of a neighbor who dared to condemn the crime; a vain appeal
by Mrs. Parrish to Brigham Young, who told her he "would have stopped it
had he known anything about it," and who, when she persisted in seeking
another interview, had her advised to "drop it," and a failure by the
widow to secure even the stolen horses. "The wife of Mr. Parrish told
me," said Judge Cradlebaugh, when he charged the jury concerning this
case, "that since then at times she had lived on bread and water, and
still there are persons in this community riding about on those horses."
The effort to have the men concerned in this and similar crimes
convicted, forms a part of the history of Judge Cradlebaugh's judicial
career after the "Mormon War," but it failed. When the grand jury would
not bring in indictments, he issued bench warrants for the arrest of
the accused, and sent the United States marshal, sustained by a
military posse, to serve the papers. It was thus that the affidavits
and confessions cited were obtained. Then followed a stampede among the
residents of the Springville neighborhood, as the judge explained in his
subsequent speech, in Congress, the church officials and civil officers
being prominent in the flight, and, when their houses were reached, they
were occupied only by many wives and many children. "I am justified,"
he told the House of Representatives, "in charging that the Mormons are
guilty, and that the Mormon church is guilty, of the crimes, of murder
and robbery, as taught in their books of faith."*
* "I say as a fact that there was no escape for any one that the
leaders of the church in southern Utah selected as a victim.... It was a
rare thing for a man to escape from the territory with all his property
until after the Pacific Railroad was built through Utah."--LEE,
"Mormonism Unveiled," pp. 275, 287.
Charles Nordhoff, in a Utah letter to the New York Evening Post in May,
1871, said: "A friend said to me this afternoon, 'I saw a great change
in Salt Lake since I was there three years ago. The place is free; the
people no longer speak in whispers. Three years ago it was unsafe to
speak aloud in Salt Lake City about Mormonism, and you were warned to be
cautious.'"
Another of the murders under this dispensation, which Judge Cradlebaugh
mentioned as "peculiarly and shockingly prominent," was that of the
Aikin party, in the spring of 1857. This party, consisting of six men,
started east from San Francisco in May, 1857, and, falling in with a
Mormon train, joined them for protection against the Indians. When they
got to a safer neighborhood, the Californians pushed on ahead. Arriving
in Kayesville, twenty-five miles north of Salt Lake City, they were at
once arrested as federal spies, and their animals (they had an outfit
worth in all, about $25,000) were put into the public corral. When their
Mormon fellow-travellers arrived, they scouted the idea that the men
even knew of an impending "war," and the party were told that they would
be sent out of the territory. But before they started, a council, held
at the call of a Bishop in Salt Lake City, decided on their death.
Four of the party were attacked in camp by their escort while asleep;
two were killed at once, and two who escaped temporarily were shot
while, as they supposed, being escorted back to Salt Lake City. The
two others were attacked by O. P. Rockwell and some associates near the
city; one was killed outright, and the other escaped, wounded, and
was shot the next day while under the escort of "Bill" Hickman, and,
according to the latter, by Young's order. *
* Brigham's "Destroying Angel," p. 128.
A story of the escape of one man from the valley, notwithstanding
elaborate plans to prevent his doing so, has been preserved, not in the
testimony of repentant participants in his persecution, but in his own
words.*
* Leavenworth, Kansas, letter to New York Times, published May 1,
1858.
Frederick Loba was a prosperous resident of Lausanne, Switzerland,
where for some years he had been introducing a new principle in gas
manufacture, when, in 1853, some friends called his attention to the
Mormons' professions and promises. Loba was induced to believe that all
mankind who did not gather in Great Salt Lake Valley would be given over
to destruction, and that, not only would his soul be saved by moving
there, but that his business opportunities would be greatly advanced.
Accordingly he gave up the direction of the gas works at Lausanne, and
reached St. Louis in December, 1853, with about $8000 worth of property.
There he was made temporary president of a Mormon church, and there he
got his first bad impression of the Mormon brotherhood. On the way to
Utah his wife died of cholera, leaving six children, from six to twelve
years old. Welcomed as all men with property were, he was made Professor
of Chemistry in the University, and soon learned many of the church
secrets. "These," to quote his own words, "opened my eyes at once, and I
saw at a glance the terrible position in which I was placed. I now found
myself in the midst of a wicked and degraded people, shut up in the
midst of the mountains, with a large family, and deprived of all
resources with which to extricate myself. The conviction had been
forced upon my mind that Brigham himself was at the bottom of all the
clandestine assassinations, plundering of trains, and robbing of mails."
The manner, too, in which polygamy was practised aroused his intense
disgust.
He married as his second wife an English woman, and his family relations
were pleasant; but the church officers were distrustful of him. He was
again and again urged to marry more wives, being assured that with
less than three he could not rise to a high place in the church. "This
neglect on my part," he explained, "and certain remarks that I made with
respect to Brigham's friends, determined the prophet to order my private
execution, as I am able to prove by honest and competent witnesses."
Loba adopted every precaution for his own safety, night and day. Then
came the news of the Parrish murders, and there was so much alarm among
the people that there was talk of the departure of a great many of
the dissatisfied. To check this, when the plain threats made in the
Tabernacle did not avail, Young had a band of four hundred organized
under the name of "Wolf Hunters" (borrowed from their old Hancock County
neighbors), whose duty it was to see that "the wolves" did not stray
abroad.
Loba now communicated his fears to his wife, and found that she also
realized the danger of their position, and was ready to advise the risk
of flight. The plan, as finally decided on, was that they two should
start alone on April 1, leaving the children in care of the wife's
mother and brother, the latter a recent comer not yet initiated in the
church mysteries.
At ten o'clock on the appointed night Loba and his wife--the latter
dressed in men's clothes--stole out of their house. Their outfit
consisted of one blanket, twelve pounds of crackers, a little tea and
sugar, a double-barrelled gun, a sword, and a compass. They were without
horses, and their route compelled them to travel the main road for
twenty-five miles before they reached the mountains, amid which
they hoped to baffle pursuit. They were fortunate enough to gain the
mountains without detention. There they laid their course, not with a
view to taking the easiest or most direct route, but one so far up
the mountain sides that pursuit by horsemen would be impossible. This
entailed great suffering. The nights were so cold that sometimes they
feared to sleep. Add to this the necessity of wading through creeks in
ice-cold water, and it is easy to understand that Loba had difficulty to
prevent his companion from yielding to despair.
Their objective point was Greene River (170 miles from Salt Lake City by
road, but probably almost 300 by the route taken), where they expected
to find Indians on whose mercy they would throw themselves. Two days
before that river was reached they ate the last of their food, and they
kept from freezing at night by getting some sage wood from underneath
the snow, and using Loba's pocket journal for kindling. Mrs. Loba had to
be carried the whole of the last six miles, but this effort brought them
to a camp of Snake Indians, among whom were some Canadian traders, and
there they received a kindly welcome. News of their escape reached Salt
Lake City, and Surveyor General Burr sent them the necessary supplies
and a guide to conduct them to Fort Laramie, where, a month later,
all the rest of the family joined them, in good health, but entirely
destitute.
They then learned that, as soon as their flight was discovered, the
church authorities sent out horsemen in every direction to intercept
them, but their route over the mountains proved their preservation.*
* Referring to the frequent Mormon declarations that there were
fewer deeds of violence in Utah than in other pioneer settlements of
equal population, the Salt Lake Tribune of January 25, 1876, said: "It
is estimated that no less than 600 murders have been committed by the
Mormons, in nearly every case at the instigation of their priestly
leaders, during the occupation of the territory. Giving a mean average
of 50,000 persons professing that faith in Utah, we have a murder
committed every year to every 2500 of population. The same ratio of
crime extended to the population of the United States would give 16,000
murders every year."
The Messenger, the organ of the Reorganized Church in Salt Lake City,
said in November, 1875: "While laying the waste pipes in front of the
residence of Brigham Young recently the skeleton of a man--a white
man--was dug up. A similar discovery was made last winter in digging a
cellar in this city. What can have been the necessity of these secret
burials, without coffins, in such places?"