William Jefferson King

William Jefferson King, 1833 - 1860, age 26. Shooting of William King Found Dead - On Tuesday week, a man named William King, as we have been informed, left his residence at Kay's Creek, Davis County, early in the morning, to hunt for his horses on the range. Not returning during the day as expected, search was made for him, and on Thursday afternoon his body was found on the sand ridge between Kay's Creek and the Weber [River], pierced with two balls. By whom he was shot, is not known; [assailants were identified, one was Richardson] but it is supposed that some alleged unlawful meddling, with one not his wife, was the moving cause of his untimely death. ------------------------------------ The second child and second son of Thomas Jefferson King and Rebecca Eglesby Olin, William was only about 12 when the mobs of Mormon haters drove his family from their new home at Morley's Settlement a short distance from Nauvoo, Illinois. Tragedy struck when their 9 month old baby sister, Rhoda Elenor, twin of Enoch Elmer, died before they could flee and was buried at the Old Nauvoo Burial Ground. They eventually settled near Iowaville, on the Des Moines River. There they stayed for about seven years while their father worked at freighting. William's 10 year old brother, Enoch Elmer, died at Iowaville in 1850 and his 15 year old brother, Jonathan Alma, was killed there in a wagon accident later that year. Both were buried at the Iowaville Cemetery. William's father headed for California shortly afterward, to see if he could raise enough funds from the gold field, hoping he could afford to outfit his family for the long awaited exodus of the Latter-day Saint Church members to settle in the Great Salt Lake Valley, Utah Territory. While the father was absent, his family was washed out of the double log house he had built for them by a flood of the Des Moines River. They stayed with another family on higher ground until they could rebuild. All this time, nearly three years, William was the caretaker of his mother and younger siblings as his brother, George Elisha, was married with a family of his own struggling to survive. His father had good luck early, constructing dams on the Feather River, to extract the channeled gold. After his dam flooded out, he was able to send some money home but later invested in a quarts mill, which eventually cost too much to sustain. He headed back home in fall of 1853, taking the Cape Horn Route, arriving the following spring in time to invest in the goods and equipment necessary to migrate across the Great Plain. Along with that of their oldest son, who departed a day or so prior to them, they had several wagons, and traveled with the Benjamin C. Turman Wagon Company, leaving in May of 1854. Their son, George Elisha, turned off at Fort Hall, determined to take the trail to Oregon. It would be the last time they saw him and his little family, as they were later massacred at White River Settlement in 1855. This was not the last of the heartaches endured by William and his parents. At the deaths of his parents in 1876, they had only three of eight children living. In 1856 William had married, at age 24, to a girl not yet 14, Lillian Elizabeth "Lizzie" Catherine Bair. Two years later, they had a daughter, Frances Lucretia, and then a son, William Thomas, in April 1860. They had hired a girl to help with the baby and housework. Rumors quickly spread that William intended to move his family to California, taking the girl with them. The girl's alarmed father arranged with two men to eliminate William. Within two months, William was shot, ambushed and left for dead. His body was found three days later, on the sand ridge between Kay's Creek and the Weber River, pierced with two balls. His faithful little dog was sitting at his side, guarding the earthly remains of his master. As William was known to gather his team early in the morning, a man riding a dapple grey mare and one on a dark colored sorrell, laid in wait for him at the grazing place. The two assailants were later identified; one's name was Richardson. William's knife was found, the distance a man could throw from his body, toward an object. Since he apparently had no gun, when he looked up seeing the gun wielding men approaching, he threw the knife, which was his only weapon. His widow remarried about two years later in Salt Lake City to Peter John Moss, who was near her age. They had a daughter and son together, but parted within two years and she married a man named Charles F. Allen. They had two sons by 1869, but it is not known what happened to him because she had married a fourth time to Egbert A. Scranton by 1872 and had a son with him in 1873. Scranton was also about her age; and, since "Lizzy" had consistently given her age to be the same as theirs, it is not surprising that her headstone, later placed by her youngest son, is inscribed with a birth year of 1838, rather than 1844. Being first married at such a young age, it is probable she was not educated, and didn't know any better than to report a similar age as her spouses. She had only been about 17, with two children in tow, when she met her 2nd husband. Her fifth husband was Russell H. Fish, whom she married 29 January 1879 and had her last know son, Jesse Russell Hiram Fish, in January of 1880. It is not known, by this researcher what became of Scranton nor Fish; however, Lizzy married her sixth husband, William T. Osborn about 1881 in Nevada. He had been living in the Fish household in 1880 and was ten years younger than Lizzy, but they had no children of record. Her infant son by Fish and her 6, 12, 14, and 15 year old sons by Moss, Allen and Scranton were also living in the household at that time.