This is the story about our Dalton family experience with the Mormon
Battalion:
Compiled & collected from various sources by
Rodney G. Dalton.
We all know that
three of our Dalton men were
members of the Mormon Battalion; One was a cousin of the other two. These three
were Henry Simon Dalton, the son of Henry Dalton who died in Wysox Penn in 1833
and two sons of John Dalton Jr.; Harry Dalton & Edward Dalton. Henry Simon
was assigned to Company B and the two brothers, Harry & Edward were assigned
to Company D.
These
three had many hardships by volunteering for service on 16 July 1846. Henry
Simon Dalton was the only one to make the trip all the way to California. After his discharge he
made his way up the coast of California to San Francisco where he meet and courted
his future wife, Elizabeth Kittleman. Harry & Edward on the other hand were
not so lucky! After the Battalion arrived in Santa Fe they were reassigned to
Lieutenant W. W. Willis’ sick detachment and were forced to winter at
Fort Pueblo Colorado.
After
Brigham Young gave word for this group to start for Utah, it took six days for the
three detachments and remaining Saints to load their wagons. They started out
at noon
On May 24 1847.
Harry
& Edward Dalton left Pueblo with these other Battalion
members and finely arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley only a few days after
Brigham Young’s original Company arrived on July
24th, 1847. Edward Dalton did in fact join up again with his
cousin Henry Simon in California some time later according to Norma Baldwin
Ricketts in her book; “The Mormon Battalion, U.S. Army of the West, 1846
– 1848” He probably went with Captain James Brown who had orders to
go to California to see if he could pick up the muster- out pay that was owed
to all ex- Battalion members who were in the sick Detachment Company.
All
three of these Dalton’s evenly made it to
Utah where they had a long and
good life.
Henry
Simon Dalton was with the Hancock-Los Angeles Company. He was to travel with
Jefferson Hunt’s company of fifty-one (page 294) to Northern California.
The
following excerpt is from a story told by Elizabeth Jane Kittleman (Dalton) concerning their voyage on
the ship Brooklyn and the trek from California to Utah. She was born May 26, 1831 at Downington, Chester county, Pennsylvania, the eldest daughter of
William and Elizabeth Hindman Kittleman.
"
On July 16th, 1847 the Mormon Battalion boys
were discharged at Los Angeles and scattered out, some
coming to San Francisco. Among them was Henry Simon Dalton (Company
B) who came to work in a butcher shop and boarded in our house. (Note: Elizabeth kept a boarding house on
Bush and Montgomery Streets, Where the Mills Building now stands;) He stayed
with us until the following March, when we were married by Elder Addison Platt.
We left San Francisco in June of 1849 to come to Utah.
(It
is possible that Edward Dalton lived with them at this time and traveled back
to Utah
when
they did. – RD)
The
following history was copied from many sources; “The Mormon Battalion,
U.S. Army of the West, 1846 – 1848” and many sites taken off the
Internet pertaining to the “Mormon Battalion”
- The Mormon Battalion story -
The
need to assist the U. S. Army in the Mexican war was urgent. President James K.
Polk instructed the Secretary of War, William L. March to authorize Col. (later General) Stephen W.
Kearney, Commander of the Army of the West, to enlist a battalion of 500
Mormons for this purpose. Captain James Allen was ordered to proceed to the Mormon
Camps in Iowa to recruit five companies of 75 to 100 men each.
In
July 1846, under the authority of U.S. Army Captain James Allen and with the
encouragement of Mormon leader Brigham Young, the Mormon Battalion was mustered
in at Council Bluffs, Iowa Territory. The battalion
was the direct result of Brigham Young's correspondence on 26 January 1846 to Jesse C. Little, presiding elder over the New England and Middle States Mission.
Young instructed Little to meet with national leaders in
Washington, D.C., and to seek aid for the
migrating Latter-day Saints, the majority of whom were then in the
Iowa Territory. In response to Young's
letter, Little journeyed to Washington, arriving on 21 May 1846, just eight days after Congress had declared war on Mexico.
The
battalion marched from Council Bluffs on Monday morning, July 20th, 1846, arriving on 1
August 1846 at Fort Leavenworth (Kansas), where they were outfitted
for their trek to Santa Fe. Battalion members drew
their arms and accoutrements, as well as a clothing allowance of forty-two
dollars, at the fort. Since a military uniform was not mandatory, many of the
soldiers sent their clothing allowances to their families in the encampments in
Iowa.
Each
soldier was issued the following: 1 Harpers Ferry smoothbore musket, 1 infantry
cartridge box, 1 cartridge box plate, 1 cartridge box belt, 1 bayonet scabbard,
1 bayonet scabbard belt, 1 bayonet scabbard belt plate, 1 waist belt, 1 waist
belt plate, 1 musket gun sling, 1 brush and pike set, 1 musket screwdriver, 1
musket wiper, 1 extra flint cap. Each company was also allotted 5 sabers for
the officers, 10 musket ball screws, 10 musket spring vices, and 4 Harpers Ferry rifles.
Of
note here is that during the remainder of their enlistment, some members of the
battalion were assigned to garrison duty at either San Diego, San Luis Rey, or Ciudad de
Los Angeles. Other soldiers were assigned to accompany General
Kearny back to Fort Leavenworth. All soldiers, whether en
route to the Salt Lake Valley via Pueblo or still in
Los Angeles, were mustered out of the
United States Army on 16 July 1847.
The
march from Fort Leavenworth was delayed by the sudden
illness of Colonel Allen. Capt. Jefferson Hunt was instructed to begin the
march to Santa Fe; he soon received word that Colonel Allen was dead.
Allen's death caused confusion regarding who should lead the battalion to
Santa Fe. Lt. A. J. Smith arrived
from Fort Leavenworth claiming the lead, and he was chosen the
commanding officer by the vote of battalion officers. The leadership transition
proved difficult for many of the enlisted men, as they were not consulted about
the decision.
Smith
and his accompanying surgeon, a Dr. Sanderson, have been described in journals
as the "heaviest burdens" of the battalion. Under Smith's dictatorial
leadership and with Sanderson's antiquated prescriptions, the battalion marched
to Santa Fe. On this trek the soldiers suffered from excessive
heat, lack of sufficient food, improper medical treatment, and forced
long-distance marches.
The
first division of the Mormon Battalion approached Santa Fe on October 9, 1846. Their approach was heralded by Col. Alexander
Doniphan, who ordered a one-hundred-gun salute in their honor.
At
Santa Fe they were given a new commander, Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, who
had been with Kearny's advance party, but was sent back to take command after
Kearny learned of Allen’s death. Col. Cooke told the men that they had
orders to make a new wagon road to the Pacific along a southern route, something
that had never been done.
After
the Battalion reached Santa Fe, Colonel Cooke decided to
send the women and children and all the sick soldiers to Pueblo for the winter. Cooke was
aware of the rugged trail between Santa Fe and California and also aware that one
sick detachment had already been sent from the Arkansas River* to Fort Pueblo in Colorado. He ordered the remaining
sick women and children to accompany the sick of the battalion to
Pueblo for the winter. Three
detachments consisting of 273 people eventually were sent to Pueblo for the winter of
1846-1847. Included in this group were the two Dalton brothers, Edward and Harry
Dalton.
*
Just after they left the Arkansas River a sick detachment was sent
to Fort Pueblo, Colorado, via Bent's Fort. Many of
the men were sick from exposure to the elements and Dr. Sanderson prescribed a dose of calomel powder and
arsenic, no matter what was wrong with them.
More
on the sick detachment;
On Nov. 10th 1846, a detachment of fifty-five
sick men of the Battalion, under the command of Lieutenant W. W. Willis, was
separated from the main body and started back to Pueblo. The Willis Company took
one wagon, loaded with sick men and provisions, pulled by two worn-out mule
teams. Those who could walk did so. Two days later John Green died. On Sat. 28th
Elijah Freeman and Richard Carter, members of the Battalion (Lieut. Willis'
detachment), died, and were buried by their comrades four miles south of
Secora, on the Rio Grande. On Sun. Dec. 20th, 1846 Capt. Willis' detachment of
the Battalion joined the other detachments of Captains Brown and Higgins that
was already at Pueblo. This group of Mormon
Battalion members lived as best as they could of over 6 months in pueblo before
starting another long trek back north to find Brigham Young’s wagon
train.
The
trip to Salt Lake City - May 24th,
1847:
“The
sick detachment traveled about two miles and were visited that night by
Jefferson Hunt who spoke words of comfort to the men and administered to the
sick. The group consisted of besides Captain Brown, Captains Nelson Higgins,
and William J. Willis. There were 140 of the sick detachment and 40 of the
Mississippi Saints also bound for Utah. There were only 29 wagons,
1 carriage, 100 horses and mules, and 300 head of cattle to make the journey.
They
traveled north to Fort Laramie and then found the Mormon
Trail and headed west. They found out that Brigham Young and the original
vanguard Co. was only a few days ahead of them. This company arrived in
Utah just five days after the arrival
of the original company on July 29, 1847. On July 31, 1847, Brigham Young assumed command of the soldiers and
ordered them together brush for the bowery. They built a confortable shelter
forty by twenty-eight feet in size. During the week the soldiers worked under
church direction, cultivating the soil and making adobes for both living
quarters and a fort.
(Edward
and Harry Dalton were then the first two Dalton’s into the
Salt Lake valley. They were each
later assigned a plat of land and
started to build the first of many Dalton cabins yet to come. -RD)
It
was through that these soldiers had to travel to California to be mustarded out of
service and to receive their pay. However Brigham Young sent Captain James
Brown and a small party to California to obtain severance pay for
the men who had been on dispatched duty in Pueblo. After a long trip, Captain
Brown found the Governor of California and ask him for all the back pay owed to
the soldiers. The final pay received by Captain Brown amounted to over 5,000
dollars. Only three men returned to Utah at this time with Captain
Brown, arriving back in Salt Lake Valley on Nov. 16th, 1847.
It is noted here that at the direction on Mormon church
officials, Caption Brown used $1,950 of this Battalion money to buy
Fort Buenaventura, a trading post, from Miles
Goodyear. This settlement on the confluence of the Weber and
Ogden Rivers was known as Brown’s
Fort and Brownsville until 1850 when it was named
Ogden City.
The
below excerpt copied from the book; “The Mormon Battalion, U.S. Army of the West, 1846
– 1848”
“By
October 12, the battalion had reached Santa Fe. Six days later, a
"sick detachment," consisting of more than 100 men and women, plus
all of the children, left Santa Fe for the Pueblo (the site of present
Pueblo, Colo.,) on the Arkansas River, where they wintered with a
smaller group that had split off earlier from the main column.
Now
under the command of Captain Philip St. George Cooke, the remnants of the five
companies that had reached Santa Fe planned to continue their
journey to California. Cooke was initially less
than enthusiastic about his motley detachment which he described as
"undisciplined ... much worn by travelling on foot... clothing ... very scant." He
lamented that he had "no money to pay them, or clothing to issue."
Nevertheless, on Oct. 19, the Mormon Battalion departed Santa Fe on the long trek to
California, supplied with less than 60
days' rations and equipment.”
They
journeyed down the Rio Grande del Norte and eventually crossed the Continental
Divide on November 28, 1846. While moving up the
San Pedro River in present-day
Arizona, their column was attacked
by a herd of wild cattle. In the ensuing fight, a number of bulls were killed
and two men were wounded. Following the "Battle of the Bulls", the
battalion continued their march toward Tucson, where they anticipated a
possible battle with the Mexican soldiers garrisoned there. But the Mexican
defenders temporarily abandoned their positions and no conflict ensued.
On December 21, 1846 the battalion encamped on the Gila River. They crossed the Colorado River into California on January 10, 1847. By January 29, 1847 they were camped at the
Mission of San Diego, about five miles from General Kearny's quarters. That
evening, Colonel Cooke rode to Kearny's encampment and reported
the battalion's condition.
On January 30, 1847, Cooke issued orders listing the accomplishments of
the Mormon Battalion. "History may be searched in vain for an equal march
of infantry. Half of it has been through a wilderness where nothing but savages
and wild beasts are found, or deserts where, for lack of water, there is no
living creature."
During
the remainder of their enlistment, some members of the battalion were assigned
to garrison duty at either San Diego, San Luis Rey, or Ciudad de los Angeles. Other soldiers were
assigned to accompany General Kearny back to Fort Leavenworth. All soldiers, whether en
route to the Salt Lake Valley via Pueblo or still in
Los Angeles, were mustered out of the
United States Army on July 16, 1847. Eighty-one men chose to
reenlist and serve an additional eight months of military duty under Captain
Daniel C. Davis in Company A of the Mormon Volunteers. The majority
of the soldiers migrated to the Salt
Lake
Valley and were reunited with their
pioneering families.
The
men of the Mormon Battalion are honored for their willingness to fight for the United States as loyal American citizens.
Their march of some 2,000 miles from Council Bluffs to California is one of the longest
military marches in history. Their participation in the early development of
California by building
Fort Moore in Los Angeles, building a courthouse in
San Diego, and making bricks and
building houses in southern California contributed to the growth of
the West.
After
the volunteers were released in San Diego on March 14, 1848, some men went
northeast to Utah and the other half, as well as Henry Dalton traveled north to
Yerba Buena (San Francisco) They build flourmills,
sawmills, and other structures in northern California. Some were among the
first to discover gold at Sutter's Mill.
Men
from Captain Davis’ Company A were responsible for opening the first
wagon road over the southern route from California to Utah in 1848.
“The
five companies of the Mormon Battalion, Army of the West, were discharged
officially at Fort Moore in Los Angeles on July 16, 1847, one year after their enlistment. There were 317
men who lined up for the brief ceremony. After discharge, it took several days
for them to receive their pay and to complete arrangements for their journey
[to join their families in Utah or wherever they might be at the time]...Each
man received $31.50, but no transportation allowance for traveling back as
promised. When the companies were paid, they purchased animals and supplies for
the return journey. Several men noted [in their journals] that the price of
horses increased when the Mormons began buying so many. Quantities of flour and
salt were purchased.”
Jacob
Truman was among the 223 men of the Levi Hancock company
who traveled north from Los Angeles to take the northern route
over the Sierra Mountains. They broke into smaller
groups, but all ended up together again in the Sierras after a brief stop in
Sacramento to replenish their supplies
and provisions for the trip from John Sutter. When they were together at
Truckee Lake, Captain James Brown, who
had been sent to California by church authorities to
collect the pay from the Army for the soldiers in the sick detachment that went
to Pueblo, came into their camp with a letter from President
Brigham Young.
“Brown
delivered the letter from the church leaders, dictated by Brigham Young and
addressed to ‘Capt. Jefferson Hunt and the officers and soldiers of the
Mormon Battalion.’ It was dated August 7,
1847,
Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Brigham Young and the pioneers had been in the
valley only two weeks when he wrote the letter to the battalion. Already they
were in destitute circumstances in the valley, and Brigham Young’s
concern about an influx of people and the resulting strain and hardships it
would make on the meager resources of the pioneers in the valley was
understandable...
“The
letter recommended that those men with adequate provisions proceed to
Salt Lake Valley. Others were asked to
remain in California to labor until spring, then bring their provisions and earnings with them...
“After
hearing the letter from Mormon Church authorities, the group divided, with
approximately half...continuing on and half returning to Sutter’s Fort to
find employment.
“When
approximately 100 ex-soldiers returned to Sutter’s Fort after the Sierra
meeting with Brown, they joined their comrades who had remained behind. About
20 continued on to San Francisco to find employment. The
rest were put to work immediately by Capt. John Sutter, who wrote in the Fort
log after the Mormons had returned. ‘I employed about 80 of them.’
“Records kept by Sutter’s
clerk reveal the Mormons worked as carpenters and laborers, dug ditches, made
shoes, tanned hides, built granaries, and a grist mill in Coloma. Others split
shingles and clapboards. There were farms to be cultivated and cattle and sheep
to be tended.” There were blacksmiths and butchers.
While
the men were working in Coloma building the sawmill,
gold was discovered. “The journal entry of Henry Bigler,
an ex-soldier of the Mormon Battalion, that preserved this historic moment for
California was the following. ‘This day some kind of metal was found in
the tail of race that looks like gold.” It is the only known source
indicating the exact date gold was first found.
Two
of the ex-soldiers, Sidney Willes and Wilford Hudson, were some of the first to locate and show
others where the gold was being found. “The Willes-Hudson
strike came to be known as Mormon Island and turned out to be the second major
gold strike, one with very ‘rich diggings.
“It
was not long until many of the ex-soldiers and men from the ship Brooklyn gathered on
Mormon Island to search for gold. They
marked off plots of five square yards for each man and worked five men
together. The Mormons were situated ideally, being on site at the beginning of
the gold rush, working with friends before the onslaught of Forty-niners. The
atmosphere was one of openness and trust. They tossed their daily golden
findings into containers on their plot and left their tools out at night. One
group divided $17,000 at the end of one week. Mormon Island became a very busy place,
with about two hundred ex-soldiers and Brooklyn men all panning for gold.
(Did
our Henry Simon Dalton try his hand at finding gold? There is no written proof
of this. –RD)
“Even
with the discovery of gold, most ex-battalion soldiers still planned to go to
the church and their families. They remembered the letter from church
authorities the previous August advising them to work until spring to obtain
needed supplies, a plan which they seemed determined to follow...Sutter
apparently attempted to settle his accounts with the battalion workers on April
18, 1848, when he wrote, ‘A very busy day to settle accounts with some of
the Mormons.’
“The
soldiers bartered for pay ‘in kind.’ Sutter gave them
wild horses, mules, cattle, oxen, wagons they had made for him, plows, picks,
shovels, iron, seeds, plant cuttings, and other items that would be useful when
they reached Salt Lake Valley made the first wagon tracks
over the Salt Lake Cutoff.”
Epilogue:
The Mormon Battalion
was involved in numerous significant events in western history between 1846 and
1849. They blazed the wagon route became the southern route to California; they
demonstrated the demonstrated the importance of the San Pedro and Santa Cruz
rivers as transportation corridors, which led to the Gadsden Purchase; they
took part in the conquest of California to claim it as part of the United
States. The battalion aided the 1847 move to Utah by the Mormons. Fifteen veterans escorted
General Stephen Kearny to Fort Leavenworth when he took John C. Fremont to be court-martialed. They participated in
the discovery of gold and opened the highway over
Carson Pass in the Sierra
Nevada. Now called the
Mormon-Carson Pass Emigrant Trail, this road became the main entrance to
California for approximately 200,000 gold-seeking
immigrants during 1849-56. Six ex-soldiers carried two thousand copies of the California
Star east that told the world gold had been discovered. They drove the first
wagons over the Old Spanish Trail and the Salt Cutoff of the California Trail.
As impressive as these
accomplishments are, it is the day-to-day stories of these men and their epic march that remain indelibly stamped on our minds. Traveling
together, they experiencing everything in common,
bonded the men together in a way that lasted for the rest of their lives. They
traveled in small groups or messes of six men to a tent; messmates seemed to
have a particularly strong bonding. Frequently, after camping for the night,
the weary, starving men carried canteens of water back to their comrades who
had fallen along the trail, too weak and to continue. Helping their fallen comrades,
the men arrived back in camp in the early morning hours, just in time to begin
the next day's march. Recipients of this kind treatment recorded in their
journals they may have perished had not their friends returned for them.
One of their greatest challenges was burying a comrade
in a late, lonely spot. If the burial was to be early in the morning, the body
was kept in the tent of the deceased's messmates during the night. Even though
the grave was in a remote, lonely spot, and the bodies wrapped only in blankets
or tree bark, the burials were conducted with dignity, respect, and caring. A
friend was gone, bringing thoughts such as those of John Tippets: "At
present it is our daily prayer that there w no more deaths in our midst for
truly it is grievous to see our bread left by the side of the road."
It is
with great respect that we as members of this early pioneer Dalton
family honor these three Dalton men
for their great sacrifice and hardships by volunteering for service in the
famous “Mormon Battalion”
Rodney
G. Dalton, Ogden
Utah, July 14th, 2002.
