Nephi James Bates 1848-1921
2010
Nephi James Bates was born to Mary Ann Jones Jacaway and James Bates. Nephi’s mother was a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints and was living in the city of New Orleans at the time of James’ birth. She had children from her first marriage to Fields Jacaway, who had died an untimely death. The story is that when Nephi was about 18 months of age, his father James left New Orleans for St. Louis to find work. There, he contracted cholera in the great epidemic of 1849 and died. There is no record of James Bates outside of the memory of Mary Ann Jones Jacaway Bates. There is no formal record of his death nor of Nephi James Bates’ birth.
In 1850, just months after the death of James Bates, Mary Ann Jones married Thomas Davies. Together, Mary Ann and her children from her first marriage and Nephi whose father was James Bates and Thomas Davies and his children joined the Saints in the Utah Valley. There, Mary Ann gave birth to three more children whose father was Thomas Davies. All of the children became the children of Thomas Davies in the religious and temporal sense.
As a young boy Nephi was known as Jamie. As a child he contracted measles which negatively affected his eyesight throughout his life. He was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints at the age of eight and remained a faithful member until his death. He was a musician and a poet. In 1870 he married Sarah Sprague, the daughter of Ithamer Sprague and Sarah Stedwell. Ithamer was from a New England family of Spragues who could be traced to the original three brothers who came to America in the early 1600s. Nephi and Sarah became the parents of 12 children. Ten years after his marriage to Sarah, he took a second wife named Sarah Ann Collings. Nephi and his second wife became the parents of four children.
Nephi became a Telegraph Operator after studying at the Fillmore Telegraph Office in Fillmore, Millard County, Utah. His first job in this line of work was in the town of Toquerville, in Washington County, Utah. His salary was $50 per month. Later, he was moved the the Monroe Telegraphy Office in Sevier County near the city of Richfield. In 1885, Nephi, along with 48 other men was arrested and imprisoned for having more than one wife at the same time. He spent three months in the penitentiary and was responsible for court costs. His personal journal survives and gives a more detailed account of his life and trials than is found in this summary.
His marriages to both Sarah Sprague and Sarah Ann Collings ended in divorce. In his old age, in the year of 1906, he married a widow named Julia Ellen King. She had daughters from her first marriage who took care of Nephi in his last years. While Nephi James Bates is buried in Idaho, the grave stone for his first wife Sarah Sprague Bates includes the information that he was her husband and that he is not buried with her, but in the Shelton City Cemetery in Rigby, Idaho. She is buried in the Monroe City Cemetery, Monroe, Sevier County, Utah.
Nephi lived during a very difficult time in the establishment of settlements in the Salt Lake Valley. He had a personal memory of the days when the crickets came in black clouds and covered the crops. After all of the settler’s efforts had failed to protect their crops, the seagulls came. Also in black clouds. Not known to ever eat crickets, they swooped down and devoured the crickets. They flew away from the fields and regurgitated the crickets and flew back for more. This continued until the crickets were gone. He also lived through and remembered the worries about the advance of Johnston’s Army which was sent by the government to take charge of the new settlements. He remembered the panic of the people when they learned about the advance and the preparations they made to abandon the city and burn it.
While Nephi did not give his son Nephi James Bates 1875-1958 a “junior” designation after his name, it is often used to distinguish between the two men. Nephi James Bates has significant posterity to the present day through both wives named Sarah. Our ancestral line is through his first wife Sarah Sprague and his son Nephi James Bates Junior who married Flora Louise Maiben.
The migration of Nephi James Bates
Louisiana to Utah to Idaho