Chapter Three
The Battalion Man
Jeduthan Hardy Averett, 1816–1902
At a Glance
- Born
- June 12, 1816, North Carolina
- Died
- January 7, 1902
- Wife
- Holly Jane Tingle (married August 11, 1836, Alabama)
- Parents
- Hardy Averett & Drucilla Meador
- Religion
- Converted to LDS (Mormon) faith, 1843
- Military
- Mormon Battalion, U.S. Army, 1846–1847
- Migration
- Utah Pioneer, arrived 1852
- Your relation
- Jerry’s 3rd great-grandfather on his mother Fern’s side
A Carolina Boy Goes West
Jeduthan Hardy Averett was born in North Carolina in 1816, the son of Hardy Averett and Drucilla Meador, and the grandson — on his father’s side — of Jeduthan Averett Sr. and his wife Rebecca, whose maiden name was Stephens.
The family moved south to Alabama, where Jeduthan married Holly Jane Tingle in 1836 at age twenty. They were young, in a new land, building a life. Then, in 1843, something happened that changed the trajectory of their entire family for generations: they joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The LDS Church was barely thirteen years old. It was controversial, persecuted, and migrating west under pressure from hostile neighbors. To join it in 1843 was not a comfortable choice. It meant aligning yourself with a movement that much of American society actively despised. Jeduthan and Holly did it anyway.
The Mormon Battalion, 1846–1847
In the summer of 1846, the United States was at war with Mexico. The LDS community, under their prophet Brigham Young, had just been expelled from their city of Nauvoo, Illinois, and were preparing the largest organized overland migration in American history — a march to the distant Utah Territory, then still part of Mexico.
Into this moment came a strange request from the U.S. government: would the Mormon people contribute 500 men to march to California as part of the Army of the West?
It was, on its face, an awkward proposition. The U.S. government had done little to protect the Mormons from the violence that had driven them from their homes. Now it was asking them for soldiers. Brigham Young agreed — partly for the pay and supplies, and partly to demonstrate loyalty and goodwill to the nation that had expelled them.
Jeduthan Hardy Averett was one of the 500 men who volunteered.
The march itself was grueling. The battalion moved through desert, mountains, and scrubland with inadequate food and supplies. They fought no significant human enemies but survived heat, thirst, disease, and terrain that broke lesser men. When they arrived in California, they helped secure American control over the Southwest — territory that would become California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.
Jeduthan received his discharge in California. He made his way back east and, eventually, continued the trek to Utah. He arrived as a pioneer in 1852, joining the growing settlement in the Salt Lake Valley.1
Members of the Mormon Battalion who were discharged in California in 1847 were camped near Sutter’s Fort when gold was discovered in January 1848. Some Mormon Battalion veterans were among the very first people to find gold in the California hills — though Brigham Young urged his people to return to Utah rather than join the Gold Rush.
A Long Life in Utah
Jeduthan Hardy Averett lived to age 85, dying on January 7, 1902 — long enough to see Utah become the 45th state of the Union in 1896, the very state his marching had helped make possible.
The 1852 pioneer journey itself was no small undertaking. Church records show that when Jeduthan departed on May 23, 1852, he traveled with his wife Holly Jane and at least three of their children — including two-year-old William Clark and ten-year-old Jeduthan Hardy Jr. They crossed the Wyoming plains, passed Independence Rock on the Sweetwater River, climbed over South Pass in the Rockies, and descended into the Salt Lake Valley. Bringing a toddler across 1,300 miles of wilderness by wagon was an act of extraordinary faith and determination.2
His daughter Elizabeth Jane Averett, born in Salt Lake City in 1854, married John William Blackett and settled in Springville, Utah. Their son Robert Earl Blackett was born in 1886. Robert’s daughter Fern married John Paul Johnston. And that is how a Mormon Battalion veteran’s bloodline flows directly to you.
Where the Averetts Come From
The Averett family’s roots in America reach even deeper than Jeduthan. Genealogical records trace the line back through Hardy Averett to Jeduthan Averett Sr. and Rebecca Stephens, and further still to a Christopher Averitt who arrived in Virginia from Cornwall, England, around 1630 — two years before Anne Hutchinson, a decade before the Salem Witch Trials, and 146 years before the Declaration of Independence.
Your Averett line is, in other words, a founding American family line — present on this continent for nearly four centuries.