48 minute read
A Long Course of the Most Inhuman Cruelty
A long Course of the Most Inhuman Cruelty
The Abuse and Murder of Isaac Whitehouse
BY NOEL A. CARMACK
On October 28, 1855, James H. Martineau, the Parowan City recorder and Iron County militia adjutant, made a chilling entry in his journal. 1 “I heard of the sudden death and burial of an orphan boy named Izaac Whitehouse,” he wrote. “He died last night and was secretly buried in the night.” 2
The next day, Martineau made another entry in his journal, detailing the abuses the boy had suffered at the hands of his custodians, Samuel and Elizabeth Baker. Martineau wrote that the body of the boy, who was an orphan of about ten years of age, was dug up and brought to the town hall where H. D. Bayless, the justice of the peace, held an inquest. When the boy’s body was examined, it showed obvious signs of violence. “It was a horrible sight to see,” Martineau wrote. The boy had been partially buried in his dirty clothes and excrement. “His hands and feet had been tied with a cord, (the marks of which were still shown in the flesh) and then he had been placed in a water ditch, and partly chilled and partly drowned. The Sand had washed into and settled in the folds of his Clothing. His body had large purple spots where he had been kicked or struck, the skin being badly abrazed and broken.” 3
Children at play in Provo, Utah, circa 1890s.
utah state historical society
When Samuel Baker was confronted with the crime, he denied responsibility, but his wife confessed and showed them the cord with which the boy had been tied. Martineau reported that, during the inquest, “The testimony of the people revealed a long course of the most inhuman cruelty, perpetuated on the poor boy, whose father and mother, dying while on their way here, left him to the care of Mrs. Baker, the sister of his mother. After she got here, she herself became a mother, and hated the boy most intensely, and incited Baker to his cruel deeds.” 4
Aside from the grim details of the crime revealed in Martineau’s journal, we know little about the events leading up to Isaac’s horrifying demise. It is known, however, that eight-yearold Isaac Whitehouse had accompanied his parents, Jacob and Rebecca, on the ship Windermere with other westbound Latter-day Saints who left from Liverpool, England, on February 22, 1854. The Whitehouse family, of Watford Locks, Northamptonshire, England, traveled among a total of 477 Mormons under the charge of Daniel Garn, an elder in the church. Isaac, who was later described as “dumb” or mute (sometimes due to deafness or intellectual impairment) was listed as eight years of age, traveling in the company of his parents, a threeyear-old brother, Joseph, and his twenty-eightyear-old unmarried aunt, Elizabeth Ward. 5
The record is silent as to the cause of Jacob’s and Rebecca’s deaths, but as many as nine passengers on the Windermere had succumbed to smallpox on the long and dreadful passage from England. 6 Adverse winds and heavy gales hampered the first five weeks of travel. Thirty-seven passengers and two crewmen contracted smallpox on the voyage, but “at this crisis the malady was suddenly checked in answer to prayer.” 7 After sixty-one days at sea, the Windermere arrived in the Port of New Orleans on April 23, 1854. Isaac’s parents were not listed among the dead who lost their lives to smallpox on the Windermere, but it was reported that a number of passengers died later from illness on the trek west. 8 According to Eliza Goodson Jex, who had emigrated with the Windermere company, “Some lost mothers, some fathers, some both and then the poor children were left to the mercy of others which was sorrowful to see.” 9 As was the common treatment of orphaned children on the journey west, Isaac and his little brother were placed under the care of their aunt to be raised in Utah. 10
The Windermere’s roster also listed Samuel George Baker, a pearl worker from Birmingham, and his wife Sarah, noting nothing more than their ages, twenty-four and twenty-eight, respectively. A three-year-old son, Edwin, traveled with them. 11 The Baker family had evidently received financial assistance for their journey from the LDS church’s Perpetual Emigration Fund (PEF). Samuel and his little family survived the turbulent Atlantic crossing and smallpox outbreak, but Sarah reportedly died from cholera on the overland journey to Saint Louis after giving birth to a second son, Franklin Edward. 12
Samuel Baker (1830–1912), photographed in his later years. Baker was tried and convicted for the murder of Isaac Whitehouse.
public member tree, ancestry.com
After losing his wife to cholera, Samuel Baker now faced a daunting overland trek to Salt Lake City with his three-year-old son and newborn baby boy. After losing her sister and brotherin-law, Elizabeth Ward faced the same grueling journey and was charged with the care of her two young nephews—one of whom was physically disabled. Perhaps out of mutual necessity, Samuel and Elizabeth joined together to shepherd these four children across the plains and into Utah. Baker and Ward were married somewhere on the trail, probably by Daniel Garn, who had solemnized six marriages on the Windermere. The Bakers likely arrived in Parowan sometime in late October or early November 1854. 13 Parowan, an economically depressed southern Utah fort community, was inhabited by about 1,200 men, women, and children, who struggled to support the sporadically successful iron works in nearby Cedar City. 14
It is impossible to say when the abuse of Isaac Whitehouse began, but it is not unreasonable to conclude that it took place over the better part of a year, until the end of October 1855, when the boy’s body was discovered. At the inquest, Samuel and Elizabeth initially denied having anything to do with the crime. Martineau described Samuel as being “cool and defiant throughout” the questioning. Elizabeth’s deceit was soon broken, and as the truth came to light, it became clear that Samuel—aided and supported by his wife—had caused the death of their disabled nephew. On October 30, 1855, the day following the inquest, Martineau recorded that Samuel G. Baker and his wife were “cut off from the Church for their crime, by a unanimous vote of all the people.” 15 The people of Parowan showed that they would not allow brutal acts of violence to go without justice.
Sometime between the time of the initial inquest and the first two weeks of November, Samuel and Elizabeth made an unsuccessful attempt to escape to California. Unfortunately, Martineau is the only known Parowan diarist to note the escape attempt. No extant account of the tragic affair describes their apprehension, but it is clear that on November 13, the Baker couple was brought before Justice Charles Hopkins of the Cedar City precinct. The defendants were prosecuted by Jesse N. Smith, district attorney of the (then) territorial Third Judicial District, and then bound over to appear and answer the charge of murder at the next term of the U.S. District Court. 16
Elizabeth Ward Baker (1826–1913), Isaac Whitehouse’s aunt and Samuel Baker’s wife.
public member tree, ancestry.com
The grand jury of the Second U.S. District Court presented an indictment against Samuel G. Baker for the murder of Isaac Whitehouse on November 19, 1855. Territorial District Attorney Joseph A. Kelting was appointed as prosecutor. Hosea Stout and John Bair, deputy U.S. district attorneys, acted as counsel for the defense. 17
When Deputy U.S. Marshal Alexander Williams reached Parowan with papers for the arrest of Samuel and for the retrieval of witnesses, James H. Martineau was subpoenaed to testify, presumably for his part in the postmortem examination, “much against my will,” he noted. 18
The Bakers and the subpoenaed witnesses, accompanied by the marshal, made the snowy trek to Fillmore and arrived on November 24. After spending a day investigating Baker’s case for his defense, Stout reported on November 26 that he had “commenced [a] suit against Baker the prisoner and in favor of the perpetual Emigration Fund in the sum of $155.20”; in other words, the fine against Baker for his alleged crime might go to pay debt to the PEF. 19 Bair, the attorney for the defense, confessed judgment for the amount and its execution. Immediately following the settlement of this suit, Stout wrote that “the Case of The People &c vs Samuel G Baker for murder was taken up Joseph A. Kelting Prosecutor & I & Bair on defense. We moved to quash which was argued half a day Court Quashed first count and sustained the second Prisoner Plead not guilty.” 20
On this day, James Martineau wrote to his wife of the uncertainty of the length of his service as witness: “I do not know whether the case of Baker will be got through with whether wend to Parowan for more witnesses, or not. If they do not send for more witnesses, the case will be dispensed of in short order. But if they send for more witnesses, it may take two or three weeks longer.” 21 Stout added more detail, writing that the “Jury empannelled and witnesses introduced occupying the rest of the day U. S. D. M. Alex Williams again started for Parowan to summons witnesses on the part of Baker’s defence and to execute his property in favor of the P. E. F. Company.” 22 Witness Martineau offered little description of the proceedings but noted that Judge William W. Drummond— whom Martineau considered to be unscrupulous—presided over the trial. Drummond, an associate justice of Utah’s territorial supreme court, had come to Utah earlier that year with his mistress, a woman he called “Mrs. Justice Drummond.” An attractive woman took a seat on the stand next to the judge, about whom Martineau later wrote “besides him on the bench sat a strumpet called wife.” 23
The trial continued on November 27 and occupied most of the day. When the prosecution rested its case on the third day, Stout reported that the judge “took a very active part in the trial against the prisoner and today even took on himself the examination of the witnesses very unbecomingly.” 24 Baker’s defense rested on the fifth day of his trial. After five days of court testimony, the case was submitted to the jury. On the morning of December 1, 1855, the court met at nine o’clock and, according to Stout’s diary account, the jury was deadlocked. Then, at one p.m., came the verdict: the jury found Samuel Baker guilty of murder in the second degree. He was sentenced to ten years in the territorial penitentiary.
On the day of Samuel’s sentencing, December 3, Stout made a poignant statement in his diary: “Mrs Baker now poor and destitute, sentenced to bereft of all she had on earth and her husband sentenced for ten years imprisonment, and herself in a peculiar condition and her fullness of times having expired was delivered of a son, whose name was called Douglass Drummond in token of his some day becoming a great man and a leading Democrat.” 25 Recognizing the incongruity of Samuel’s son being born while his father was tried and sentenced under a Jacksonian Democrat, Stout concluded: “How could it be otherwise for born under the heigh auspecies of a Democratic Court while the same day his father was sentenced to the penetentiary for ten long years by said Court and then the names of two such conspicuous Democrats as Senator Douglas and Judge Drummond placed upon his head.” 26
Though such a namesake would indeed have been an irony, public records show that Elizabeth gave birth to a boy in 1856, but she did not name him for the notorious judge. She named him John Samuel Baker, and he was born in Fillmore on December 3, 1855, on the heels of her husband’s jury trial. 27 Hosea Stout remarked, “Immediately afater [sic] the advent of the son the officer started with the father to his long 10 years home in prison.” 28
In what appears to be a response to questions to local authorities about the abuse and murder of Isaac Whitehouse, the Parowan doctor Calvin C. Pendleton wrote to George A. Smith, a Mormon apostle, only weeks following the sentencing. Pendleton had learned that church authorities had heavily censured the selectmen and others in Parowan regarding the Baker case. Church officials in Salt Lake City believed that the local authorities had been aware of the course of ill treatment of the deceased boy for a considerable length of time prior to his death. Pendleton, in contrast, did not think the LDS stake presidency or county court officials knew of the boy’s mistreatment. To his limited knowledge of the matter, a complaint had never been made to the court or to any member of it. 29
Brigham Young, circa 1866.
library of congress
Pendleton remembered seeing the boy soon after he and his caretakers arrived in Parowan. He reported that Samuel’s treatment of the boy was, at that time, considered improper and that Samuel was “corrected by the teachers being sent to inquire into the matter.” Pendleton remembered observing the boy a few times during the summer season at play in the streets with his friends. At that time Whitehouse appeared comfortable and happy. “The next time I saw him,” Pendleton wrote, “was a few days before his death at mid day as he was passing up the street from towards the field, where as I learned after his death he had been. The day was warm but noticing that he was ^not^ as well clothed as formerly, and his legs appearing in an uncomfortable condition.” 30
Pendleton then made inquiries of a man named Jones who came in company with Baker to Parowan and who was acquainted with the family. He asked Jones if he knew the cause of the boy’s condition. Jones responded that “the filthiness of the boys habits, rendered it impossible to cloth him in a common manner, or keep him in a comfortable condition.” 31 The doctor delved no further into the matter since no subsequent complaints of neglect or ill treatment were made to him. According to Pendleton, this was the extent of his knowledge of the sad affair prior to Whitehouse’s murder or until he was called to attend the postmortem examination of the boy’s body.
The selectmen and the stake presidency knew this information, and it had been entered as in testimony to the court. As Pendleton wrote, however, the censure of church authorities “reminds me of the truth of the old addage, ‘that drowning men will grasp at straws’ Let my faults be what they may. I know this much, that Pendleton never looked quietly on, and disregarded the sufferings of his fellow creatures, and ^trust^ I shall not be condemned from the hearing of the ear.” 32
If Parowan residents thought that the murderous tale of Samuel Baker had ended, then they were in for another stunning turn of events. On January 24, 1856, Governor Brigham Young pardoned Samuel Baker. This occurred after a petition was signed by “a large number of persons, citizens of Iron County” who did not believe that Baker “either willfully, intentionally, or maliciously, did commit” the murder of Isaac Whitehouse. 33 Not more than two months had passed from the day of Baker’s sentencing to when he was free to return home to Parowan. On Friday, January 25, Hosea Stout reported that “Mr Baker came to my house, rejoicing that his term of ten years had expired so soon.” 34
The pardoning of Samuel Baker for the abuse and murder of Isaac Whitehouse raises important questions about the prosecution of child abuse and domestic violence among Latter-day Saints in the frontier West. For example, what laws had been enacted for the protection of children against parental abuse? If members of the community had suspected the guardians of this orphaned boy of abuses prior to his murder, then why did they so willingly forgive Baker of such a crime? Even more troubling, does Whitehouse’s violent demise represent an underlying feeling in nineteenth-century frontier communities that disabled children were expendable? Perhaps what was inhumane cruelty to Martineau and a few other members of the community was considered a private family matter to a majority of others.
According to historian Leonard Arrington, many petitions arrived at Governor Young’s office “mostly asking pardon for crimes or forgiveness of fines.” Occasionally, however, he issued pardons for murder convictions, “usually on the grounds of extreme youth and/or a conviction based on circumstantial evidence.” 35 Further, at least according to Judge Drummond, the pardon of Samuel Baker was caught up in the ongoing conflict between Mormon and federal officials. Young’s influence on the rule of law in Utah Territory came under question during the period of increased government oversight by federal appointees chosen by President Buchanan. From mid-1854 to the early months of 1857, Supreme Court Associate Justices John P. Kinney, George P. Stiles, and William W. Drummond waged a letter-writing campaign to Washington D.C., wherein they condemned Mormon authorities for using Utah probate courts as a means of denying due process to people outside the faith. Drummond, in particular, began to challenge the church’s influence on governance by questioning the jurisdiction of the probate courts and accusing Young of treasonable acts as governor. 36
By the end of March 1857, Surveyor General David H. Burr, Indian agents, and other federal authorities had fled the territory for fear of bodily harm by Mormon operatives. On March 30, 1857, Drummond sent Attorney General Jeremiah S. Black a resignation letter containing a list of indictments against Young and Mormon authorities. In addition to accusing Young of ordering the destruction of territorial supreme court files, Drummond leveled charges of treason against the governor for granting unwarranted pardons to Mormon convicts and incarcerating five or six non-Mormons for no crime but being outsiders. “I also charge Governor Young with constantly interfering with the federal courts,” he wrote. “The judiciary is only treated as a farce,” he further alleged, having done little good during his tenure as a judge in the territory. Drummond specifically named the Baker case, writing that Young had pardoned Samuel Baker,
Parowan resident James Henry Martineau (1828–1923), photograph probably taken in his late forties.
author’s collection
At nearly the same time, a correspondent for the San Francisco Herald paraphrased Drummond’s charges against Young and the egregious circumstances surrounding the pardoning of Baker. Adding his own embellishments, the correspondent wrote:
Such a charged statement only mixes fact with conjecture. While Young’s pardon might have been an “insult” to the court, it was probably more about keeping an able-bodied breadwinner at home to support his wife and family. Sending Samuel Baker to prison would have effectively rendered his wife, Elizabeth, an unmarriageable widow with four small children. Even worse, the confiscation of Samuel’s property in repayment of the PEF debt would have left Elizabeth completely ruined. The unanimous vote to excommunicate the Bakers went against the idea that neighboring citizens would forgive the uncle’s deadly abuse of the boy and petition for his pardon. The so-called petition of a “large number” of Iron County residents might have been concocted as a subterfuge—out of compassion for Elizabeth Baker— to keep the Baker family intact. 39
Samuel and Elizabeth Baker were presumably restored to full fellowship in the church and allowed to reclaim their lives in Parowan. It appears, however, that Samuel may have been predisposed to violence. Less than a year from the time of his pardon, James Martineau noted in the official Parowan stake history that “Samuel G. Baker was cut off from the church for cutting a cow with an ax so bad she had to be killed, and trying to lay it to Zachariah B. Decker, on the night of Dec. 12, 1856.” 40 In a letter to
Martineau, Jesse N. Smith wrote that the cow was so “horribly mangled,” that one of the hind legs was completely severed. The killing must have been ghastly, for not only had blood been spilled on the ground, but it was also splattered on the gate of the corral in which the cow was held. The mutilated cow was found in the street the next morning and, as described by Smith, “the sight was enough to chill the blood of the Stoutest heart.” 41 For some unknown reason, it was done to implicate Decker.
Smith, who was then serving as second counselor in the Parowan Stake presidency, described the sequence of events to Martineau: “That evening Bro Pendleton the Bishop and counsel Bro Silas [Smith] and myself ^and some others^ met with the Second Quorum [of Elders] and after ascertaining that none of [them] knew anything about the matter prayer was offered that this iniquity in Israel might come to light.” 42
According to Smith, Baker went to Bishop Tarlton Lewis the next morning and “confessed that he had done the deed.” It was believed by some that Baker cut the cow in hopes of getting the beef. When the bishop discovered at a priesthood council meeting that Baker belonged to the church, he decided, on motion, to cut him off. The vote was unanimous, with only one person “astride the fense” who did not know what Baker had done. 43
Following this incident, several men shared what they knew of Baker’s past. Smith wrote that “Bro Tophane had known of him to steal wood” and “Bro Davenport had known of his taking the Indians corn in the Shock in the field.” Even more disturbing, “Bro Jacob West Said that on the plains as they were coming in Baker and another man crowded out a man and wife from the wagon they were all coming in when the woman was confined from the effects of which exposure both mother and child died also that Baker caused the death of his own wife. ^(Bakers)^” 44
Initially, Baker not only denied responsibility for cutting the cow, he also tried to place the blame on someone else. Moreover, his reputation for insolence had followed him from England. His treacherous, duplicitous behavior had allegedly caused the death of an immigrant mother and child, his wife Sarah, and (in this case) his orphaned nephew. While it is generally believed that, as David Courtright writes, “families constrain violent and disorderly male behavior,” Samuel Baker had exhibited aggression in this family and in a marital union prior to his arrival in Parowan. 45 As a pearl worker, Baker was undoubtedly familiar with the tedium of factory work, since Birmingham was known for its jewelry and pearl button manufacturing. According to one writer, the daily burnishing, turning, and polishing processes were so mentally taxing and intensely physical that “a certain kind of sharpening of the wits goes on, more than exists in many other kinds of labor.” 46 Though his wits might have been sharpened and maintained at work, Baker must have given vent to pent-up frustrations and anger at home with little cause. A move to a peaceable, forgiving Mormon community in the American West would have offered a clean slate and the possibility that an aggressive temperament would go unnoticed or unchecked. 47
Regardless of the circumstances leading up to Whitehouse’s abuse and murder, Baker’s arrest, conviction, and pardon for the boy’s death evidently did not scare him into reform. The cow mutilation signaled the end of his short and disgraceful period of residence in Parowan. His act of brutality and the consequential second excommunication effectively banished him and his wife from the community. Samuel Baker was listed in the 1856 Utah Census as a resident of Cedar City, suggesting that the Bakers sought to flee the confines of the fort wall. The order of the census enumeration also suggests that Isaac’s five-year-old brother was placed under the care of Joseph and Nancy Barton of Parowan. 48 Although we do not know precisely when they decided to move, Samuel and Elizabeth soon took their children away to live in anonymity in San Bernardino, California (where many Iron County residents out-migrated) and to avoid the possibility of awkward stares from neighboring members of the Parowan and Cedar City settlements. 49
The Bakers’ move to California helped to stifle any public memory of the incident. Whitehouse’s murder was never reported in the Deseret News or any other published records. With the exception of Martineau’s explicit journal entry, only a few extant diaries mention the murder and court case and then only obscurely. As a consequence, the tragic affair was never recounted in histories of Parowan or Iron County. One account, written decades after the incident by a Baker descendant, falsely tells a story of the Baker family passing through Utah, with no mention of their stay in Parowan or the boy’s death and the subsequent murder trial: “Before reaching Salt Lake City, the Whitehouse baby [Isaac] died. One of the Baker boys and Joe Whitehouse were left with some people in Salt Lake City while S. G. Baker and wife and the other Baker boy came on to
San Bernardino, Calif. with the Mormons. Later the two boys were sent on to them in another wagon train.” 50 By the mid-twentieth century, when this account was written, the episode had been effectively washed from collective memory.
The absence of reports of Baker’s crimes and the trial in contemporary newspapers seems to indicate that such violent abuses against children— and undoubtedly spouses—were taboo and kept from public knowledge. According to the historian Elliott West, “Violence and child abuse usually remained behind closed doors, but enough is mentioned in reminiscences and memoirs to show that it was certainly not unknown.” 51 The stresses of frontier life, family transience, marital discord, the death of a parent, and the abandonment of children to strangers or uncompassionate caretakers often led to child neglect and abuse. 52
Contemporary research has revealed some of the causal factors leading to the maltreatment of children with disabilities. Studies have shown that “children with chronic illnesses or disabilities often place higher emotional, physical, economic, and social demands on their families.” 53 Newly arriving immigrants to Parowan encountered a rough and tumble existence and brought with them the social behaviors that they had adopted in industrialized cities like Birmingham, London, and Liverpool. Moreover, as clinical psychologists conclude, “Parents with limited social and community support may be at especially high risk of maltreating children with disabilities, because they feel more overwhelmed and unable to cope with the care and supervision responsibilities that are required.” 54 These factors were particularly profound for the Bakers. The severely depressed conditions in Parowan would have exacerbated the tremendous demands placed on the blended Baker family. The day-to-day care of Isaac, the mute boy who was neither Elizabeth’s nor Samuel’s biological child, would have been extremely taxing on them.
Parowan Fort in 1852, by William Warner Major.
courtesy of the lds church history museum, copyright by intellectual reserve, inc.
If citizens of the young settlement of Parowan had acted upon the abuse and maltreatment of Whitehouse, then perhaps they would have placed the boy in another home or in an institution, where he would have received better attention than he did under his guardians. Salt Lake City was best prepared to have an institution for children, but an “Orphan’s Home and Day Nursery” was not established in the city until 1886. 55 Larger towns and cities in the antebellum East often had facilities for people
with disabilities, though the care given in orphanages, almshouses, and mental hospitals often left much to be desired. 56 Although Whitehouse had extended family with whom he could (and should) have been adequately cared for, the harsh economic conditions in Parowan only intensified the pressures on his guardians— creating a “simmering pot” ready to boil over on a defenseless, disabled boy. The idealism of church membership presupposed a closeness of the family unit, a family that adhered to Christian principles of compassion and care. Within the confines of Parowan’s fort wall, however, Samuel and Elizabeth must have felt that they could keep the abuse of the boy hidden and behind closed doors.
Territorial newspapers did not report violent treatment of children prior to about 1870. Utah newspapers were careful not to risk libel in reporting allegations of child abuse. For example, in a landmark case decided in 1896, Tooele rancher Amos Fenstermaker sued the Salt Lake Tribune for libel after the newspaper alleged that Fenstermaker and members of his family had cruelly treated a thirteen-year-old girl who lived with them as an adopted child and had turned her out into the desert to die. The jury in the lower court found in favor of the defendant, after which the plaintiff appealed to the Utah Supreme Court. The court reversed the ruling of the lower court and ordered a new trial. Judge Powers, the attorney for the Salt Lake Tribune, petitioned for a rehearing of the case. Ultimately, the court ruled, in part, that “a newspaper article which relates wholly to the private acts of a family, with respect to cruel treatment of a child, is not a privileged publication, though made in good faith as a matter of news in which the public may have much interest.” 57
Except for a high-profile case of abuse in December 1879 in which a father cruelly assaulted and beat his four-year-old son, incidents of physical abuse went virtually unreported in nineteenth-century Utah newspapers. The father in this case, Charles W. Morris, was charged and acquitted of simple assault. Two and a half months later, when Morris was charged with attempted murder, he was acquitted on a technicality in the law. Because he had been previously tried and acquitted for the charge of assault by the police magistrate, the former trial was a bar to further prosecution for the same crime on the greater charge. 58
The public outrage over the abuses the boy suffered and the father’s subsequent acquittal became the impetus for publicizing extreme cases of brutality and sexual assaults on children thereafter, but it did very little for increasing vigilance in protecting children generally. Utahns applauded the labors of humanitarian societies and social reform groups in eastern cities for “accomplishing much for the protection of children from brutal parents and taskmasters,” but their efforts were seen as unnecessary in the prosecution of child abuse in Utah. “If anything of the kind existed in Utah,” reported the Deseret News, “it would be pointed out at once as an ‘outgrowth of Mormonism, a natural result of polygamic life.’” It was believed that these social reformers could find a sufficient number of important and perplexing issues within their own realm of influence in New York and other larger cities, “without troubling themselves with Utah, where such sorrows as afflict the poor of ‘Christian’ cities are unknown, and where there is no need for societies to protect little children from cruelty and oppression.” 59
Although the mistreatment of children could hide behind a mask of religious idealism, it was no less a problem in Utah than it was a national one. 60 Not until the coming of child protection laws did violence and other abuses of children receive the attention that they deserved. In September 1900, Professor R. J. O’Hanion of Milwaukee, a representative of the American Humane Society, spoke to the Salt Lake
City chapter of the Utah Humane Society and advised it to enlarge its scope by including a humane interest in neglected children. “This state so far had not enacted any special law applicable to their case,” he reminded them, “but the society should see the legislative nominees and obtain pledges from them before the election that if elected they would use their influence for the enactment of laws for the protection of children.” 61 Likewise, state chapters of progressive reform organizations—such as the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NYSPCC), founded in 1874 by Elbridge Gerry, and the American Home-Finding Association—did not arrive in Utah until the turn of the century. 62 The Utah chapter of the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace, was incorporated in Ogden in 1910 by Mary J. Gosling. 63 These benevolent organizations primarily functioned as intercessors, pleading the cause of neglected, orphaned, or abandoned children and placing them in foster homes, as did Brace when he started the orphan train movement of the mid-nineteenth century. 64 Their advocacy led to vagrancy reforms and child protection laws in 1905, but only after decades of unpublicized child assault cases in Utah’s district courts. 65
In Utah, the efforts of benevolent societies to abrogate the maltreatment of children failed to yield results until the end of the nineteenth century, when those organizations began lobbying state representatives to criminalize abuses against children as much as they had done for cruelty to animals. For example, Utah’s 1876 penal code and form of civil actions, which was adapwted from California’s Code of Laws, imposed criminal penalties for sexual crimes, or the “carnal abuse of children,” and afforded a parent “an action for the injury or death of a child,” but did nothing specific for death or injuries caused by the abusive acts of parents or guardians. 66
A group of children at St. Ann Orphanage, December 1909. Formal aid for children—in the form of institutions and laws, for instance— came about slowly in Utah.
utah state historical society
Issues of maltreatment began to receive attention after several decades of advocacy by lobbyists, women’s groups, and humane societies to end child incest and illegitimacy in polygamous households. After Utah achieved statehood in 1896, the legislature passed the first child protection laws to impose limits on the length of work time for children, labor conditions, truancy, and the ages of consent for boys and girls. 67 During the early decades of the twentieth century, successive legislative acts sought to criminalize physical and sexual violence against children, as well as to regulate child labor. On March 23, 1903, the Utah Legislature passed, along with the authorization and definition of terms for a children’s aid society, the first act to formally penalize any adult-aged person or custodian who failed to support and adequately care for minor children; it was the first to include specific verbiage intended to prosecute the physical abuses of a child. Amendments to the Utah penal code soon followed, imposing more severe criminal penalties for abusive acts on children. 68
Regrettably, these laws were too little and much too late for countless Utah children, such as Isaac Whitehouse, who suffered at the hands of an abusive parent or guardian. Their cries fall silent, as did Isaac’s, as the sordid details of their abuse remain undisclosed in the records that preserve the existence of the crimes. Whitehouse’s bruised and battered body was laid to rest in an unmarked grave, immediately adjacent to and at the foot of Parowan’s beloved stake president, John Calvin Lazelle Smith. The sexton’s record failed to list the boy’s age and the cause of his death. 69 We may never know the whole story behind the senseless murder of this child forgotten after more than one hundred and fifty years. The tragic sequence of events appears to have avoided the detection of local historians and storytellers. As the years pass, the unspeakable events surrounding Isaac Whitehouse’s death seem to sink deeper into the soil beneath the sod of the Parowan City cemetery and into oblivion.
— Noel A. Carmack is an assistant professor of art at USU Eastern in Price, Utah. He has published on the art, culture, and labor of nineteenth-century Mormonism, including his award-winning article on James Henry Martineau, which UHQ published in 2000. This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper he delivered at the Fifty-Seventh Annual Utah State History Conference on September 12, 2008.
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WEB EXTRA
Visit history.utah.gov/whitehouse-murder for a dialogue between the authors of articles published in Utah Historical Quarterly and Journal of Mormon History about the Whitehouse case.
NOTES
1 For a parallel article on the murder of Isaac Whitehouse, see Connell O’Donovan, “The 1855 Murder of Isaac Whitehouse in Parowan, Utah,” Journal of Mormon History 40, no. 4 (Fall 2014).
2 James H. Martineau, Journal, October 28, 1855, Book 1, p. 85, MSS FAC 1499, Henry B. Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 The passenger list notes Isaac’s father, Jacob, as age thirty-two, and his mother, Rebecca, as age thirty. Passenger List for Windermere, April 24, 1854, NARA Series M259, roll 39, film no. 200177, LDS Family History Library (hereafter FHL), Salt Lake City, Utah. For more on the 1854 voyage of the Windermere, see Conway Sonne, Ships, Saints, and Mariners: A Maritime Encyclopedia of Mormon Migration, 1830–1890 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1987).
6 Passenger List for Windermere. While the ship’s captain reported nine deaths, Sonne puts the death toll at ten. See Sonne, Ships, 200.
7 “Church Emigration,” The Contributor 13 (September 1892): 509–10. See also Sonne, Ships, 200.
8 “Foreign Intelligence,” Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, June 3, 1854, 345–46. According to William Watton Burton, a traveler in the Garn Company, “We had no new cases of smallpox after leaving New Orleans, but were afflicted with cholera, which proved fatal to many from that time until June 19th, when we commenced our journey over the plains from our camping grounds near Kansas City.” Quote from Burton’s autobiography in Andrew Jenson, ed., Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson History Company, 1901), 1:351. For more on overland deaths caused by cholera, see Ramon Powers and Gene Younger, “Cholera on the Overland Trails, 1832–1869,” Kansas Quarterly 5 (Spring 1973): 32–49; and Herbert C. Milikien, “‘Dead of the Bloody Flux’: Cholera Stalks the Emigrant Trail,” Overland Journal 14 (Autumn 1996): 4–11. For the effects of cholera on the Mormon migration, see Patricia Rushton, “Cholera and Its Impact on Nineteenth-Century Mormon Migration,” BYU Studies 44, no. 2 (2005): 123–44.
9 Eliza Goodson Jex, [Autobiography], in Heber Joseph McKell, comp., Jex Genealogy and Family History (Bountiful, UT: Paragon Press, 1963), 47–48.
10 For more on the kind treatment of orphaned children on the overland trail, see Emmy E. Werner, Pioneer Children on the Journey West (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), 164–67; and Elliott West, “Family Life on the Trail West,” History Today 42 (December 1992): 33–39.
11 The British Mission Register for Windermere lists Samuel, a “Pearl Worker” from Birmingham, his wife Sarah, and a son, Edwin G. Baker. British Mission Registers, Book no. 1040, p. 21, film no. 025,690, Emigration Records, European Mission, FHL.
12 “From a Journal of Alma Eliot Russell: The Baker Family,” accessed April 23, 2014, http//trees.ancestryinstitution. com/tree. According to his grave marker, Franklin was born on May 4, 1854 (Franklin Edward Baker, memorial #120421936, accessed July 28, 2014, www.findagrave. com). His death certificate, however, lists his birth date as August 7, 1854 (“Idaho, Death Certificates, 1911–1937,” film no. 1509302, FHL).
13 For the arrival of Garn’s company in Salt Lake City on October 1, 1854, see “Immigration. Oct. 3,” Deseret News, October 5, 1854; and “Church Emigration,” The Contributor 13 (September 1892): 514.
14 See Leonard J. Arrington, “Planning an Iron Industry for Utah, 1851–1858,” Huntington Library Quarterly 21 (May 1958): 237–60, esp. 255–57; Morris A. Shirts and William T. Parry, “The Demise of the Deseret Iron Company: Failure of the Brick Furnace Lining Technology,” Utah Historical Quarterly 56 (Winter 1988): 23–35; and Morris A. Shirts and Kathryn H. Shirts, A Trial Furnace: Southern Utah’s Iron Mission (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2001), 343–94.
15 Martineau, Journal, October 30, 1855, Book 1, p. 86.
16 Martineau, Journal, November 13, 1855, book 1, p. 87; Jesse N. Smith, Six Decades in the Early West: The Journal of Jesse Nathan Smith, 1834–1906 (Provo, UT: Jesse N. Smith Family Association, 1970), 21.
17 Hosea Stout, On the Mormon Frontier: The Diaries of Hosea Stout, ed. Juanita Brooks, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press; Utah State Historical Society, 1964), 2:566–68. The minutes of the trial are found in Second District Court Minute Books, Book 3, 1852– 1865, p. 73, 80–87, Series 5319, Utah State Archives and Records Service, Salt Lake City, Utah.
18 Martineau, Journal, November 21, 1855, Book 1, p. 87.
19 Stout, On the Mormon Frontier, 2:567. The amount included court expenses. See Second District Court Minute Books, Book 3, p. 80. For an excellent treatment of companies aided by the PEF, see Polly Aird, “Bound for Zion: The Ten- and Thirteen-Pound Emigrating Companies, 1853–54,” Utah Historical Quarterly 70 (Fall 2002): 300–325.
20 Stout, On the Mormon Frontier, 2:567.
21 James H. Martineau to wife [Susan E.?], November 26, 1855, box 1, fd. 1, James H. Martineau Collection, 1822–1932, MS 4786, LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter CHL). My sincerest thanks to LaJean Purcell Carruth for transcribing this letter, which was written in the Deseret Alphabet.
22 Stout, On the Mormon Frontier, 2:567.
23 Martineau, Journal, November 21–26, 1855, Book 1, p. 87. The “strumpet” Martineau referred to was a woman who accompanied Drummond as his wife but who is now believed to have been a prostitute from Washington State named Ada Carroll. See Jan MacKell, Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 296.
24 Stout, On the Mormon Frontier, 2:567.
25 Ibid., 2:568.
26 Ibid.
27 Public records indicate that John S. Baker was born in 1856. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, California, population schedules (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1950, 1967), p. 33, San Bernardino, San Salvador township, household 243; Los Angeles County, “California, Great Registers, 1866–1910,” John S. Baker, 09 Jul 1884, p. 67, Norwalk, Los Angeles, California, United States, film no. 976928, FHL. A published biographical sketch of John S. Baker states that his birth was on December 3, 1855, in Riverside County, California. This sketch makes no mention of Samuel and Sarah’s sojourn in Parowan, only adding to the confusing timeline of events. It is apparent that Samuel G. Baker falsified birth and marriage dates to erase all memory of his notorious past in Utah. J. M. Guinn, A History of California and an Extended History of Its Southern Coast Counties, 2 vols. (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1907), 2:2192, s.v. “John S. Baker.”
28 Stout, On the Mormon Frontier, 2:568–69.
29 Calvin C. Pendleton to George A. Smith, January 9, 1856, box 5, fd. 11, George A. Smith Papers, 1834–1877, MS 1322, CHL. Quotations from this letter are published as they appear in the original, with no corrections or punctuation. Superscripted insertions appear between carets. Editorial additions appear between brackets.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Brigham Young Letterbook, February 26, 1855–August 19, 1856, p. 537–38, box 2, vol. 2, Brigham Young Office Files 1832–1878, CR 1234 1, CHL. The pardon is also found in Governor Brigham Young Letterbook, 1853–1858, p. 420–21, Series 13844, and Executive Proceedings, Book B, 1852–1871, p. 44, reel 2, box 1, Series 242, Secretary of State Executive Record Books, Utah State Archives and Records Service, Salt Lake City, Utah, (hereafter USARS).
34 Stout, On the Mormon Frontier, 2:566–568, 590.
35 Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Knopf, 1985), 239.
36 See “From Utah,” Washington, D.C. Daily National Intelligencer, April 1, 1857; “Freaks of Popular Sovereignty in Utah—Is the Democracy a Unit?” National Era 11 (April 2, 1857): 54; “The Very Latest News,” San Francisco Daily Alta California, April 13, 1857; “Events of the Month. Domestic. The Mormons,” American Phrenological Journal 25 (May 1857): 112; “From the Mormon Country,” Washington, D.C. Daily National Intelligencer, June 6, 1857; Norman F. Furness, The Mormon Conflict: 1850–1859 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960), 54–58; and William P. MacKinnon, ed., At Sword’s Point, Part 1: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858 (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2008), 472–74.
37 W. W. Drummond to Jeremiah S. Black, March 30, 1857, in James Buchanan, “The Utah Expedition,” House of Representatives, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Exec. Doc. No. 71, p. 212–14, quote from 212. This letter was printed under “Affairs in Utah Territory,” Washington, D.C. Daily National Intelligencer, July 31, 1857, and “The Utah Problem,” San Francisco Daily Alta California, May 21, 1857, and reprinted in Leroy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, eds., The Utah Expedition, 1857–1858: A Documentary Account of the United States Military Movement under Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, and the Resistance by Brigham Young and the Mormon Nauvoo Legion (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1958), 363–66; and Mackinnon, ed., At Sword’s Point, 116–18.
38 “‘Popular Sovereignty’ in Utah: Destroying the Records of the United States Courts,” National Era 11 (April 2, 1857): 55.
39 A letter from Governor Young’s clerk to the sheriff of Iron County appears to support this theory. Attached to the pardon were two blank forms for him “or the other proper person to fill up, because the petition from citizens of Iron County do[e]s not contain the necessary information to enable me to execute the paper in form, full, as it should be.” Daniel Mackintosh to Sheriff of Iron County, January 9, 1856, Young Letterbook, 1853– 1858, p. 422, Series 13844, USARS.
40 Martineau, “James H. Martineau Record and Negotiations,” typescript, part B, December 14, 1856, p. 27, box 90, fd. 4, William Rees Palmer Collection, MS 1, Special Collections and Archives, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University (hereafter SLSUU); the original MS is held in CHL, LR 6778 28.
41 Jesse N. Smith to James H. Martineau, December 23, 1856, box 1, fd. 1, Martineau Collection. Quotations from this letter are published as they appear in the original, with no corrections or punctuation. Superscripted insertions appear between carets. Editorial additions appear between brackets.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 David T. Courtright, Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 37–41, quote from 37.
46 Samuel Timmins, ed., The Resources, Products, and Industrial History of Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District (London: Robert Hardwicke, 1866), 443–44, quote from 444. See also William Hutton, The History of Birmingham, 6th ed. (Birmingham, England: James Guest, 1836), 171–73.
47 Baker was one of innumerable young men who came to the North American frontier to, in a sense, overtake and occupy the land—often by violent means—like a heroic hunter who sought to exploit or conquer nature. Violence on the American frontier under this premise has been examined as a subject of literary and historical mythology. See Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600– 1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), and Reginald Dyck, “Frontier Violence in the Garden of America,” in Eric Heyne, ed., Desert, Garden, Margin, Range: Literature on the American Frontier (New York: Twayne, 1992), 55–69.
48 See 1856 Utah Census Returns, “Cedar City, Iron County, Utah,” p. 19, col. A, line 1, and “Parowan City, Iron County,” p. 1, col. B, lines 13–15, film no. 0505913, FHL. Though many researchers consider the 1856 Utah census to be unreliable because it often duplicated individuals or incorrectly showed them as residing in Utah, the census may have accurately documented the location of Samuel Baker and Joseph Whitehouse.
49 Samuel G. Baker, his wife Elizabeth, and children (John, Joseph, Harriet, and Edwin) were listed as residents of the San Bernardino Valley as early as 1860. According to the 1860 California census, Edwin (age ten) was born in England and John Samuel (age four) was born in Utah, while Joseph (age two) and Harriet (age one) were born in California. Hence, the narrative of this article does not mention these two youngest children. The reason for Franklin’s absence is unknown. See Eighth Census, California, p. 33, San Bernardino, San Salvador township, household 243.
50 “From a Journal of Alma Eliot Russell.”
51 Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 152–53, 203–204, quote from 152.
52 Ibid., 152–53.
53 Roberta A. Hibbard, Larry W. Desch, et al., “Maltreatment of Children with Disabilities,” Pediatrics 119 (May 2007): 1018–25, quote from 1020.
54 Ibid.
55 “The Orphan’s Home Benefit,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, May 16, 1886; “The Orphan’s Home,” Salt Lake Evening Democrat, August 14, 1886; “Memorial to Congress. Orphan’s Home,” Laws of the Territory of Utah, Passed at the Twenty-Eighth Session of the Legislative Assembly (Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing, 1888), 222. An act for the establishment of an “Institution of the Deaf Mutes” was passed at this session, but the purpose of the institution was to educate them. See idem, 77–78.
56 David J. Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, rev. ed. (1971; repr., Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 2009), esp. 154– 204.
57 Festermaker v. Tribune Publishing Co., 12 U. 439; 13 U. 532; 43 P. R. 112; 45 P. R. 1097; State of Utah, Revised Statutes (January 1, 1898) Title 38, Section 1348, p. 358–59. See also “The Fenstermaker Suit,” Salt Lake Herald, November 29, 1894; “The Fenstermaker Family,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 1, 1894; “Was Fond of Children,” Salt Lake Herald, December 2, 1894; “The Fenstermaker Waif,” Deseret Evening News, December 6, 1894; “A Just Verdict,” Salt Lake Herald, December 6, 1894; “Fenstermaker Case Again,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 6, 1895; “Fenstermaker Gets a New Trial,” Salt Lake Herald, December 22, 1895; “Supreme Court,” Salt Lake Herald, February 20, 1896; “Fenstermaker Decision,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 7, 1896; “State Supreme Court,” Salt Lake Herald, July 7, 1896; “Fenstermaker Girl Re- Arrested,” Deseret Evening News, January 16, 1897; “Carrie Fenstermaker’s Arrest,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 8, 1897.
58 “The Child-Beating Affair,” Salt Lake Herald, November 16, 1879; “That Child Abuser,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 27, 1879; “Third District Court,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 3, 1880; “Local and Other Matters,” Deseret News, February 4, 1880; “Morris’ Trial,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 27, 1880; “A Child Beater,” Deseret News, March 3, 1880; “City Jottings,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 4, 10, 1880; “The Child Abuser,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 9, 10, 1880; “The Torturer Free,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 11, 1880; “Morris Acquitted,” Deseret News, March 17, 1880. The earliest published reports of child assault include “Nephi, Dec. 5,” Deseret News, December 7, 1870, 516; “A Human Brute,” Deseret News, September 8, 1875, 508; “An Attempted Rape,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 3, 1876; “Rape. The Foul Ravisher of 12-year-old Girl Arrested,” Ogden Daily Herald, March 14, 1883.
59 “Cruelty to Children,” Deseret News, April 25, 1883. This viewpoint was reiterated six years later. See “Parental Cruelty,” Deseret Weekly, March 23, 1889, 398.
60 For more on the abuse of children in the nineteenth century, see Lloyd de Mause, “The History of Child Assault,” The Journal of Psychohistory 18 (1990): 1–29; Robert W. Ten Bensel, Marguerite M. Rheinberger, and Samuel X. Radbill, “Children in a World of Violence: The Roots of Child Maltreatment,” in The Battered Child, ed. Mary Edna Helfer, Ruth S. Kempe, and Richard D. Krugman, 5th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 3–28; Lester Alston, “Children as Chattel,” in Small Worlds: Children and Adolescents in America, 1850–1950, ed. Elliott West and Paula Petrik (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 208–231; Lloyd de Mause, “The History of Child Abuse,” Journal of Psychohistory 25 (Winter 1998): 216–36; Barbara Finkelstein, “A Crucible of Contradictions: Historical Roots of Violence against Children in the United States,” History of Education Quarterly 40 (Spring 2000): 1–21.
61 See, for example, “Humane Society’s Work,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 20, 1900; “For Humane Causes,” Salt Lake Herald, September 20, 1900; “Local Briefs,” Deseret Evening News, August 5 and September 9, 1901. For more on the joining of child protection laws with animal rights laws, see Susan J. Pearson, The Rights of the Defenseless: Protecting Animals and Children in Gilded Age America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
62 Ivan, “Church and State,” Deseret Weekly, January 16, 1892, 101; “Runaway Salt Lake Boys,” Deseret Evening News, February 14, 1898; “Children’s Aid Society Work,” Deseret Evening News, November 15, 1904; “Children’s Aid and Home Finding Association,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 21, 1904; Scipio A. Kenner, Utah as It Is (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1904), 357–58, 523–25.
63 “Children’s Aid Society of Ogden,” Ogden Standard, March 16, 1910; “New Incorporations,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 23, 1910; “Incorporations,” Salt Lake Herald- Republican, April 23, 1910; Colleen R. Burnham, The Children’s Aid Society of Utah: A Brief History, 1910–1995: 85 Years of Caring (Ogden, UT: Children’s Aid Society of Utah, 1996), 6. For more on the CAS and the NYSPCC, see LeRoy Ashby, Endangered Children: Dependency, Neglect, and Abuse in American History (New York: Twayne, 1997), 35–54, and 59–67, and Marshall Spatz, “Child Abuse in the Nineteenth Century,” New York Affairs 4, no. 2 (1977): 80–90.
64 Burnham, Children’s Aid Society, 6–9. For a history of the orphan trains, see Miriam Z. Langsam, Children West: A History of the Placing Out System of the New York Children’s Aid Society, 1853–1890 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1964), and Stephen O’Connor, Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
65 Cases of assault and cruelty to children are found in the criminal case files and minute books of the various territorial district courts in Utah, preserved at the USARS. For more on the maltreatment and abuse of children in Utah, see Martha Sonntag Bradley, “Protect the Children: Child Labor in Utah, 1880–1920,” Utah Historical Quarterly 59 (1991): 52–71, and Doug Miller, “The History of Child Sexual Abuse in Utah, 1870–1910” (paper, Utah State History Conference, Salt Lake City, UT, September 12, 2008). On growing up in frontier Utah, see Davis Bitton, “Zion’s Rowdies: Growing Up on the Mormon Frontier,” Utah Historical Quarterly 50 (Spring 1982): 182–195, revised and republished in The Ritualization of Mormon History and Other Essays (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 54–68; Susan Arrington Madsen, “Growing Up in Pioneer Utah: Agonies and Ecstasies,” in Nearly Everything Imaginable, ed. by Ronald W. Walker and Doris R. Dant (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1999), 316–28; Elliott West, “Becoming Mormon,” Journal of Mormon History 28 (Spring 2002): 31–51.
66 Territory of Utah, Compiled Laws (1876), Title IX, Chap. 1, Sec. 1964, and Title XX, Sec. 1236; “Utah Laws against Sexual Crimes,” Deseret News Weekly, March 1, 1882, 88; “The Crime of Incest,” Salt Lake Daily Tribune, March 2, 1887; “An Act Regulating Marriage,” Ogden Standard, March 20, 1888; “Utah’s Marriage Law,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, April 29, 1888.
67 “A Horrible Crime,” Provo Utah Inquirer, May 24, 1889; “Polygamous Children,” Deseret Evening News, July 29, 1890; “Polygamous Children,” Deseret Evening News, January 27, 1891; “Held for Incest,” Provo Dispatch, July 4, 1891; “Age of Consent,” Provo Daily Enquirer, February 6, 1896; “Fixed the Age of Consent,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 24, 1896.
68 “For Humane Causes,” Salt Lake Herald, September 20, 1900; “Abuse of Children,” State of Utah, Compiled Laws (1903), Chap. 124, Sec. 8, p. 174; “National Outlook for Children,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 14, 1905; “Child Labor,” Deseret Evening News, December 5, 1905; “Laws in Aid of Juvenile Work,” Salt Lake City Inter-Mountain Republican, January 13, 1907; State of Utah, Compiled Laws (1907), Chap. 10, 720x29, p. 369; “Club Women Ask for New Laws,” Salt Lake Herald, October 24, 1907; “Carnality Leads to Incest,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 29, 1910; State of Utah, Compiled Laws (1911), Secs. 2911, 2912; State v. Bess, 44 U. 39; 137 P.R. 829; State of Utah, Compiled Laws (1917), Section 1840. For the enactment of Utah child labor laws, see Bradley, “Protect the Children,” 212–14.
69 Parowan City Cemetery, Block A, Lot 8, Grave 1. See Parowan Cemetery Internment Record, 1852–1929, microfilm, p. 13, Series 23643, roll 2721, SLSUU; the cemetery record is also available as a typescript by Lola Ann Johnson Jones, copy held at the Old Rock Church, Parowan, Utah.
