Erastus Perry Bingham

The Most Frightened Boy In The West, By Erastus Perry Bingham, Pioneer Vignette, Deseret News

(Editor's Note: Erastus Perry Bingham was born in La Harp, Ill., March 20, 1846, and died June 4, 1929, in Ogden, Utah. This is another in a series of true accounts of early Utah and its founders as told by the pioneers themselves in interviews or written records and compiled by Harold H. Jensen of the Old Folks Central Committee.)

I was scheduled to have been born in Nauvoo, Ill., but the event took place while we were wintering among the Indians 200 miles up the Missouri River with Daniel Spencer's second division wagon train under Capt. Ira Eldredge.

Mother had been ill when our people were driven from Nauvoo and Grandfather Erastus Bingham had taken her under his care since father had been sent ahead to help prepare the route. Soon after the train caught up with father, President Brigham Young issued a call for 500 able-bodied men to join the Mormon Battalion. My father, his brother, and my mother's brother all joined as volunteers in the War with Mexico and marched away with the battalion.

After my birth, mother was unable to walk and was under Grandfather Bingham's care until our arrival in Salt Lake Valley September 19, 1847. Father was sent back with a sick detachment and arrived in the valley five days after Brigham Young and his company. Father carried some of the sick men on his back during the latter part of their journey. He suffered exhaustion from the heat and died three days after his arrival.

Again Grandfather took Mother and her two children under his wing. His feet were crippled and he couldn't farm, so President Brigham Young appointed him the herder of the church cattle. Grandfather built a cabin in Bingham Canyon, which was named for him.

Grandfather and his sons found good mineral ore there and took some samples of it to President Young. The church leader told them to say nothing about it as the news would create excitement and the people would desert the farms and wouldn't raise grain. He said word of the discovery would only create excitement and a panic, and people from the East would rush into the valley.

So nothing more was done about the discovery of ore in Bingham Canyon until many years later, when it became the largest open pit copper mine in the world.

One childhood experience I remember well was the sensation of being scalped. I was 10 years old and had wandered five miles away from where Plain City now stands. An Indian came out of the brush on horseback and I started to run. The Indian whooped after me and tried to ride over me. I dodged from side to side. Suddenly he grabbed my coat collar and dragged me along for several rods. Then he slowed up and kicked me down.

He leaped from his horse to sit on me, then grabbed me by the "Scalp Lock" pulled out his knife and ran it around my head. My heart seemed to stop. And as the Indian galloped away I remember feeling to see if my hair was still there. It was. Since then I realized the Indian buck was just trying to frighten me. He did. Until that incident I was completely unafraid of the Indians. From then on I was the most scared kid in the West.

SOURCE: http://www.ourfamiliesroots.org/sketches/4249.htm

Mormon Pioneer

Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847–1868, Bingham, Erastus Perry

Birth Date: 20 Mar. 1846

Death Date: 4 June 1929

Gender: Male

Age: 1

Company: Daniel Spencer/Ira Eldredge Company (1847)

SOURCE: http://lds.org/churchhistory/library/pioneerdetails/1,15791,4018-1-...

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Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel 1847–1868 Daniel Spencer/Ira Eldredge Company (1847)

174 or 177 individuals and 76 wagons were in the company when it began its journey from the outfitting post on the Elkhorn River about 27 miles west of Winter Quarters, Nebraska.

Age at departure: 1

Find a Grave

Birth: Mar. 20, 1846 La Harpe Hancock County Illinois, USA

Death: Jun. 4, 1929 Ogden Weber County Utah, USA

Son of Erastus Bingham Jr. and Olive Hovey Freeman

Married Emeline Clarissa Allen, 21 Feb 1870, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah

Children - Perry Alanson Bingham,

Emeline Chastina Bingham,

Francis Bingham,

Albern Allen Bingham,

Joseph Franklin Bingham,

Olive Rebecca Bingham,

Louisa Marinda Bingham,

William Henry Bingham,

Thomas Lorenzo Bingham,

Ezra Bingham,

Erastua Edward Bingham,

Clarence Bingham,

Wilford Levi Bingham,

Leonard Bingham, 

Lorin Bingham,

Cadenia Bingham,

David Moroni Bingham,

Arnold Hyrum Bingham

LDS Biographical Encyclopedia, Andrew Jenson, Vol. 2, p. 342

Bingham, Erastus Perry, a veteran Elder of the Huntsville Ward, Weber county, Utah, was born March 20, 1846, at La Harpe, Hancock county, Illinois, the son of Erastus Bingham and Olive H. Freeman. He was baptized in March, 1854; ordained a Seventy in 1865 by Franklin Cummings and a High Priest May 5, 1910 by Adam L. Peterson. Emigrating to Utah in 1847 with his parents he crossed the plains in Daniel Spencer's hundred, arriving in the Valley in September, 1847. After spending the winter in the Old Fort, he located in Cottonwood in the so-called Holliday Settlement, where he remained until the spring of 1850. In 1866 he went to the Missouri river after emigrants under Captain Horton D. Haight and returned to Utah with telegraph wires and three families of emigrants. Since his early youth Bro. Bingham has been a diligent Church worker. For more than twenty years he acted as one of the presidents of the 75th quorum of Seventy, and for the same length of time he acted as a president of a teacher's district in the Huntsville and Middleton Wards. He has practically been a Ward teacher since 1866. He has also been superintendent of the East Huntsville Sunday school when that branch was yet a branch of the Huntsville Ward. Among the many civil offices which he has held may be mentioned that he served as constable of the Huntsville precinct for six years and as school trustee in the Huntsville school district five years. His occupation, otherwise, has been that of a lumber dealer, farmer and stockraiser. On different occasions he has changed his places of residence. Being born at La Harpe, Ill., he has since resided in Punca, Nebraska, Salt Lake City, Cottonwood, Ogden, Bingham's Fort, Far West, Slaterville and Huntsville. He became a settler of Ogden valley in the spring of 1864. During the Black Hawk Indian war he made a trip to the Missouri river after telegraph wire and emigrants, although he at that time served as a cavalry man in the Utah militia. Often since the Indian wars has he done military duty as a home guard.

Utah Death Certificate

Family links:

Parents:

*Erastus Bingham (1822 - 1906)

• Olive Hovey Freeman Bingham (1820 - 1905)

Spouse:

*Emeline Clarissa Allen Bingham (1851 - 1912)*

Children:

*Perry Alanson Bingham (1871 - 1953)*

• Emeline Chastina Bingham McBride (1872 - 1948)*
• Francis Bingham (1874 - 1966)*
• Joseph Franklin Bingham (1877 - 1958)*
• Thomas Lorenzo Bingham (1885 - 1948)*
• Ezra Bingham (1886 - 1963)*
• Leonard Bingham (1893 - 1968)*
• Cedenia Bingham Hale (1895 - 1979)*
• Arnold Hyrum Bingham (1899 - 1926)*

Inscription: Father

Note: Pioneer plaque: Faith in every footstep, 1847-1907

Burial: Huntsville Cemetery Huntsville Weber County Utah, USA Plot: 50-4-7

Maintained by: SMS Originally Created by: Chris Calcut Record added: Jun 23, 2007 Find A Grave Memorial# 20047823