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LAWSON A. MCENTIRE

*VICTIM OF THE 1857 MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE*


Lawson A. McEntire was the third son of Daniel Champion McEntire and Sarah Black Waters, born abt. 1836 in Rutherford County, North Carolina. His father was a wagon maker and farmer, and was the first settler of Bruno, Marion County, Arkansas in the mid 1840's. By 1857 the McEntire family was living in Yellville in Marion County.
Lawson A. McEntire departed for California from Marion County, Arkansas with "The Mitchell Train" in April 1857, and probably worked as a drover for brothers Charles Roark Mitchell and Joel Dyer Mitchell.  Also working as drovers with the Mitchell Train were brothers John Prewit and William Prewit, whose family, like the McEntires, had come from Rutherford County, North Carolina to Marion County, Arkansas. (Lawson McEntire's sister Rachel Dulcina McEntire, was married to George Francis Elam. George Francis Elam's father, William Thomas Elam's, second wife was Sarah Prewit, the sister of John and William Prewit.) Lawson A. McEntire was 21 years old, and single, when he died in the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Lawson McEntire is said to have had a brother John who had gone to California several years earlier. However, according to the account of Elizabeth (Watkins), the wife of Lawson's older brother, John Oliver McEntire, she and John met on a wagon train "headed for California", to look for gold, in 1859. They were married "on the trail" on 22 December 1859. The birth of their first child ten months later supports the 1859 date of their marriage, and the date that John Oliver McEntire was traveling to California. In 1860, John Oliver McEntire, and his family, are living in Tulare, San Joaquin County, California. It would appear that Lawson's brother John traveled to California two years after the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre took place.

© 2008 A.C. Wallner for the Mountain Meadows Association. All rights reserved

    Inscription:
    IN MEMORIAM

   IN THE VALLEY BELOW BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 7 AND 11, 1857, A COMPANY
   OF MORE THAN 120 ARKANSAS EMIGRANTS LED BY CAPT. JOHN T. BAKER
   AND CAPT. ALEXANDER FANCHER WAS ATTACKED WHILE EN ROUTE
   TO CALIFORNIA. THIS EVENT IS KNOWN IN HISTORY AS THE MOUNTAIN
   MEADOWS MASSACRE

    LAWSON A. MCENTIRE, 21

*Please note that the names of the victims of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre that appear here are those who we have personally researched and verified as victims. In some cases this list will differ from the names that were inscribed on the 1990 Monument on Dan Sill Hill.

                  Leave virtual flowers - MMA FIND A GRAVE MEMORIAL
                                 FOR LAWSON A. MCENTIRE


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