Welcome Chapman - Settling Utah

Settling Utah

The Chapmans had their final child, a son named Welcome Chapman, Jr., in the Salt Lake Valley in Fall 1849. About the same time, Brigham Young asked Chapman to help colonize the Sanpitch (now Sanpete) Valley with Isaac Morley. They arrived in November 1849 and endured a harsh winter with little shelter. Chapman was part of the first militia of Manti and used his stone cutting skills to help construct the first fort. He was also among the first group of selectmen. The young colony experienced great difficulties, but gradually began to prosper.

On April 30, 1851, Brigham Young called Chapman to be part of the first High Council of the Manti Area Branch in Manti, Utah. On July 8, 1854, the High Council installed Chapman as the colony leader, replacing Isaac Morley, who had been "called to Salt Lake." The next day, the settlers unanimously approved him as their leader. Later that month, on July 27, a stake was organized and Chapman was chosen as its president. That same day, the Mormons baptized (or rebaptized) Chief Wakara into the LDS Church in Manti's City Creek, along with 120 other members of his tribe (103 males, 17 females).

Amelia was born into a family of seven girls and five boys on a flax farm in upstate New York. Her mother taught the girls reading and mathematics, as well as how to cord, spin and weave wool and linen. When the Chapmans first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, Amelia turned most of the housework over to her 12- and 14-year-old daughters while she focused on weaving linsey-woolsey cloth, which the young community badly needed. Contemporary accounts consider Amelia an excellent cook and housekeeper and an authority on herbal medicine. She served as a practical doctor and nurse to "neighbors for many miles around" and as a midwife. She assisted in the births of some of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was more educated than her husband, which helped him during his active public life. After the Chapmans relocated to Manti, Brigham Young and other authorities from Salt Lake made the Chapman home, which was better furnished than most neighbors, their headquarters when visiting Sanpete.

After Wakara died in 1855, his brother, Arapeen, succeeded him as war chief. Although the brief Wakara War was over, tensions between the Mormons and the Ute Indians in Sanpete still existed. In early 1857 Arapeen reported having a vision in which Wakara came to him with a message of peace. In the vision Wakara specifically instructed him to pass this message on to Chapman and two others. B.H. Roberts believed it was the peace that ensued that enabled Arapeen to accompany Brigham Young on an expedition to present-day Idaho, where Young made peace with the Bannocks.

In Manti, Chapman practiced plural marriage. He married Ann Mackey on October 5, 1855, and Catherine Stainer on March 5, 1856. He had a large family with each of these women, in addition to the family he had with Amelia. (He also possibly married two women who left him shortly thereafter.) Chapman was a founding owner of the San Pete Coal Company, incorporated by act of the Territorial Legislature on January 8, 1856.

After serving as the leader in Manti for eight years, Brigham Young called him to Salt Lake City to cut stone for the Salt Lake Temple, where Chapman often worked with a son at his side. At one point he worked alongside seven of them. He helped build the temple, "from the bottom to the top," through at least 1880, including during times the church could not pay. He earned supplemental income in Salt Lake City by cutting and hauling wood to Fort Douglas, where he sold it to the soldiers.

In either late November or early December 1893, at the age of 88, Chapman reportedly rode a horse bareback for three miles to build a chimney on the house of his third wife, Catherine. Chilled through after building the chimney and riding home again through the cold, he developed pneumonia. He died soon after in Fountain Green, Utah on December 9, 1893, and was buried in Manti.