1864 DEATH of A SODOMITE 25 November 2004 Issue 16 Vol 1 Publish Salt Lake Metro

DEATH of A SODOMITE

Camp Douglas, Utah circa 1864

 It is rare to see the word “Sodomite” used in 19th Century journalism and rarer yet to find it in the headlines of the Deseret News.  The broadsheet was founded as the official organ of the Latter Day Saints Church shortly after the arrival of Mormon refugees to the Wasatch Front.  The weekly paper printed pontifications from the Tabernacle pulpit as well as more secular news. However, whatever was printed was carefully reviewed and approved by the Mormon hierarchy, in particular Brigham Young. Therefore an article on the murder of a Camp Douglas soldier for sexual assaulting  a Mormon youth  printed in October 1864 was more as a warning to the Gentile population of their precarious situation among the Saints, than as an accounting of salacious facts. Nevertheless it is the first public use of the word Sodomite in Utah.

Camp Douglas

At the outbreak of the Civil War, California regiments were organized to protect the gold and silver fields of the west and to protect the overland mail routes between Salt Lake City and Sacramento. Utah had questionable loyalties and with Brigham Young refusal to let Mormon men enlist in the war, it was up to California to provide the men power. Two regiments from California would eventually be stationed in Salt Lake City on the east bench overlooking the area above where the University of Utah is located today.  These two regiments were the 2nd Regiment of California Volunteer Cavalry and the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteer infantry.  Camp Douglas was established in July 1862 to house the California Union volunteers. Their presence was also to deter the Mormon Saints from acting on any  notions of secession of their own while the American Civil War raged on.  After all Utah was a slave territory and Brigham Young made it clear that Mormons were not going to fight to preserve the Union.  Tensions between the local populace and the federal troops stationed in Utah were, to say the least, unpleasant for the next four years. 

The soldier who was assassinated for his crime on the Mormon boy was a 25 year old man named Frederick Jones. Not much is known about him although he is listed as a farm laborer born in Illinois in the 1860 United States Census of California. He was a 21 year old single man working for Charles Minter Taylor who was a young prosperous farmer in the community of Lee in Sacramento County. 1860 Census Sacramento, California When the American Civil War began in 1861 both Taylor and Jones joined as volunteers for the Union Army as both men were natives of the Northern States. 

Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor joined the 2nd Regiment of the California Volunteer Cavalry serving in companies C and D and stayed primarily in northern California. Frederick Jones also joined the 2nd Regiment of California Volunteer Cavalry but he joined when the regiment was stationed at Fort Churchill in Nevada. Jones joined Jan.11, 1862 and was assigned to Company A which was stationed in central Nevada to protect the Pony Express Route and the California Emigrant Trail from Indian depredations. The adobe built  Fort Churchill was established in 1861 on the Carson River just south of present day Silver Springs, Nevada.  While at Fort Churchill Jones must have encountered soldiers from the 3rd Infantry which was also stationed there at the same time before being ordered off to Salt Lake City to build a camp there and establish a federal presence.

Fort Churchill, Nevada

Fort Churchill was very primitive and must have been incredibly hot and desolated and by September 1862 Frederick Jones is listed as having deserted on Sept. 7 at Cold Springs, Nevada near present day Reno. His motives for desertion is unclear and his whereabouts uncertain until the summer of 1864 when Jones appears in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The day after the Mormon Saints celebrated their Pioneer Holiday, Jones enlisted at Camp Douglas as a Private in Company G of the 3rd California Infantry in the Union Army on 25 July 1864. Three months later he was murdered.  

On the afternoon of October 19th, while in City Creek Canyon, Jones encountered a 9 year old Mormon boy who he sexually assaulted and sodomized.  Jones told the boy he would cut his throat if he told anyone but he immediately went home and told his father Charles Monk Sr., who was the school trustee of the Eleventh District of Salt Lake City. The enraged father took his boy  to Camp Douglas where in the Quarters of Company G, the boy  

General Patrick Connor

saw Jones. Monk Sr. then went to General Patrick Connor’s Head Quarters where the General’s assistance was solicited. An orderly was immediately instructed to bring the accused  soldier before the General, but on returning to the Quarters of Company G, Jones could not be found.

After much searching Frederick Jones was eventually found, sitting in the extreme corner of the building “turning the leaves of a book.” Private Jones was said to have turned “pale” when he saw the boy and his father, but he denied the crime. He voluntarily accompanied Charles Monk Sr.  to the General’s Headquarters where he again he denied the charge. The General ordered Jones to be taken to the guardhouse and instructed the father to secure a warrant and let the civil law take its course

Camp Douglas soldiers quarters

Private Jones remained in the camp's guardhouse until October 25th when he was brought to the city jail. The next day he was brought into court and questioned by Justice Jeter Clinton.  Jones again pled not guilty. He was returned to jail for the next three days until finally brought to trial on October 28th. Judge Clinton while believing Jones to be guilty released him due to the fact that Utah had no Sodomy Law to criminalize anal sex.  

After Jones was released from jail he left to return to Camp Douglas. When he was at the southeast corner of 1st South and 2nd East he was shot in the back around 7 p.m. in the evening. Four shot had been fired but the ones to the back of the head and shoulder killed him. Mormon Bishop Edwin Woolley, grandfather of Spencer W. Kimball, was the first to find 

Edwin Woolley

Jones after hearing the shots and fleeing footsteps. Woolley found Jones dead and "weltering in his blood." Jones' body was lying in front of the residence of Horace Eldredge, Brigadier General of the Nauvoo Legion, from where two boys and a young man testified to having seen the flash of the pistol that killed Jones. The Salt lake Coroner recorded his death as an assassination.  Charles Hempstead, editor of the Union Vedette, called the soldier's death "A Horrid Assassination".

In contrast on October 31, 1864, Thomas Stenhouse, soon to be Mormon apostate, and editor of the Salt Lake Telegraph printed an account of the murder calling it "Death of a Sodomite".  His bias towards Jones was clearly evident when he wrote, “we have no crocodile tears to shed over him (Jones), he is dead, and we have not the slightest disposition to call him back again to change the manner of retribution. To give the details of his crime would be to besmear our sheet with facts so loathsome enough to crimson the face of the most barbarous of the human race.  We confine ourselves to narrative, our readers who want more information the we are disposed to publish can seek it elsewhere.” 

 

Charles Hempstead

Hours after Private Jones was found, the Mormon police arrested Charles Monk  Sr.  for his murder.  Captain Charles Hempstead, provost marshal of Salt Lake City, acted as prosecutor in the murder case. The Captain repudiated any sympathy with the perpetrator of the "most heinous of heinous crimes,” while at the same time denouncing at the same time the assassination of Jones. Charles Monk’s defendant counsel, however, addressed the Mormon court and stated that Monk had an alibi at the time of the murder and “everybody being of the one opinion the court”  the defendant was discharged.  

Private Frederick Jones was buried in an unmarked grave at Fort Douglas as per California Volunteer Records.

   

A few months after the assault on his son, records show that Brigham Young called Charles Monk in December 1864 to settle in Spanish Fork. One can not think but there was a reason to remove Charles Monk Sr. from Salt Lake City. Monk Sr., a Mormon polygamist, died 31 March 1920 in Spanish Fork at the age of 88 years.  Charles Monk Jr. died 16 February 1952 in Big Horn County, Wyoming at the age of 96.Charles Monk Sr.

Charles Monk Jr 1855-1952