Pronuncination of the name LEIGH

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Our name Leigh was always pronounced as Lee, and occasionally spelled Lee or Lea. In 1597 Lewys Dwnn’s heraldic visitation in Carmarthen gave the name as Lee, but our earliest ancestor in Wales signed Dwnn’s pedigree as Raffe Leighe, and all descendants signed the same. Samuel Leigh certainly carried that spelling and pronunciation with him to Cedar City. When he emigrated, the ship’s register gave the name “Lee” for both Samuel and his brother Daniel with their families, but Samuel signed his name as “Samuel Leigh” on the “Last Greeting of the Emigrating Saints to California” from shipboard the day before departure (Dennis, The Call of Zion, Appendix B and p.142).

However, sometime between 1860 and 1870, the family changed the pronunciation to Lay as in sleigh and have continued that sound to the present. This change is clearly shown in the two census records.  In the 1860 census for Cedar City, Utah, the family name was recorded as Lees, even though the name was spelled Leigh.  In the 1870 census, the name was recorded as Lay (Leigh).

Their motive, according to family tradition, was simple: to avoid any association with the notorious John D. Lee, whose name became synonymous with the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Lee was once a respected founder and resident of Cedar City, but on 11 September 1857 he led a group of militia men in a tragic and terrible raid on a wagon train of over a hundred non-Mormon emigrants camped in a meadow about 35 miles from Cedar City. The raid was staged to appear as an Indian attack, and all but the youngest children were mercilessly murdered. Other Cedar City residents including military, church, and town officials participated in various ways. Rumors, charges, and denials were thick for almost twenty years before Lee was finally convicted in his second trial and executed on the site of the Massacre in 1877. No one else was convicted because Lee was made the scapegoat, and for still more decades Cedar City was blackened and shamed by the cover-up.

John D. Lee, who was English, came to Utah from Illinois and was said by some to be a second cousin of General Robert E. Lee of Virginia. He had no possible family connection to the Leighs, but the identical sound of his name and ours was too much to bear. The great intensity of the family desire to be separated from Lee was still present when we heard the story from our father in the early 1940s. The same story is probably known by all the current lines of Samuel Leigh’s descendants, judging from the responses of the various cousins we questioned.

The true identity of all the perpetrators of the Massacre may never be known because of their oath of silence and the general reluctance of Cedar residents to name as participants their leaders who were also their friends and neighbors. For the same reason the identity of those who objected or tried to prevent the Massacre may also be lost. Individual families, however, have their own private archives about where their people were during the crucial days. In our Leigh archive we cherish the following oral story, given here in the words Jacqueline Leigh Beem, a great-granddaughter of Samuel Leigh, as told by Samuel's son Henry to her father Henry Webster Leigh:

My father [Samuel Leigh] and I were on Cedar Mountain when the Massacre occurred. I remember I was surprised one morning when Father took us back up the mountain after we had just returned. The tragedy occurred while we were on the mountain this second time. As I reflect back, I feel Father knew something of the pending situation and did not want to be a part of it. This was my conclusion although my father never said anything to confirm or deny it.

Samuel would have learned what was pending because of his position as a member of the Stake High Council, or if he had then been away on Cedar Mountain and absent from the Sunday Council meeting on 6 September 1857, he would learn at once on his return of the long hard argument for and against a military attack on the emigrants. The argument ended finally with a unanimous vote to ask for counsel from Salt Lake before taking any action against the emigrants (Brooks The MMM pp.62,65 ff, John D. Lee pp. 206-8; Bagley pp.126-9). Regardless of that vote, however, Samuel was a 2nd Lieutenant and CO of the 2nd Platoon, Company F, 3rd Battalion of the Iron Military District, and he knew he could be ordered into the attack by those who would not wait for counsel. The militia was not a volunteer unit, as all able-bodied men belonged de facto.

By leaving town Samuel not only prevented his own involvement but also protected his growing sons, William age 15 and Henry age 14, who were close to military age. Perhaps Samuel also took away his young brother-in-law William Treharne, a private in the 4th Platoon, Company F. Or perhaps William was protected by his other brother-in-law in Cedar City, Thomas Jones (husband of Sage Treharne). Jones was a private in the 5th Platoon, Company E, but he was one of those who are known to have spoken out against the attack in the Sunday meeting (York Jones, Lehi Willard Jones, pp.22-23).

Samuel’s action saved his family from the guilt, recrimination, intense remorse, and life-long depression suffered by even some minor participants in the Massacre, as shown by numerous letters, journals, and family stories. In fact, Samuel must have been known as one of the “clean” residents of Cedar City. When Mormon officials replaced local church leaders in July 1859, they chose men who were known to be outside the participants, including Thomas Jones as second counselor to the Bishop (Brooks, The MMM, p.180). Two years later, when the Bishop’s first counselor moved to Salt Lake, Samuel Leigh was appointed in his place, and he remained in that position for the next eighteen years.

Samuel’s silence even later with his son Henry may seem strange to us now, but he must have been a quiet man by nature, certain of what he believed himself but not quickly pushing his view on others. Also, silence became a hallmark of the Cedar City reaction, as shown first by Juanita Brooks’s pioneer study of the whole event. Samuel was doubtless one of many who condemned the Massacre in action more than in words.

Recently, public acceptance of the fact of the Massacre seems at last to be occurring, as evidenced in 1999 by the dedication of a large monument at the massacre site by Gordon B. Hinckley of the LDS Church in the presence of hundreds of descendants of both victims and participants of the Massacre. For those who are interested in its complex causes, sequence, and long aftermath, see the classic monograph by the Mormon historian Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 3rd ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1970), her biography John Doyle Lee: Zealot -Pioneer Builder- Scapegoat (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1962), and new evidence by Will Bagley in Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2002). See also the review of Bagley’s book by Robert H. Briggs in Sunstone (Issue 125, December 2002). On the military participation, Robert H. Briggs is preparing a detailed study of the militia in That Wretched Regiment: The Iron Military District, the Mountain Meadows and Beyond (2002, privately circulated, copy from author in our possession). According to Briggs, it was not a military operation as such, but at least 16 to 20 percent of the Iron District militia probably participated. We are very grateful to Briggs for the information that none of our family names appear in any of the known documents on those involved in the Massacre.

Norma Leigh Rudinsky and Allen Wilford Leigh
27 March 2004