Unwilling Martyr: The Death of Young Ed Dalton

Unwilling Martyr: The Death of Young Ed Dalton

BY FAE DECKER DIX

ON A COLD NOVEMBER DAY almost twenty years ago I stood by the grave of Young Ed Dalton in the century-old cemetery that shields the dead of my little home town. Snow lay across the quiet graves—melting here and there where the red earth and the green juniper trees converge. It made a gentle scene.

I remembered how the townspeople walked or drove to the graveyard to place May flowers and paper wreaths on the resting places of their loved ones. They would stop at family plots to visit friends and talk in hushed tones of those long gone—taking great care when they left not to show disrespect for the dead by stepping on the graves. Then they would walk to Young Ed's grave.

Edward Meeks Dalton (called Young Ed to tell him from his father) enjoyed a special regard among the older families of our southern Utah valley, for Ed—a civic-minded Mormon and an idol of Parowan's youth—had been killed in 1886 by a federal marshal's gunfire during the government crusade against plural marriage.

The mounded graves at Parowan's burying place, in the days before the red dirt was laid smooth in green lawn, were surrounded by a scattering of native wild flowers dominated by the purple-blue of the stiff-stemmed iris which the people of our arid land called lilies. These flourishing plants, transplanted from town gardens, along with lilacs and wild yellow roses were a traditional part of the local landscape. Traditional, too, was the lore recalled on Decoration Day by townspeople as they strolled from grave to grave, stopping always by the headstone which was our valley landmark. This was the monument marking the burial place of Young Ed Dalton. Someone would always recall the sorrow Parowan felt in losing this favorite son and point to the fine-chiseled words on the monument which reaffirmed that he "was murdered in cold blood."

The story was legend in our town. I had heard it often from my father who always spoke in grief of the memory; for father was one of those who helped carry Young Ed away from the old Page house as he breathed his last.

Father was eighteen at the time—an ardent worshiper of Young Ed whose athletic prowess and gay temperament fascinated young swains of the day. In relating the story, father would tell it to us from the beginning of the December morning when he was out in the corral doing chores. It was toward noon when he heard a gunshot ring out. The sound came from the south, and being young and curious he simply dropped his pitchfork and started out to find the trouble. Leaping the pole fence, he was crossing the quaint chip bridge which spanned the big ditch back of the corrals when someone ran by and cried out, "Run—we'll be needing you. They've just shot Ed Dalton!""Where?" "Over at Page's corner." This was the home of Daniel Page, a disaffected church member and hotel owner who collaborated with the federal marshal stationed in the area.

By the time father ran the block and turned the corner west, Ed had been moved first to the porch and then inside the home. Father burst into the room and bent over his friend asking, "What have they done to you, Ed?" The dying man replied, "They've got me this time."

Young Ed, suddenly recognizing that he lay in the home of his enemy, cried out, "Don't let me die in this house." The crowd took up his plea, delegating my father and two others to carry him up the street to his mother's home. They lifted him gently but were only a short distance along the "pathwalk" when he died. This my father could never forget. Whenever he reached this point as he retold the story, his voice broke and his eyes blurred.

A slain son's image lingers long in a little town. If you asked any of the elderly what they recalled hearing of Young Ed's death, they'd start you back at the "old Page corner three blocks west from Main Street, where the blood still stains the porch and the parlor floors." For sixty years and more, they used to claim the house was painted red "because no one could wash Ed Dalton's deathblood from its floors." They would send you next to read the lettering on the tall monument in the cemetery. Inscribed on the east panel is the scriptural passage:

"And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How Long, Oh Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?"

REVELATIONS 6:10

The north side carries this poetic cry:

Here lies a victim of a Nation's blunder,Which many to untimely graves hath brought,It nature's holy ties hath torn asunder,And, untold suffering, woe, and anguish wrought,By ruthless hand this man crossed death's dark river,His was the sacred blood of innocence,The taker of his life will meet the giver, Before the Tribune of Omnipotence.

On the west side of the monument you read:

In memoriam EDWARD MEEKS DALTON

Son of Edward & Elizabeth DALTON Born, Parowan, Utah, August 25th. 1852 DIED December 16th, 1886, 34 Yrs, 3 Mos, & 21 Das.

And, on the south side are the words they always quote in Parowan:

He was shot and Killed December 16th, 1886, in cold blood by a deputy United States Marshal, while under indictment for a misdemeanor under the Edmunds Anti-polygamy law.

Dalton family members say they did not put in writing their own version of his death ("Grandmother just couldn't bear to talk about it"). But there are bits and pieces: his first wife Emily's old diary, a letter here and there, and a plethora of town legends. They have read and reread the account of historian Orson F. Whitney and found it near to their family legends. A few excerpts give the tone of the times:

It was between four and five o'clock on the morning of the fatal day —Thursday, December 16th—that Daniel Page admitted Marshals Thompson and Orton 4 into his domicile. [The two had traveled the thirty-two miles from Beaver under cover of darkness after learning that Dalton had come out of hiding in Arizona.] About 8 o'clock, according to Page's statement, he went at Thompson's request, across the street to the house of John J. Wilcock, from whom he borrowed a gun— a Browning rifle, .32 calibre. . . . [Page's teen-age son, Willie, was sent to look for Young Ed,] and reported that he had seen him near Edgar Clark's corral. He had probably learned also that it was Dalton's design to drive a herd of stock to the range that morning, in doing which he would come from the east and pass Page's house, situated on the north-west corner of a block. . . .

Just as Dalton was passing the house, Thompson and Orton went out at the back door on the south side, while the Pages . . . stationed themselves at the north and west windows . . . and watched Dalton as he turned the corner to go south. He was riding a horse, bare-back, was unarmed and apparently unsuspicious of danger. That he had no weapon was plainly to be seen, as his coat was off. . . . As Dalton was riding slowly in a southwesterly direction, ... he was suddenly hailed by voices on his left and ordered to halt. The order was twice or thrice repeated but the calls were so close together as to seem almost simultaneous. Immediately afterwards, a shot was fired from Page's backyard, . . . and Dalton was seen to reel and grasp his horse's mane. The animal reared slightly, . . . [and] its rider fell to the ground, writhing in agony. He was mortally wounded. . .

Thompson . . . declared that the gun went off sooner than he intended. Then stooping down and tapping Dalton on the shoulder, he said, "I told you to halt; why didn't you stop?" The wounded man made no reply.

Dalton, whose life was fast ebbing away, was carried into Page's house, where he temporarily revived. Recognizing Thompson, who was holding his hand, he ordered him to "let go." Dr. King examined the wound and pronounced it fatal. . . .

Dalton now seemed sinking, and forthwith the cry was raised, "Why let him die in the house of his murderers? Take him to his mother's." Strong arms tenderly lifted the dying man and bore him into the open air; but it was too late for him to reach home alive. ... It was a quarter past twelve o'clock when he breathed his last. . . .

The funeral of the deceased took place two days later. The principal speaker was John Henry Smith, who, with his fellow Apostle, Heber J. Grant, happened to be in that part of the territory attending Stake Conference. Every effort was made by these Elders, on hearing of the tragedy, to prevent any possible tumult that might arise. Two-thirds of the population of Parowan followed Dalton's remains to their last resting place.

Although Marshal Thompson, who had been an officer since 1874 and was a former Mormon, declared he had fired the gun "with the intention of shooting over him" the stunned residents of the little town called it a likely story and pronounced the tragedy "cold-blooded murder." Their descendants for decades supported this belief and expressed indignation over what seemed to them the total injustice that followed in the court trial at Beaver. Some who were there left their version of the sad day. If others could not remember it, they again told what their fathers had told them. Although the Salt Lake Daily Tribune took up the cause to defend Thompson against his Mormon detractors, there was no voice raised in the marshal's behalf in Parowan. Residents could not accept the incomplete, and thus to them insincere, explanation in the telegram dispatched to United States Marshal Frank H. Dyer in Salt Lake City:

PAROWAN, UTAH, December 16, 1886

This morning at about eleven o'clock I undertook to arrest E. M. Dalton of this place, he having esccped from the officers last spring. He was on horseback. Myself and W. O. Orton both hailed him, but he turned his horse and started to get away. I fired with the intention of shooting over him. Called his name before I called to him to halt. Write you further from Beaver tomorrow.

W. THOMPSON, JR.

There were threats of lynching. One quiet woman stated she could remember that the school principal dismissed his class and joined several friends who went weeping down the dusty road avowing revenge. But calmer voices prevailed. The town sheriff was the respected church and civic leader Hugh L. Adams, Sr., and he, with Bishop Morgan Richards and Young Ed's father, joined in a stern warning not to "make a move toward retaliation." Ed's father kept saying, "Two wrongs won't mend one."

Sheriff Adams found Thompson at the Parowan telegraph office and placed him under arrest. Together with Orton, the accused was taken before a local magistrate where the two of them waived preliminary examination. A coroner's inquest, meantime, had declared the shooting "was feloniously done." 9 Adams offered the two deputies the shelter of his own home for protection. His wife cooked the evening meal, but with the shadow of the day's events hanging heavily over them, they declined her hospitality, instead waiting anxiously in an upstairs bedroom until Sheriff Adams brought further counsel.

Armed with a writ of habeas corpus from the district court in Beaver, a posse was already on its way to Parowan. The group of four included Thompson's sons, Oscar and Edward, and was followed by R. H. Gillespie, a grand juror sent by the court attorney. After Gillespie's departure ten more jurors, ignoring Judge Jacob S. Boreman's pleas, headed south. They were accompanied by the court clerk and six Beaver citizens.

The first Beaver posse met no difficulty in securing Adams's hostage and were accompanied north that same evening by the sheriff and two Parowan men. This convoy soon met the party of grand jurors near Paragonah and continued their night-long journey to Beaver, arriving near eight o'clock the next morning.

As the posse rode their horses through Parowan, the echo of hammer and saw followed them on the cold night wind. Ed Dalton's coffin was being finished at the old PUMI shop—Parowan United Mercantile Institution—where the coffinmakers lined it with white muslin and trimmed the outside with black velveteen.

The funeral service was held on Saturday afternoon, December 18, in the muslin-draped chapel of the small rock meeting house. There were no flowers to carry to the church, but the women sent their house plants to place against the draped pulpit. The men of the town rode their well-curried saddle horses on either side of the hearse as an honor guard for Young Ed. The hearse itself was a new wagon box on a freshly cleaned wagon gear. The Deseret Evening News reported that "about 600 people, being three-fifths of the entire population of the entire town" turned out to pay homage to their fallen son. Those remembering back claimed that not a wagon nor a riding pony was left in the corrals and fields of the town.

A single file of Indians came down from their homes in the hills to join the solemn procession—for they were Ed's friends and protectors on many a flight from the federal officers, and they grieved in their own stoical way.

When the last stone was rolled onto Young Ed's grave at the foot of the red hill which once served him as a lookout, the mourning town went back to its way of life with new wounds to heal and new prayers to repeat.

Edward M. Dalton had been in violation of the Edmunds Act, passed by Congress in 1882. It gave the United States government the right to arrest, imprison, and fine men with plural wives. This law focused national attention on the Mormon church whose members had sincerely obeyed "the principle" for almost fifty years before one was to die at the hands of a federal marshal. Indeed, it was the only known death over polygamy during the fateful years of the crusade. That it occurred in a remote town nearly three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City could have been due to the clash of personalities involved.

Young Ed was no easy man to catch. He had fled the officers in several daring escapes before that day when he drove a herd of cattle past the home where the two deputies lay in wait. In a telegram to U. S. Marshal Frank H. Dyer telling of the shooting, Thompson referred to Dalton's escape "last spring." Dyer reacted by promptly revoking Thompson's commission and dispatching another officer to the Parowan area. He told the Deseret Evening News: "He [Thompson] had no right to shoot ... the man was only charged with a misdemeanor, and an officer has no right to shoot in such a case." Thompson was restored to his post, however, following the trial which was covered in great detail by newspapers in Utah and in the East.

The grand jury at Beaver, which included the men who had gone to Thompson's rescue, brought out an indictment for manslaughter, and trial was set for January 6, 1887, at Beaver. Twelve jurors, non- Mormons from mining towns in southern Utah (Silver Reef, Marysvale, Star, and Frisco), heard witnesses describe E. M. Dalton as a "hard man" who would be difficult to arrest. The prosecution told the story of the shooting and declared that Dalton was charged with a crime punishable by imprisonment in the territorial penitentiary. This was significant; the penitentiary under territorial laws was to house crimes classified a felonies, and arresting officers could fire on persons thus charged. The Tribune had already taken this position, which would justify the shooting. The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles S. Varian, was expected to follow the argument of the News that cohabitation under the Edmunds Law was only a misdemeanor. There were many surprised observers, therefore, when Varian argued that cohabitation was in effect a felony. The jury returned a verdict of "Not Guilty."

The Deseret Evening News, having prepared its case against Thompson by sending reporter George C. Lambert to interview witnesses, published their accounts before the trial commenced. In a January 10 editorial, following the jury's decision, the Mormon paper commented in language so fiery as to bring a $25,000 libel suit against it. But to avoid a trial the publishers effected a financial settlement, and Thompson accepted "a tithe of the sum which the News company paid, and thus the matter ended."

Young Ed had married two wives—Emily Stevens in 1871 and Helen Delila Lown Clark eight years later—and his story was common to the times when hounded men sought means of flight as their places of refuge became places of fear. The Mormons, normally a zealous people filled with the secure sense of being "right," were by 1884 a harrassed people haunted by the federal crusade to imprison and fine "religious law-breakers." Intense feelings gripped the men who championed or discredited the plural marriage doctrine. And, while adherents found it hard to live by and only a few were willing to attempt it, many of these were among the territory's most respected and influential citizens. Many Utahns, both Mormon and non-Mormon, sought compromise. Appeals were carried to the church president, Wilford Woodruff, "to exercise the authority conferred upon him by revelation and suspend thereby the further extension of plural marriage."

But it was six more heart-rending years before the official declaration known as the Manifesto would abolish the marriage custom. Many ingenious ways of "safe-hiding" the men being pursued were devised by the Mormons. Some heads of households sought work in Colorado, Arizona, and old Mexico. Others found hiding places in their own valleys and mountains.

Young Ed had vowed never to be taken prisoner nor to pay the fine. Others might languish for months in the territorial penitentiary, but it was not for him. Better he should use his own daring and stay free. Although some doubted the wisdom of this decision, he knew he could count on family and friends. And although out of this decision he became a martyr to a profound belief of his church, it can scarcely be said that he intended paying with his life. Full of wild abandon and good humor he was far more likely to make a quick getaway than to be caught in any marshal's trap.

So he had made the decision to stay with his families and continue his ranching and livestock raising. He had finished homesteading a ranch in the lush "Chimney Meadows" northwest of Parowan and had dreams ofbreeding thoroughbred horses. He owned a home in the northwest section of town for Emily and their children, and he had purchasedthe Main Street home of Colonel William H. Dame for Delila and family.

Tall and dark and high spirited in his younger days, he would ride "hell-for-leather across the flats—whoopin' and hollerin,' his black hair flyin' for all git out," one old-timer told me. "There wasn't anything Ed wouldn't try. Once he broke a desert pony by clinging to it bareback with his legs wrapped 'round the trunk of a young sapling. Just let it buck itself out, and he got off fresh as ever."

Joseph E. Dalley, at ninety-four years of age, commented freely on the athletic prowess of Young Ed: "I remember Ed Dalton well, a large man, no coward, a brave man — good wrestler — good sport. They didn't give him a chance at all—he had eluded them so often."

In Young Ed's youth he had paid little attention to his church. Then he spent a year (October 1881 to November 1882) in the Southern States Mission field, returning early because of illness from chills and fever. Upon Ed's recovery, the ward bishop, it is said, called him to the superintendency of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association. This sparked his determination to teach the young people to come early to their belief. He would stride down the chapel aisle with his impressive gait, and the whole MIA was his. "Ed had a way with him that made everybody want to cater to him," Sam Mortensen remembered.

We just liked him, that's all. Wonderful speaking voice. Wonderful with the banjo—used to saunter out on his mother's front porch on summer evenings and start strumming. Pretty soon all the young folks in town would cross the town "Square" and they'd sit there singing all the old-time songs they knew.

Later, many of these singers joined the stirring game of helping Young Ed outwit the United States marshals.

The most quoted tale of Young Ed's bravado is recorded by Orson F. Whitney:

In the spring of 1886 Dalton was arrested by Deputy Marshal William O. Orton, but made his escape from that officer, or rather from R. H. Benson, City Marshal of Parowan, to whom Orton had temporarily entrusted his prisoner.

. . . The deputy marshal had gone to the telegraph office to notify his superiors at Beaver of the capture, and had left Dalton standing with Benson and others in the street. The prisoner, a fine, manly fellow, brimming with health and good nature, six feet in height and weighing over two hundred pounds, was noted not only for strength and courage, but for activity and swiftness in running. As the shades of evening fell, and Orton delayed his coming, Dalton remarked jocularly to Benson that he wished the deputy would return as it was his intention to escape and he did not wish to get the city marshal into any trouble. He added with a smile, that if Orton did not come soon —he had been gone more than an hour—he would have to leave anyhow. Suiting the action to the word, he adroitly slipped off his boots, gave Benson a sudden slap on the shoulder, bade him "good night" and was off as on the wings of the wind. Benson, who was also fleet of foot, gave chase, in the darkness. He [Dalton] was seen about town the next day, but was not arrested.

Young Ed left for Arizona soon after this incident and for several months helped on a mail contract. With the approach of winter, he returned to his family, reaching Parowan about December 10. "Warned of danger by friends, . . . [he] impulsively replied: T must see my mother if it costs me my life.' Within a week from his return, he lay cold in his coffin, shot through the back with a rifle-ball."

During that last week in Parowan the town again took pride in seeing Ed ride his favorite horse, Red Man, a part-thoroughbred which his mother kept saddled and bridled day after clay in her own corral ready for her son's escape on a moment's notice. He could dart from her home, leap in the saddle, snatch the reins which his doting mother was already loosening from the post, and be off through the back lot to the foothills and safety, for Red Man was known as the fastest brush horse in the countryside. His spirited mother, Elizabeth Meeks Dalton, had already signaled their Indian friends to help make the getaway safe for her much-loved son. And the Indians—who called him "Mattone," meaning "man without fingers," since he had lost the fingers of his right hand in an accident—were not only willing but waiting for him to flee "the feds."

And what of his wives who waited out his maneuvers to safety and before that his year's mission service? First there was Emily, the only daughter of English converts, a shy violet of a girl who wore her hair in waist-length ringlets and often dressed in white through her youth and early marriage. She changed to black and to subdued prints after his death and even removed the gold earrings from her piercedears. To be loved by the dashing son of the town mayor when she was scarce seventeen and he twenty was enchantment for her. As the mother of three living sons and a daughter and suffering a deafness which steadily worsened, she faced a heartbreaking test when Young Ed in 1879 had taken a second wife, tall and fashionable Delila Clark who was given to a "worldy turn of mind." Still the young wives got along well and held Ed in a common bond of love. In Emily's diary, written while their husband was on his mission, she recorded under the date of April 1, 1882: "Lila has got a baby boy this morning they are both doing well we have sent word to Ed the first thing for he will be so anxious to hear." Sixteen days later she wrote, "Lila's baby is dead, Father in heaven help us to bare [sic] the trials of this life in a right way." And in July (no date), "Oh dear how my heart does ache we have got a letter from our dear Husband he is very sick."

She cherished a letter he wrote her from the mission field under the date of April 28, 1882: "Dear Wife I received your kind and welcome letter of 11th inst. and read it with pleasure especially the part that referred to your self." Mentioning that he had sent handkerchiefs to her and to Delila, he added that he had bought for himself a suit of clothes for $10.00 and had been to "every store in Farboro to get a coat that was large enough for me." He counseled her, "You must take good care of yourself and if you feel poorly get someone to come and do the work. Have Zina stay with you this summer if you go on the ranch and don't over do yourself."

Delila, known locally as Lylie, had only two living children, a son and a daughter. Others were stillborn or died in infancy. She always carried her head high, wore clothes of the latest fashion, and was seen often at the racetrack and other "sociable places" in her wellremembered green velvet gown and sweeping plumed hats. After Ed's death she remarried and divided her time between southern Utah and California. For a time Delila ran an ice cream parlor on Sundays and holidays in her home on Main Street, serving ice cream with soda crackers at small tables in the parlor or, on sunny days, out on the lawn among the summer flowers of her yard. Young men of the day remember turning the freezer for a free dish of ice cream and a soda cracker.

Emily stayed on in Parowan, struggling against poverty, frail health, and her growing deafness which she mentioned often in her diary. In later life she used an old-fashioned ear trumpet and was unable to hear except when friends and family bent to her ear and spoke loudly. Her skin took on a transparency and her figure such frailty that one wondered at her strength to work. She moved through our town softly as she worked at the tasks of her life.

Her four sons in maturity gave her love and respect. They were often seen at public celebrations walking her proudly down the church aisle or across the square, speaking tenderly into her ear trumpet— these men of the rough frontier who had known so much of life's grimness. When they were children they worried that she worked so hard. They knew she stayed up late into the night to braid the straw hat she would sell next day for a quarter. Often their only meal was water-gravy and bread she had baked in the night. By day she took in sewing, wove carpeting, and pressed suits for the pittance with which she supported her six children, all under fifteen years of age when their father was killed. Through all this adversity, the ward bishop always knew she would contribute a tenth of her income for tithing.

In time the Mutual Improvement Association of the Mormon church began sending her money for a suitable monument to be placed at the grave of Young Ed. It came in dimes and dollars from wherever Mormon youth lived. She saved it all and solemnly placed the order when there was enough.

The years moved on and sorrow still haunted her door, for both daughters died in childbirth—one at eighteen and the other at age twenty-nine—and a son's wife and baby died, leaving a two-year-old daughter. Emily wrote pitifully of these tragedies in her diary and ended each account by recording a prayer. And, to her way of thinking, there was still to come the ultimate grief, for Lylie died first. Emily had lived with an abiding trust that she, the first wife, would be the first to meet Ed in another world. How could it be that Lylie should have this coveted reward? Emily sank into deep, almost bitter, mourning, refusing at first to attend the funeral or even the viewing which was to be held in her own son's front parlor when Delila's body was brought home from California. But yielding to the kind persuasion of her sons, Emily went timidly to the coffinside, bent over Delila, bade her greet Young Ed with her love, and then she quietly attended the funeral. However, she stayed by a solemn decision made some days before: Delila should not be buried on the left side of their husband as was customary in polygamous burials. She should lie far right with space saved for Emily by his side and between them when her hour came.

So the three martyrs lie together under the monument by the red hill, where the blue iris bends in the wind. The sorrow which rested so long over a whole town has softened with time and echoes now the memory of the man who revelled briefly in his own daring, the two women who loved him, the children who scarcely remembered him, and the parents who could not forgive his death.

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