The Butchers of Bingham
In about 1852 Bill Hickman's 2nd oldest daughter Sarah Catherine (1835-1914) married Samuel Monroe Butcher (1828-1908). The newlyweds accompanied her father to Sacramento,California where their first three children were born; they returned to Utah about 1857. By the summer of 1873 they were operating a successful ranch on Bingham Creek near the mouth of the canyon, and the couple had 11 children whose ages ranged from 20 to 2 (they eventually had 13). In 1862 Samuel had taken a second wife, Mary Chadwick (1843-1896) and by the summer of 1873 they had 6 children, aged 9 to 2 (they eventually had 12). Little else would be known today about these Butcher families were it not for a holiday disagreement they had with some neighbors that involved guns.
If you're a Hickman, you may start out as you read this thinking Samuel was a terrible fellow, but he was disadvantaged by bad publicity, and his last name "Butcher" didn't help much (one headline read "The Butcher Butchery"). If this event had been as well known in the lore of the West as the OK Corral, Hollywood would certainly have made a Technicolor movie about it in the 1950s. It's no great loss that this didn't happen. They'd have hired John Wayne, when the obvious choice to play Samuel Butcher is Jimmy Stewart. The classic westerns also had the good guys wearing white hats and the bad guys wearing black. The Butchers and their neighbors were real people; they wore various shades of grey.
Click on an image below for more details:
Who was Gabriel Cotton?
Pull the trigger to learn about the Butcher-Cotton gun battle.
Want to visit the Butchers on their ranch?
Do you want to see a map of the area? For an 1873 map click here.
Would you like to search for Butcher or Cotton gravesites?
Meet Sarah and Samuel's children.
Want to meet some modern Butchers? Click here.
To read an 1890 interview with Samuel Butcher, click here.
To return to the Hickman Family index page, click here.
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This picture of Samuel Monroe and Sarah Catherine Butcher was probably taken at Sacramento in the early 1850s.
Provided by Marlene Butcher Gates.
