William Wallace Haws Life Sketch

My great-great-great- grandfather, William Wallace Haws, was born on 18 February 1835 in Green Township, Illinois. With his parents, Gilbert and Hannah Haws, he crossed the plains with the Lorenzo Snow Company as a Mormon pioneer. The family settled in Provo, Utah, where they faced Indian attacks and suffered from the overpopulation of grasshoppers. There, he met his first wife, Barbara Belinda Mills. While his wife gave birth to their eight children, William served a short mission and worked for the Salt Lake Police and enlisted as a private in the Indian Wars.

During the time that the members of the Mormon church practiced polygamy, William married his second wife, Martha Barrett (my ancestor), on 8 November 1875 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The United States government was upset about the Mormons practicing polygamy, so William sought refuge for his family elsewhere. They first went to Arizona to escape persecution and to help settle the land there. While in Arizona, they received news that U.S. marshalls were headed there in an attempt to end polygamy among the Mormons. This is when William decided to take his family elsewhere. William did not have the money to bring both his wives and all his children. He was forced to leave his first wife, Barbara and their children in Arizona while he took Martha and their three small children to Colonia Juarez, a developing Mormon colony in Chihuahua, Mexico. William provided for his family by farming their land. In Mexico, Martha blessed him with six more children and William also married another woman by the name of Gertrude. Together, they had three children. William died in 1895 and is buried in Chihuahua, Mexico. [1]

[1] Chloe Haws Lunt, “Sketch of the Life of William Wallace Haws,” 1964, http://aprilsancestry.com/files/_HawsWWHistbyChloe.pdf, accessed on 15 September 2014.