Slaves, Free Blacks Among the First Utah Settlers
ST. GEORGE—Though many Utahns may not connect Black history with Utah history, Black pioneers were among the first settlers to enter the Salt Lake Valley with Brigham Young on July 24, 1847.
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| Joyce Bridgewater collects pictures of her ancestors. |
The modest home sits on a piece of property owned by her family since the mid-1800s.
Over time she has learned that certain family names in Utah stem from her ancestors: Black pioneers who came with the first wave of settlers belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"When we first came here the Black community was tight-knit," she says. "You may not have known everybody, but you knew someone who was related to somebody. We were a community that stayed together because we lived together. We may not have attended the same church, but as Blacks we attended the same social events."
As the great-great-granddaughter of early pioneer Jane Manning James, Bridgewater is always looking to preserve her heritage. So she collects pictures, newspaper clippings, and information passed along by others in the family.
The history of Black pioneers goes back even further than the early LDS settlers. Utah's first Black pioneers entered the state as early as 1824 as explorers and fur trappers of the Far West.
James P. Beckwourth is the most famous of these explorers. A legendary trapper for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Beckwourth explored Ogden, Salt Lake, and Cache Valley from as early as 1824 to 1826. He was part of a famous band of explorers that included Kit Carson, James Clyman, William Sublette, and Jedediah Smith.
After 1847 Blacks continued to arrive as domestic workers, slaves, soldiers, railroad workers, and miners while settling the Utah territory. The pioneer list includes men and women, members of the LDS Church and non-members.
"If you look to explain why people of African descent were here as permanent settlers in 1847 and afterwards, it's directly connected to [Utah] being the new Zion for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," says Ronald G. Coleman, Utah State University professor and historian. "Like the white families, the James family and later the family of Elijah Able came primarily because of their affiliation with the Church."
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| Elijah Able. |
Other early Black pioneers with connections to Joseph Smith include Bridgewater's ancestor, Jane Manning James. She and her husband, Isaac James, were domestic workers who worked in Smith's Nauvoo home and later came to Utah with Brigham Young in 1847. Isaac James is said to have driven wagons and cleared the path during the exodus.
Jane's brother Isaac Manning came to Utah a few years later. He was among those who accompanied the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum Smith back to Nauvoo after they were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.
Also among the first Utah settlers were Southern LDS converts who brought slaves into the territory. Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby were three slaves who came to Utah with Brigham Young's party.
When Young became ill on the journey, Flake, Lay, and Crosby joined an advance company and helped find the best route through the mountains to their destination. The names of the three men are among those listed on a monument at This is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City.
After the Emigration
Churches of all faiths held the early Black communities together. While some Blacks did join the LDS Church, most formed their own churches. By the early 1900s, Trinity African Methodist Episcopal and Calvary Baptist Churches were well established in Salt Lake City. Wall Street Baptist Church served the community in Ogden.
A Black community would eventually form near the Union Pacific Railroad yards in Ogden. In Salt Lake County, communities were formed in Union, East Millcreek, and a part of Salt Lake City called Central City.
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| Green Flake. |
Members of the 24th Infantry, however, were not the first Black troops in Utah. The 9th Infantry was sent to the Uintah frontier area to help build a fort and manage what was referred to then as the "Indian problem." After building Fort Duchesne in 1866, the unit was stationed there for 12 years.
While many civilian workers found employment on the railroads, others found work in the mining industry. These jobs sent Blacks into Utah's rural communities. Records are sketchy regarding the history and locations of Black miners. However, some Blacks are said to have lived as far south as Silver Reef between 1878 and 1882.
Census records show fewer than 100 Blacks living in Utah in the 1850s and 1860s. By 1910 there were more than 1,100. The numbers grew as the military presence began to increase at Hill Air Force Base in the 1940s with more than 4,000 Blacks calling Utah home in the 1960s.
Today an estimated 19,110 Blacks live in Utah—fewer than 1 percent of Utah's 2.4 million-person population.
Southern Utah
Much less is known about early Black pioneers in Southern Utah. Coleman believes this common lack of information exists in part because "Black history is an often overlooked and, therefore, undervalued part of American history." Still, we know some things.
Bart Anderson, a [St. George-area] historian/folklorist, says many of the first Black pioneers in Dixie came as slaves of LDS converts from the South. Since Utah had both slaves and free Blacks at the time, the settlers were allowed to keep their slaves.
Anderson agrees with Coleman. He says there are not many written accounts of those slaves or even the free Blacks. Most accounts simply say something like "a Black person planted this."
In Carter's book, Hazel B. Bradshaw wrote a chapter about early Black pioneers in Dixie. Among the first Black people in Dixie, according to Bradshaw's account, was a young girl who accompanied the Cunningham family, originally from the South.
The girl came because of her attachment to the family but returned "back home" when she found no one of her race to associate with in Dixie. Bradshaw's account is not clear as to whether the girl was a slave.
Another early settler, Haden Church of Tennessee, brought a Black man with him to the area in 1861. Again it is not known if this man was a slave. He left with Church when Church was called on a mission back to Tennessee.
Ben Polk is said to have been a resident in St. George in the late 1890s, according to Bradshaw. Polk spent several years working for a man named Walter Dodge cultivating fruit and berries. Anderson says Polk lived on Dodge's property near the Elk's Lodge and the Dixie Red Hills Golf Course.
There also are some records of Black pioneers in early Iron County, including a man called Faithful John, whom Anderson says was instrumental in building the old rock chapel in Parowan. He came to Iron County with an early group of settlers in 1851.
Brigham Young began to spend his winters in St. George in the mid-1870s and invited a friend, Colonel Thomas L. Kane, to bring his family one year. Kane brought with him a Black cook, according to Bradshaw's writing.
Aside from those accompanying LDS settlers, the mining boom in Silver Reef also brought a few Blacks to the area for work. Among those was a man known only as "N--- Johnson," who worked as a nurse taking care of sick miners.
But because of Dixie's isolation, there were not many other Black settlers through the first part of the 1900s.
Things were somewhat different in Iron County because of the railroad. Some older residents there remember Black families who came to Cedar City during the first half of the century to work.
Now, with the massive population growth, more available jobs, and higher education opportunities, people of all races and religions are coming to Southern Utah as pioneers of a new generation.