John Doyle Lee implicated in massacre

“About 40 years ago John D. Lee, the leader of the Mountain Meadow massacre, was living in the north part of this township [Sefton], near where John Reynolds now lives. Mr. Reynolds remembers him distinctly as a still, morose man of considerable ability, and not well-liked by his neighbors, probably on account of the Mormon doctrines preached by him, which were very unpopular at that time.” Page 82, History of Fayette County, Illinois – 1878.
The Mountain Meadow Massacre is a dark stain on the history of the Latter Day Saints, and is not a subject one finds in the official histories.
A group of 20-25 Arkansas families, comprising the Fancher Train, were ruthlessly murdered on their way to California in early September 1857, in southwestern Utah. Of the 60 men, 40 women and 50 children, only 18 children were spared – those too young to talk, so they could not tell what had happened at this place and by whose hand.
The murders were to be kept secret…although the truth could not be obscured,  and John Doyle Lee, former Fayette County resident, was hanged for taking part in it.
The Latter Day Saints had their beginning in 1830 with Joseph Smith as leader. As the movement of Mormonism grew, Smith, with his followers, went first to Kirtland, Ohio, then to Missouri, where in 1838 they were attacked by a mob and ordered to leave.
It seemed that wherever the Saints moved,  trouble followed. Their attempts, sometimes successful, to influence government decision-making was one of the causes for the discord.
At the climax of the Missouri troubles, John Doyle Lee, his wife and Levi Stewart, another Fayette County man, moved to Missouri and joined the Mormon church.  From there, the threesome fled with Smith and 15,000 followers to Nauvoo.
As Lee became more involved with the Saints, he also became more influential, becoming one of 12 Danites, a secret group whose principal duty was to physically protect Joseph and Hyrum Smith.
The Danites also carried out other duties at Smith’s order. Following the murder of both Joseph and Hyrum Smith in Nauvoo, Brigham Young ascended to the leadership of the Latter Day Saints.
John Doyle Lee was among those closest to Brigham Young, and was an ardent supporter. Young, who referred to Lee as “my son,” showed his trust in Lee by making him privy to secrets of the church, as well as allowing him to take multiple wives.
John Doyle Lee was born in Randolph County, the son of Ralph and Elizabeth Doyle Lee. He was a veteran of the Black Hawk War, and it was probably this service that brought him to Fayette County.
Men who actively served 10 days in the conflict with the Sac-Fox Indians in northern Illinois were paid for their service with a warrant entitling them to a certain amount of land, based on their rank.
Lee settled in Section 14 of Sefton Township. He also made his home for a time in Vandalia, and along with George Washington Hickerson, his brother-in-law, operated a store here.
John Doyle Lee and Agatha Ann Woolsey, a daughter of John and Abigail Schaeffer Woolsey, were married in Randolph County on July 23, 1833. Soon after their marriage,  the couple moved to Fayette County, as did Agatha’s parents, living as neighbors to Levi Stewart and Jeremiah King.
King, a Mormon preacher, had converted several families in Sefton Township, including several of Agatha’s brothers, George W. Hickerson and Levi Stewart.
Stewart, in turn, gave his neighbor, Lee, a copy of “The Book of Mormon,” and several years later he and Agatha were baptized into the faith.
Lee was one of the first Mormons to practice polygamy, a sign of favor from Brigham Young. Of John Doyle Lee’s 26 wives, we have names of only a few. Agatha was the first; her sister, Rachel Andora Woolsey, was wife number seven; they married on May 3, 1845; and sister, Emeline Vaughn Woolsey, whom he married on Dec. 21, 1846, at Summer Quarters, Iowa, was number eight.
In the Mormons' view, if a man took an older woman as his wife, this would guarantee her a place in heaven. I do not have the date of his marriage to Agatha’s mother, Abigail Schaeffer Woolsey, who died on Oct. 3, 1848, at the head of Sweetwater Crossing,  on the way to Utah.
As the West opened up, it became known that Salt Lake City was a place for weary travelers to buy provisions and exchange tired horses for fresh ones.
A line of Mormon settlements was established along the trails leading to and from the Mormon capital. It was a good business for the Mormons, and profits were high.
According to unofficial histories, greed entered the picture, and where before wagon trains were allowed to pass unmolested through the Mormon territory, stories began to surface of how well-to-do travelers were being robbed and their wagons looted.
In August of 1857, as the Fancher train from Arkansas entered Salt Lake City, the word was put out that no one was to sell them grain or trade horses with them under threat of repercussion. A woman who gave them onions was beaten. Stories were spread that these Mormon-haters were in some way responsible for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.
They were to be hurried on their way along the southern route to California. The wagon train, with 12 mounted riders, was directed south to the Mountain Meadows,  where they could rest before crossing the mountains. Why the Fancher train was chosen to be exterminated is not entirely clear.
The Fanchers were wealthy, and among the covered wagons were also several carriages. The orders went out from Salt Lake City, and Young’s followers, Lee included, did not question them.
The friendly Paiute Indians were to create a disturbance. However, it was the white men who did the killing, described as “one of the most calculated, pitiless and shameful mass murders ever perpetuated in the violent history of America’s violent frontier.”
Following a couple of days of being pinned down by sporadic gunfire from the Paiute and Mormons, John Doyle Lee, with William Bateman, approached the group under a white flag. The members of the Fancher train thought their liberators had come, when in fact it was their doom.
The men were told to place their weapons in a pile so the Indians would not see them as a threat, and the Mormons would take them to safety. When the men were disarmed, the women, children and sick were loaded into several wagons and escorted from the area.  The men were killed first, then the sick and the women, with only the smallest children, 18 in all, being spared. These children were divided among Mormon families.
Later, 17 of them were found and returned to relatives in Arkansas – with one child, Nancy Cameron, remaining with the Mormons.
The clothing of the Fancher dead was given to the Indians in payment for their assistance. The items were listed on a voucher by none other than Levi Stewart.
All members of the Fancher train who could have told what happened were dead – the secret was safe, or so it was believed.  Some of the men who unknowingly took part began to talk. So did those who were sent to bury the bodies.
For many years, the lid was kept on the box holding the secret of the Meadow Mountain Massacre. With the Mormon church being the law of the land at that time,  it was 14 years following the incident before a grand jury was impaneled. No charges were brought as a result of the first trial.
The second trial took place in September 1876, on the 19-year anniversary of the killings. The jury was handpicked, the scapegoat chosen and John Doyle Lee was given the choice of being shot, hanged or beheaded.
At the trial he protested, “I have been treacherously betrayed and sacrificed in the most cowardly manner.”
The Mountain Meadow Massacre site, located in the Dixie National Forest near the Utah-Nevada border, is designated a "point of interest" on the Rand-McNally road map of Utah.
Nearly 20 years ago, descendants of some of the 17 children who were not killed, visited the monument erected at the site of the massacre and met there a granddaughter of John Doyle Lee.
The greetings turned to tears as the thought of what had occurred there 150 years earlier came to mind. In a way, they were all victims – of history.