Articles/Essays – Volume 33, No. 4

Henry William Bigler: Mormon Chronicler of Great Events | M. Guy Bishop, Henry William Bigler: Soldier, Gold Miner, Missionary, Chronicler, 1815–1900

M. Guy Bishop has moved away from famous Mormon church leaders to delve into the life of a minor member who had a major appointment with American history. Henry William Bigler’s life is one that has both historical and religious significance. He left “thirteen day books and journals and an autobiography/journal telling much about mid-nineteenth century California” (xiii). One of his most important entries was made January 24, 1848 at Sutter’s Creek: “This day some kind of mettle was found. . .that. . . looks like goald.” (59). Bishop’s purpose is to present “Bigler’s written record [which] offers an unsophisticated mirror of his activities and thoughts, convincingly sincere in in tent and formidable in sheer volume” (xii). By all standards, Bigler was a common man who did not know he had a date with destiny when he marched out of Iowa with the Mormon Battalion on July 21, 1846, to the strains of “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Bigler, however, did not leave a girl behind. 

Henry William Bigler was born in Pennsylvania in 1815 and joined the Mormon church with most of his immediate family in 1837. They migrated to Missouri soon afterwards where they were among the beleaguered Mormons who saw and participated in the conflicts with Missourians in 1838 before fleeing to Illinois in 1839. These trials cemented his allegiance to the church, and his faith and loyalty never faltered thereafter. In 1846 in Iowa, he was asked to join the Mormon Battal ion to help fight the war with Mexico, a request he hesitated to accept until his leaders pressured him to obey counsel. 

Bigler wrote in his journal that he was “willing to obey counsel believing all things would work for the best in the end” (31). As he began the march, he carried some of the curse of the Midwest with him—the ague (malaria)—but he was never too sick or weary to record his thoughts. We have a greater appreciation and knowledge of the journey of the Mormon Battalion because of Bigler’s de tailed account. Bigler’s willingness to obey counsel ushered in a year of much hardship and trials, followed by a year of relative ease and historical significance. 

After much suffering and near starvation, about 400 of the original 500 battalion members and a few women reached San Diego in January of 1847. A year later Bigler was still in California, better fed and farther north at Sutter’s Creek. He was at the American River the day that James Marshall discovered gold. This incident gave Bigler a front row seat for one of the major events in American history. His diary entry is the only contemporary record to mention the discovery on the day it occurred. Fifty years later Bigler was among the celebrities invited to commemorate California’s Golden Jubilee. 

Bigler’s devotion to the church is obvious, and while Bishop makes this observation, he does not minimize the problems nor downplay the real church history. That Mormon Battalion Saints gambled, drank, and bought to bacco is not general knowledge. Bishop also mentions that whiskey was delivered to Bigler’s group at Sutter’s Creek in 1848. He lets the record speak for itself. 

Bigler’s devotion to the Mormon church was typical and puzzling. Admittedly a devoted family man, he nonetheless accepted from Brigham Young a third mission call to work in the St. George Temple in 1877, a year after his first wife Jane Whipple died. To do this, he left his three young motherless sons with others: “I bid my children good by praying in my heart for God to bless them and all who may befriend them” (129). In a modern, family-friendly church, this kind of obedience stings. Bigler saw these sons occasionally, but he lived out his life in St. George with a new family. 

The volume includes 24 illustrations, but I found it disappointing that none were of any of the women in Bigler’s life. Surely some images exist of his children, especially of his youngest daughters, Maud and Eleanor, from his second wife, Eleanor Emett. 

I would also have liked more de tails about the battalion funds sent back to relatives in Winter Quarters, much of which ended up in the general church fund administered by Brigham Young. This did not please the relatives in Winter Quarters, who nearly starved to death. More details about conditions in Utah when Bigler arrived in 1848 would have been helpful while I think less might have been written on Bigler’s two missions to Hawaii. Bigler’s California trail diary also sheds interesting light on interactions with Native Americans and offers chilling accounts of dead bodies from the Donner party: 

Passing down the mountain to the head of Truckee River. . .we came to a shanty built last winter, and about this cabin we found the skeletons of several human beings. I discovered a hand. It was nearly entire. It had been partly burned to a crisp. The little fin ger was not burnt. . . .1 judged it to be the hand of a woman. . .. 

Bigler reports that his group found a cabin of bodies—some with limbs, ribs, or brains removed—and was told later at Sutter’s Fort that “children were saved but not till after they had eaten of their dead parents.”[1]

Bishop’s book is an easy, interesting, read. It is seldom that one finds such a rich source of American, West ern, Utah, and church history in 160 pages (followed by an extensive bibliography). I finished reading wanting more than Bishop had included. There are many fascinating tidbits such as the following: 

“Because public polygamy could no longer be a demonstration of loyalty, the new agenda for the devout became an increased emphasis upon tithing [and] stricter observance of the. . .health code known as the Word of Wisdom” (144). 

We also learn that men who practiced plural marriage prospered more than those living in monogamy (142). Bigler earned less than $900 a year. 

I heartily recommend Bishop’s biography of Henry Bigler. Much research and work went into this book, and if it is true that “good things come in small packages,” this certainly qualifies. 

Henry William Bigler: Soldier, Gold Miner, Missionary, Chronicler, 1815-1900, by M. Guy Bishop. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1998). 208 pp., $36.95. 


[1] Edwin G. Budde, Bigler’s Chronicle of the West: The Conquest of California, Discovery of Gold, and Mormon Settlement as Reflected in Henry William Bigler’s Diaries (Berkeley, 1962), 79.