Bunkerville, Nevada 2002
2010
Bunkerville, Nevada was an early Mormon settlement dedicated to raising cotton. Direct ancestor Ithamer Thomas Sprague agreed to go there to colonize. Bunkerville was the only successful early settlement to live The United Order. When Ithamer knew that he was going to this part of the country, not far from present-day St. George, Utah in Washington County, his wife Sarah Stedwell did not want to go. Ithamer sought and received the help of law enforcement who took Sarah’s five children with Ithamer away from her and gave them to him. He took them to Bunkerville where those children who have kept a record say that they did not see their mother again. One daughter, direct ancestor Sarah Sprague Bates saw her mother when her mother was eighty years of age.
An original portrait of Ithamer Sprague and history about Bunkerville, Nevada can be found in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum in St. George, Washington County, Utah.