Elijah Allen

Elijah Allen, the eldest son of Andrew Lee Allen and Clarinda Knapp, was born on February 7, 1826 in the town of Burton (now called Allegany) in Cattaraugus County, New York. The family joined the Latter-day Saint faith and moved to Kirtland, Ohio in 1835. There, Elijah was baptized with his mother by Roger Orton and they were confirmed in the Kirtland temple by Sidney Rigdon. The family intended to migrate with the Saints to Missouri in 1838, but illness and lack of money stopped them in central Illinois where they lived until moving to a small community near Carthage in 1843. In 1845, a year after the prophet Joseph Smith was martyred, Elijah and his brother Charles visited Carthage Jail. Charles recorded, "We went into the room where the Prophet and Patriarch were shot, murdered in cold blood.... We looked through the door with the ball holes, at the bloodstained floor, and at the places on the ceiling that had been scored by the balls that were shot into the room. This caused our hearts to feel very sorrowful.” Elijah left his family and went to work for Brigham Young, living with Brigham's family in Nauvoo. Charles would visit occasionally and wrote, "The two daughters, [Vilate] Young and Susan Devine, played the piano and sang their beautiful songs, which made the time pass very pleasantly during the long winter evenings." When the Twenty-first Quorum of Seventy was organized, Elijah was one of its members and like all Nauvoo men his age, he would have been a member of the Nauvoo Legion and spent part of his time building the temple. When the Youngs left Nauvoo, he drove one of their teams across the Mississippi. At Winter Quarters, the U.S. Government requested five hundred men to fight in the Mexican War. Brigham counseled Elijah to enlist and he did so, joining Company B of the Mormon Battalion. Before leaving, Brigham told Elijah that he would "have no fighting to do" and that "he would see me again." Elijah wrote later, "His words proved verily true." As the Battalion marched from Iowa to California, they frequently dealt with sickness. Elijah recorded, "I had a violent fever in the morning. I took a large dose of Boneaet (bicarbonate) which came near puking me to death during the day, in the evening Elder Hanks laid hands on me and I felt a great deal better." Of another illness, he said, "cramps seized me in the legs, drawing the flesh into knots, which was severe and painful." In December, a wild herd of bulls attacked the Battalion. "They came bounding in, uncommon savage, hooking downe everything before them...," Elijah wrote, "Several of the men were hooked ... and several bulls shot, which on the whole made it a very exciting day." Elijah described the difficult days marching through the desert, "Here is another desert before us of about 100 miles.... We drove till in the night, then lay our weary boddies downe upon the cold sand to rest till the morning dawn aroused us for the task again." "Even the mules were heard braing pitiousley through the night, for the want of water." The Battalion arrived in San Diego in late January 1847, having marched 2,080 miles in six months. They were discharged from their military service in July and Elijah found employment at the San Gabriel Mission where he worked until 1848. In February of that year, together with several other men, he started for the Great Salt Lake Valley with about 200 head of cattle that had been purchased for the Church. They arrived three months later, after a difficult journey, and he started farming land at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon. When crickets ate up his crop, he headed east with Miles Goodyear and joined his family in Coonsville, Iowa in the fall of 1848. In 1851, he and his brother Charles made a trip into Missouri to buy apples to resell. They purchased two loads from Alexander Doniphan's mother-in-law in Richmond and then stopped in St. Joseph and visited Alexander, who defended Joseph Smith in Missouri and was a fellow Mexican War veteran. Elijah married Eliza Ann Bickmore on May 2, 1852, in Silver Creek, Iowa. The newlyweds joined the John S. Higbee pioneer company and traveled with Elijah's parents and siblings to Salt Lake City, arriving on August 13, 1852. Just a few days later, they continued on to Provo, Utah to make their home. In the winter of 1855-1856, Elijah and his family were called to resettle in Fort Herriman and strengthen the small community there. A year later, word came that Johnston's army was marching to Utah and President Young reformed the Nauvoo Legion. Elijah was a captain in the Legion and his company helped build defenses in Echo canyon during the winter of 1857 and spring of 1858. The Legion constructed barriers across the canyon, including a dam that could be used to form a lake and slow down the army. On one cliff, they piled up large stones to roll down onto the invaders. It was through Echo Canyon that Governor Cummings traveled to Salt Lake in early 1858 to negotiate peace with settlers and the defenses helped convince him that the army would have a difficult time defeating the Mormons. Elijah farmed in Fort Herriman until his death on April 12, 1866. He was forty years old and left behind his beloved wife and seven young children from two to thirteen years old. [Derived from Treasures of Pioneer History, the Elijah Allen Family Chronicles, and Elijah Allen -- Autobiographical Sketch of His Mormon Battalion Experiences.]