Grafton — Memorial Day is a day when thousands of Americans remember those who lost their lives in our nation’s wars. Most died in foreign lands, many on the battlefields of the Civil War. Several have died while serving in southern Utah, including victims of the Blackhawk War of 1865-1872, the most costly conflict on Utah soil.

On the outskirts of a ghost town, under a towering sandstone ledge, in a lonely cemetery, is a small family burial ground surrounded by a weathered wooden fence. A young couple and the husband’s brother are buried there. There were three casualties in the Blackhawk War.

A flower-carved headstone stands in Grafton Cemetery near Rockville, a grave marker that silently tells of the human toll of war that has been largely forgotten.

The war gets its name from a Utah state leader whose family was massacred by local militiamen in the Utah Valley in 1849 when he was a boy. The war involved an estimated 150 raids and military engagements primarily in central Utah, and eventually spread to southern Utah.

Dozens of soldiers, warriors and innocent people on both sides lost their lives. The main combatants were members of the Ute Indian tribe and various units of the Nauvoo Legion, then known as the local militia. However, Navajo, Apache, and Paiute fighters also joined the Utes. The war finally ended only after federal troops intervened.

Grafton is where Robert Berry, his wife Isabel, and Robert’s brother Joseph are buried. They died young, with no descendants to lay flowers on their graves, but the records of the Blackhawk War and their surviving kin keep their memory alive.

The Belize

Robert and Joseph were the youngest of nine children, and the family joined the Church of the Latter-day Saints in Tennessee in 1843. The following year, the family moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, where they met Joseph Smith and named their youngest son after him. His father, Jesse, had served in the War of 1812 and was a strong man, but died of cholera within weeks of arriving in Nauvoo, leaving his wife Almeria to raise the children.

The family’s difficulties were compounded when Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered that summer, leading to the forced evacuation of Nauvoo two years later.

Amelia’s burden was lightened by the marriage of her three eldest daughters before the family left for Salt Lake City in 1849. After arriving in her Utah, her remaining two daughters and her eldest son in Almeria were married.

In 1852, the family was sent to Spanish Fork to protect the fledgling village from Indian threats during the Walker War. Almeria’s eldest sons, John and William, supported their mother and younger brothers, Robert and Joseph.

The family lived in Spanish Fork for the next ten years. William also met his wife there, as did Robert, who married Isabel Hales. Her family joined the LDS Church of Canada, then moved to Kirtland, Ohio, and then to Nauvoo. Like the Berry family, the Hale family was forced to leave Nauvoo. Isabel was born in Iowa while her family was awaiting transit to Utah.

The Berry family of Spanish Fork were doing well until 1862 when they were called to the Cotton Mission. After selling the property and loading the wagon with everything they could, they made the long trip to Dixie to build their new home.

The extended family consisted of mother Almeria, four sons, three daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and the youngest son Joseph. They settled in Middleton, where they discovered that all who had been called up to the Cotton Mission had quickly learned. It was that the climate was harsh and unforgiving, and it took everyone’s best to get through it.

More children were born over the next few years, including a daughter to Robert and Isabel. They named her Harriet.

This was a time when Brigham Young was trying to settle in a more isolated part of Utah. The Long Valley, now the towns of Glendale, Orderville and Mount Carmel, were also his one of such places. In the spring of 1864, the large Berry family was invited to settle in the Longhe Valley, which was considered the best land for agriculture and livestock grazing.

They chose a site on the northern tip of Long Valley for their new residence and named it Berryville. Other families joined them, including the Harris family (hence the Harrisburg name), the Brimhall family, the Campbell family, and the Stout family. That fall, more settlers were called in and settled further down the valley. They named the settlement Windsor after Anson Windsor, LDS Bishop of Rockville. These two his settlements are now known as Glendale and Mount His Carmel.

Almería, perhaps tired of living in the wilds of the frontier, wanted to return to Spanish Fork to see her daughters. The trip also gives Isabelle the opportunity to meet her family. The boys agreed, and in the fall of 1865 Robert, Isabelle, Joseph, and little Harriet loaded the wagon and made the long trip to Spanish Her Fork.

They planned to return to Berryville in the spring to stock up on food to supplement what they could find there. Their journey north went without incident. That winter, diphtheria raged through Utah County, killing Robert and Isabel’s daughter, Harriet. The shock was softened by the news that Isabelle is pregnant with her second child.

In March, Robert, Isabelle, and Joseph said goodbye to their families and embarked on the long journey back to Berryville. In early April, loaded with wagons full of provisions, they crossed the Hurricane Rift and made a steep climb eastward to Pipe Springs. They were excited to see their families in Long Valley, but little did they know that the distant Walker War carnage in central Utah would soon overtake them.

Settlers in Manti, Salina, Fairview, Circleville, and other villages in central Utah were well aware of the deadly cost of war. Dozens of men, women, and children were killed, scalped, and mutilated by Blackhawk warriors. In return, the local militia wreaked havoc on both warriors and peaceful Native Americans. As the raids and killings progressed, they spread to southern Utah in early 1866.

That winter, the Utes of Colorado, the Apaches of New Mexico, and the Navajos of northern Arizona joined the raids, sharing much of their frustration with Blackhawk’s success. Their main purpose was to capture sheep, cattle and horses.

Killing was secondary in defense or retaliation. The Navajo were still recovering from forced migration to New Mexico and were eager to increase their numbers at the expense of white settlers. Navajo leader Manuelito and his warriors joined Blackhawk’s men in an early 1866 raid on southern Utah.

They began by stealing horses at Kanab and Peter Shirt’s herd of cattle at Pariah. Next they turned to Pipe Springs, where Dr. James Whitmore of St. George and his brother-in-law Robert McIntyre had wintered their sheep.

Whitmore and McIntyre opposed the raid and paid the price with their lives. Their bodies, full of arrows and bullet wounds, were found in the snow and returned to St. George for burial. A vengeful St. George militia hunted down and killed seven suspected Paiutes. However, as they later learned, the Paiutes were not the culprits, and their murder only provided a potential motive for revenge.

This was the cauldron to which Robert, Isabelle, and Joseph headed that spring. Except for a team of wagons and a few supplies, they had no livestock or valuables. The motive appears to have been revenge for the murder of innocent Paiutes who were raided and murdered near Short Creek.

William Berry had been waiting for them and became concerned when they were late. He rode southwest along the route he knew they would take, and to his horror discovered their mangled bodies at the murder scene. It was evident that they had put up resistance, as dead bodies of Indians were found nearby, but there was little to see except tragedy.

Their bodies were taken to nearby Grafton for burial, and three more died in the protracted Blackhawk War. Following news of the murders at Pipe Springs and Short Creek, Brigham Young ordered the evacuation of the Long Valley settlers. Aided by armed militias from St. George and Cedar City, the settlers moved to safety in Washington and Iron Counties.

The rest of the Berry family moved to Kanarraville. It will be another five years before Long Valley is resettled. In a tragic twist of fate, eighteen years later, William Berry and two LDS missionaries were murdered by an angry mob in Tennessee, another tragic loss for the Berry family.

Blackhawk was shot in the abdomen during the raid and took refuge in the Ute Reservation in the Uinta Basin. This marked the end of his raiding days, but the war continued until he ended in 1872 with Federal troops stationed at Fort Douglas.

At that point, all remaining Utah, warriors or not, were forced to vacate central Utah and settle on reservations in the Uinta Basin. The Blackhawk War was the last attempt by the Utes to claim autonomy on their ancestral homeland.

In 1865 there were over 20,000 Utes, but today there are only a few thousand. The end of the war ushered in a new era of LDS settlement in south-central Utah.

With the Indian threat gone, more families were asked to build homes in these previously unsettled areas.

The white tombstones in Grafton’s small cemetery are one of the few vestiges of that time. It is a small memorial to the many lives lost, and the hopes and dreams that were not realized.

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