Gold Panner to Mail Pioneer: Henry Wells Jackson’s Unlikely Path to the Civil War

On May 8, 1861, Henry Wells Jackson began a journey from Springville, Utah, to Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. He later volunteered for the Union as a lieutenant. How did a Utah Mormon get involved in the Civil War? This is a surprising story involving the Mormon Battalion, the gold rush, Indian attacks, the Utah War, Camp Floyd, the overland mail service, congressional budget battles, and a skinflint postmaster general.

Twenty-year-old Henry Wells Jackson completed service in the Mormon Battalion and then the Mormon Volunteers and traveled north to Mormon Island.

On July 16, 1847, Henry was mustered out of the Mormon Battalion in Los Angeles. He reenlisted in the Mormon Volunteers while many of his comrades headed northeast to the Great Salt Lake Valley and some headed north to Sacramento and began working for John Sutter.

In 1848, two events ten days apart triggered an avalanche of immigration to California: the January 24 discovery of gold at Sutter’s sawmill and the February 2 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded from Mexico what is now the western United States. 

William Henry Jackson, Marshall Finds Gold, Scotts Bluff National Monument.

Regarding the gold discovery, Sam Brannan later wrote: “On January [24], 1848, when James W. Marshall let the water into the millrace and the water had run clear, he picked up a piece of gold—or rather what he supposed to be gold—at the bottom of the race. . . . A number of young men from the Mormon Battalion were at work on the mill. . . . Marshall, Weimer, Bennett, and Captain Sutter claimed the right to the discovery of gold and charged every man who worked there 10 percent of what they found. Some of the boys became dissatisfied and went prospecting down the river for themselves and found good digging about twenty-five miles below on an island which has ever since been known as Mormon Island.”[1]

Hiram Dwight Pierce, Miners Working at Mormon Island (1849). California State Library.

This discovery at Mormon Island (now under Folsom Lake) was made by Sidney Willis and Wilford Hudson on about March 2. On March 14, twenty-year-old Henry was mustered out of the Mormon Volunteers and traveled there, where he panned for gold for about a year. Meanwhile, Sam Brannan’s newspaper, the California Star, announced the discovery, which furthered the flood of immigration. Of course, this immigration affected not only California but also Utah Territory. Kenneth Owens concludes that “without the 1848 gold discovery and the rush for riches that followed, the development of the LDS church and community in the Great Basin must certainly have taken an alternative course. The difficult economic challenges the Saints faced in their valley in the mountains would have intensified.”[2]

While hordes of Forty-Niners traveled west to the gold fields, Henry traveled east to the Salt Lake Valley. There, he and many others made deposits in the gold account worth tens of thousands of dollars, which became an important resource to back the early Mormon currency and furthered trade with the California-bound emigrants.[3] However, “this was a mixed blessing,” wrote Kenneth Davies and Loren Hansen in Mormon Gold. “With their bags of gold, they became a disruptive force in the days of dire community poverty. They served as a visual reminder of the gold to be found in El Dorado and of the poverty of the Saints.”[4] Shown here is a 2½-dollar gold coin.

Original coins such as this were auctioned in 2014 for $500,000.

In Bountiful, Utah, Henry Jackson’s fiddling, riding, and shooting abilities captured the heart of twenty-year-old Eliza Ann Dibble,[5] and the two were married by Brigham Young on February 3, 1850.[6] 

Henry Wells Jackson, about 1861.

Eliza Ann Dibble Jackson. International Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers.

Throughout his life, Henry was strongly motivated by his family’s financial well-being and traveled extensively. They first homesteaded in Tooele, and while his first child was being born, Henry was on the road to Iowa to claim 160 acres of bounty land for his Mormon Battalion service. He returned to Utah in early 1851.[7] The Tooele settlers lived on the western frontier and were easy prey for marauding Goshiute Indians, who often killed their cattle or stole their crops. “It is estimated that the Indians cost the Tooele settlers over five thousand dollars in stolen horses and cattle. . . . The Goshiutes regarded land, water, and food resources as belong to everyone, meaning no one owned them at all.”[8] For safety, the settlers moved their houses into a fort in 1851. 

Henry enlisted in the Utah territorial militia and often participated in campaigns to pursue these raiders.[9] In 1852, Henry traveled to San Francisco to make another land claim for his reenlistment in California.[10] Then, in 1853, he enlisted again in the Utah territorial militia.[11] 

Utah Territorial Militia, 1861. Church History Library.

After a three-year stay in San Bernardino, they were called back to Utah in 1857 during the Utah War. The Jacksons moved to Bountiful in late November to early December 1857. Later, the family relocated again, temporarily moving south to Springville, being prepared to torch the crops to deny the federal troops any forage.

Commanding General’s Quarters, Camp Floyd, Utah Territory, January 1859. Photograph by C. C. Mills, National Archives. 

Despite caustic rhetoric on both sides, most hostilities were mitigated, with the notable exception of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.[12] The army peacefully marched in and established Camp Floyd, the country’s largest outpost of troops. Ironically, the unwelcome presence of federal troops infused much-needed cash and job opportunities into the local economy.[13] For example, early in 1858 George W. Chorpenning Jr. resecured a contract to deliver “mail every two weeks between Salt Lake City and Placerville, California, for about $34,000 a year. By the time service started that July, the route had been improved to weekly, and his pay nearly quadrupled.”[14] 

George W. Chorpenning Jr., western mail pioneer.

To prepare for this weekly service, Chorpenning ordered twenty Concord coaches, and “mules were stationed in teams at remount points twenty-five miles apart. . . . Chorpenning’s associates in the old Utah–Southern California contract, meanwhile, hustled their gear north and built a similar line of stations from Salt Lake City to Wells, Nevada.”[15] In the fall of 1858, Henry began working for Chorpenning. 

Major Howard Egan. Painting by William Egan Sylvester.

One of his coworkers was Major Howard Egan, who had created a shortcut trail through the desert.[16] Essentially, Egan’s shortcut “ran south out of Salt Lake through the Jordan Narrows into . . . Utah Valley, where it then turned west and ascended through Rush Valley at Five Mile Pass. This new route, used for both passenger and mail transport, shortened the traveling distance at least 250 miles. . . . There were 54 stations marked on the Egan trail from Salt Lake City to Placerville, covering a distance of approximately 650 miles.”[17]

Chorpenning's mail route in 1858–1860 is marked with a dotted line. John M. Townley, “Stalking Horse for the Pony Express: The Chorpenning Mail Contracts between California and Utah, 1851–1860,” Arizona and the West 24, no. 3 (Autumn 1982): 233.

Over the years, mail was delayed by Indian attacks and the snow-packed northern Utah valleys and Sierra Nevada. Congress heard about the mail delays and then delayed payment because of budget battles (some things never change!). In June 1858, Congress adjourned without appropriating money for the mail. Postmaster General Aaron Brown apologetically offered “letters of obligation” to use as security to get loans.[18] 

Postmaster General Aaron Brown, March 1857– March 1859.

To stay afloat, Chorpenning mortgaged several properties, and his coaches finally arrived in October 1858. “On November 21 he dispatched a column of fifty wagons and over 300 animals southwest from Temple Square along the new cutoff. Weekly coaches would thereafter be rerouted south from Granite Pass, bypassing the snow-clogged northern valleys.”[19] Then in December 1858, Chorpenning had a bright idea that others eventually coopted. He had men on horses deliver a presidential message from coast to coast in just seventeen days, proving that his central route was the quickest way to the West. He thus unwittingly gave William Russell the idea for a faster Pony Express, which displaced his service two years later using the very same roads and stations.

Pony Express rider flanked by American Indians.

In February 1859, Chorpenning was promised an additional $60,000 a year, but then the postmaster general died in March. The new postmaster general, Joseph Holt, was very budget conscious and cut the deliveries back to bimonthly, trimming the fee by $70,000. Congress again adjourned without paying for the mail—this was the final straw.

Postmaster General Joseph Holt, March 1859–December  1860.

On May 11, 1860, the postmaster general acted on complaints of mail delays and Chorpenning’s indebtedness. He nullified the mail contract with the claim of “bad management.”[20] That same day a contract was signed with the Pony Express, which had begun service a month earlier. Ironically, the Pony Express would be replaced eighteen months later by the transcontinental telegraph. Talk about disruptive technology!

Pony Express rider passing workers laying telegraph line.

Chorpenning’s financial woes left many workers unpaid, including Henry Jackson. In April 1861, just after Civil War broke out in the East, Henry finished gathering the papers necessary to file a claim for his back pay of $1,300. On May 8, 1861, he left his wife and three children in Springville. He traveled between various states, staying with his siblings and their families and working to pay his bills. In Washington, D.C., he contacted Chorpenning, who promised to pay him in four months. For the rest of his life, Chorpenning unsuccessfully attempted to collect his promised $430,000.[21]

In the fall of 1861, being low on cash, Henry began working as an assistant wagon master for thirty-five dollars a month. He hauled provisions and forage for federal military units located around the city.[22] His duties eventually expanded to areas outside the capital, and during one trip he was captured by Confederate forces. For about three months, he was held in a Southern prison camp and later exchanged for Confederate prisoners. Because of the way he was treated, he decided to fight for the Union, volunteering as a lieutenant in the First Regiment, District of Columbia Cavalry.[23] Unfortunately, he was soon transferred from his defensive position around the capital to an overland campaign in Virginia to control railways supplying Confederate troops. 

Typical cavalry skirmish in the Civil War.

Exactly three years to the day that he left home, he would be mortally wounded while taking a railroad bridge from Confederates, becoming Utah’s only Civil War battle fatality.

Notes

[1] Samuel Brannan, “Gold Discovery in California,” Calistoga Tribune, April 11, 1872, 1, 37. For a discussion of Mormon Battalion involvement in the gold rush, see Kenneth N. Owens, “Far from Zion: The Frayed Ties between California’s Gold Rush Saints and LDS President Brigham Young,” California History 89, no. 4 (2012): 5–23.

[2] Kenneth N. Owens, Gold Rush Saints: California Mormons and the Great Rush for Riches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 369.

[3] Henry Jackson’s deposits to the Utah gold accounts are listed by amount in J. Kenneth Davies and Lorin K. Hansen, Mormon Gold: Mormons in the California Gold Rush, 2^nd ed. (North Salt Lake City: Granite Mountain, 2010), 83–84, 153. For the minting of Mormon currency, see chapter 7.

[4] Davies and Hansen, Mormon Gold, 87.

[5] Eliza Ann Dibble was born on August 16, 1829, in Claymore, Cayuga County, Ohio, to Philo Dibble (1806–95) and Celia Kent (1803–40). Eliza was briefly married to Orson Spencer, though Brigham Young later canceled the marriage.

[6] The Youngs and the Jacksons were indeed well acquainted. Brigham Young performed their wedding, and Henry Jackson paid fifty dollars in California gold dust to Brigham’s wife Mima for providing the wedding party. The Story of Eliza Ann Dibble and Her Three Husbands, Orson Spencer, Henry W. Jackson, and Julius A. C. Austin (n.p., 1995), 49, 60.

[7] Smith, “Hidden Personalities among Mormon Battalion Members.”

[8] Tooele County Daughters of Utah Pioneers, History of Utah’s Tooele County: From the Edge of the Great Basin Frontier (Tooele, UT: Transcript Bulletin, 2012), 262, 17.

[9] Archival records show him as a private in James Ferguson’s Company from April 23 to May 1 and in W. McBride’s Company from June 14 to 27, 1851. Territorial Militia Service Cards, Utah State Archives and Records Service, Series 6195, reel 1. I appreciate the research assistance of Tony Castro and Doug Misner at the Utah State Archives.

[10] Smith, “Hidden Personalities among Mormon Battalion Members.”

[11]He appears on militia records as a private in W. H. Kimball’s Company from August 25 to September 10 and in J. W. Cumming’s Company from September 6 to October 9, 1853 (the last two periods overlap a few days).

[12] For a history of the Utah War and Kane’s intervention between the Saints and the federal army, see Matthew J. Grow, “Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2009), chaps. 9–10.

[13] Durwood Ball, Army Regulars on the Western Frontier, 1848–1861 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 166.

[14] Smith, The Story of Eliza Ann Dibble and Her Three Husbands, 61.

[15] John M. Townley, “Stalking Horse for the Pony Express: The Chorpenning Mail Contracts between California and Utah, 1851–1860,” Arizona and the West 24, no. 3 (Autumn 1982): 240.

[16] http://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Central_Overland_Trail.

[17] Massey, “Synopsis of Major Howard Egan,” http://www.xphomestation.com/ks-massey.pdf.

[18] Townley, “Stalking Horse for the Pony Express,” 246–47.

[19] Townley, “Stalking Horse for the Pony Express,” 245.

[20] Townley, “Stalking Horse for the Pony Express,” 248–52.

[21] Obituary for George W. Chorpenning, Somerset Herald, April 11, 1894.

[22] Henry Wells Jackson to John and Rachel Wright, October 27, 1861, transcript of letter in author’s possession.

[23] Smith, The Story of Eliza Ann Dibble and Her Three Husbands, 63.