Manuscripts
Reminiscences, written in prose form, of Joseph E. Ray's life in Fillmore, Utah, covering the years from approximately 1852 to the 1880s. Ray writes of his childhood rapport with local Pahvant Ute Indians due to his father's work as an Indian agent, but also of his essential distrust of Indians following the John W. Gunnison massacre. He writes of childhood experiences with family and in school, of the kidnapping of James Ivie by Pahvant Indians (what Ray calls "the last of the Black Hawk raids"), his assistance to Reuben McBride in rescuing women kidnapped from a wagon train by Snake Indians (one of these women was Marguerite Taylor, of whom Ray writes "here was my destiny, heaven or hell!"), and his search for a silver mine in the Snake Valley in 1868. Ray also writes of his experiences tracking outlaws, including Ben Trasker at Deseret Springs and the capture of the Ney Gang. He writes extensively of an 1871 trip to Texas with Gilbert Webb to buy cattle. During this trip, Ray saw Brigham Young in Salt Lake City; met Wild Bill Hickock in Abelene, Kansas; participated in a three-day poker game; observed a buffalo herd (by which he was "absorbed, enraptured, amazed"); and drove cattle across the Platte River. Ray also includes a brief history of the families of Thomas King (the first settler of Fillmore), Orange Warner (Ray's father-in-law), Chandler Holbrook, Reuben McBride, John Kelly, Joseph Robison, Daniel Olson, Gabriel Huntsman, Christian Anderson, Amasa Lyman, Alexander Melville, and Alma and Sam Greenwood. Includes a brief account called "Coming to Fillmore by Reuben's Cave," in which Ray gives a condensed version of his autobiography in dialog form (it also mentions his work on the Studio Ranch). Also included are typescripts of 4 letters written between Ray and Marguerite Taylor during his trip to Texas and Miscellaneous Notes on Ray's life by one of his grandsons.
mssHM 72837
