Yellacat Ranch

William Hickman Jr.

Posted on by Justin Durand

Two babies born in pioneer Utah, no more than a footnote to history and maybe that’s why they’re so often confused.

One was a son of the notorious William Adams “Wild Bill” Hickman. The other was not. They were born just a few days apart in February 1850.

William Adams Hickman, Jr. is easy. He was born February 14, 1850 in Salt Lake City, son of William and Minerva (Wade) Hickman. He was still a child when he died of scarlet fever, May 20, 1854 in Salt Lake City. He’s buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery. The Record of Deaths at Salt Lake City records the death of “Wm A. Hickman” son of “William and M. Hickman.” born 14 February 1850 at Salt Lake, died 20 May 1854 at Salt Lake of scarlet fever (Entry 397). Cemetery records show the interment of William A. Hickman (child), died May 20, 1854 (Interment No. 3986). This cemetery record nails the identification. This child’s mother was “M. Hickman.” That is, Bill Hickman’s wife Minerva.1

Wilford Albert Beebe is harder. He’s frequently confused with William Jr. He was the son of Bill Hickman’s wife Sarah Luce, but not the son of William Hickman. He was born just a few days before William Jr. (above). Patty Barlett Sessions, an early Mormon midwife, wrote in her diary for Friday, February 9, 1850, “Put Sarah Lance [Luce] to bed with a son born 2:30 P.M.” (Sessions, 52). It was the scandal around this child’s birth that makes any of this notable.

William Adams “Bill” Hickman, at the twilight of his colorful career, wrote his autobiography: Brigham’s Destroying Angel. In it, he tells a story about Sarah Luce and her baby:

“In about a month, Amasa Lyman, one of the Twelve, followed Brigham Young with another company for Salt Lake. I had in the Winter just previous to leaving Nauvoo taken me a second wife whose father was going with this Company, and she wanted to go with them. I sent her along, and when I reached Salt Lake next year, was not surprised to find that she had helped herself to a youngster a few days old. Believing her virtue to be easy long before this let me off. I never had any children by her” (Hickman 1872, 48).

Now, that’s a peculiar bit of over-the-top drama. Hickman’s story doesn’t line up with the dates. Sarah Luce traveled with the Amasa Lyman section of the Willard Richards Company. They left Winter Quarters, Nebraska on July 1, 1848 and arrived in Salt Lake City between October 10 and 19, 1848. A child born in February 1850 must have been conceived about May 1849, after Sarah arrived in the Salt Lake Valley (without her husband). Hickman himself traveled with the Cornwall Company of 1849. They left Omaha, Nebraska in April 1849 and arrived in Salt Lake City on August 14, 1849. Hickman himself arrived on August 20.

In other words, Hickman arrived in August 1849, six months before Sarah’s baby was born. This contradicts Hickman’s claim the baby was “a few days old” when he arrived. We might raise an eyebrow when Hickman says, “Believing her virtue to be easy long before this let me off.” However, he had reason to think that. Sarah had been expelled from the church on July 18, 1847 for keeping “an obscene house in the absence of her husband” at Garden Grove, Iowa, a way station on the Mormon Trail (Council Minutes, 11). On the same day Hickman was excommunicated for “unlawfully converting property away from this camp and converting the same to his own use.” (Council Minutes, 4).

Hickman’s son challenged the authority of his father’s autobiography, writing “J. H. Beadle, who wrote my father’s history, had only one object in view, and that was to slander the Mormons. He admits that he changed the original manuscript in some respects and I might say many. . . . Beadle got his data, then went East and wrote the book and published it without my father ever seeing the manuscript” (Carter 1950, 11:429).

According to family traditions reported by the Sunstone Mormon History Podcast, Sarah had a “beautiful soprano voice,” she was living at the Joseph Smith home when he was tarred and feathered and helped pick out the feathers, and she was quite devout in later life. The podcast notes, humorously, not even Smith was living in the Smith household when he was tarred and feathered.

We can track young Wilford up to age 11, when he disappears from the records. Sarah appears in her father’s household on the 1850 Census (p. 156), which was taken in 1851. Although there is some dispute, Sarah’s son seems to appear in the same household under the name “Willford”, age 2. He appears without a surname but has been indexed under the surname Purbelan [Purbelow] from the entry above. In 1853 Sarah married William Albert Beebe. Sarah’s son was baptized as “Wilford Albert Beebe” on April 7, 1859 at Payson, Utah by Willard McMullin, a family friend from Maine. The baptism record says Wilford was born Feb. 9, 1849 (rather than 1850) at Salt Lake City.2 The 1860 Census shows Wm. A. Beebe, wife Sarah, son Wilford A. (now age 11), and other children at Payson, Utah. I find no record of his death, but his profile on FamilySearch says he died in 1880. He would have been about 30. I venture a guess he died before that date. A note on his profile says he died at Kanab, Utah.

Hope Hilton, a granddaughter of Bill Hickman, adds, “Sarah apparently never lived with Bill in the valley, although her son was raised under the name Hickman to cover her ‘indiscretion'” (Hilton 1988, 15). Hilton is overstating the case.3 Sarah married William Albert Beebe in 1853 when our little guy was only three. He might have spent the first few years of his life under the name Hickman, but by the time he was 10 he had taken his step-father’s surname, as well as step-father’s middle name.

I see no way to discover Wilford Beebe’s paternity. He is not known to have married and has no known descendants, so there is no path for DNA testing. The Sunstone Mormon History podcast mentioned one of Sarah Luce’s “clients” in passing but didn’t name him: “And I do want to say with that, Sarah Luce, we are aware of at least one of her clients because he was excommunicated for adultery with her multiple times, apparently. But he was one of the wealthier members. So this was definitely a way for her make some money.” However, it’s not clear from this passage whether he was excommunicated multiple times or whether he committed adultery with her multiple times. It’s also not clear from this passage whether this happened at Garden Grove or happened later in Utah.

Sources

See Also

  1. Despite some angry emails I’ve received over the years, the famous Mormon midwife Patty Bartlett Sessions did not attend the birth of William Adams Hickman ,Jr. On Feb. 14 she attended “Reuben Millers wife” (Sessions, 53). ↩︎
  2. The 1849 date is almost certainly wrong. It contradicts the contemporary diary of midwife Patty Sessions. However, we should note in passing if young Wilford were born a year earlier the problem of his paternity would entirely disappear. Sarah would have been about 2 months pregnant when she left Iowa for Utah. ↩︎
  3. The Sunstone Mormon History Podcast says his original name was William Adams Hickman, Jr. However, he seems to have had the name Wilford by the time of the 1850 Census. By the time of his baptism in 1859 his transformation to “Wilford Albert Beebe” was complete. ↩︎

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