JOHN PERCIVAL LEE
26 Apr 1824 – 9 Apr 1907

John, my third great grandfather on my mother’s mother’s side, was born in Lincoln County, Tennessee to John Lee and Margaret Dundey. John’s father was a merchant who sold goods in a market stall which he leased in Fayetteville, Arkansas. John received a good education and became a school teacher, teaching first in the new Mormon settlement of San Bernadino. In 1857, the Mormon prophet Brigham Young called the Mormon colonists back to Utah. The Lee family then chose to settle in Beaver, Utah and purchased a large ranch called Hawthorne Dell, where they raised cattle. The money to buy the ranch and the cattle purportedly came from an inheritance Eliza received from her brother, Frederick, who was involved in the slave trade. John also taught school in Beaver. He was a large, fleshy man and his pupils nicknamed him “Pumkin Lee”, so he was soon called that by everyone. One of his pupils said “He taught by the rule of the hickory stick. He never spared the rod. One first looked around the room each morning was to see how many switches were piled in the corner to help our educational advancement that day. There were always plenty!” In Oct 1866, the family ranch was brazenly attacked by Indians who drove off the family cattle and attempted to burn their house down. One of their ranch hands, Joseph Lillywhite, was injured in an exchange of gunfire and John shot and killed several Indians during the skirmish that ensued. Two of the young children escaped the compound and ran eight miles to town in order to get the help necessary to eventually end the siege. The family never completely recovered financially from the attack. In 1867, John went on a southern states Mormon mission. In 1868, he entered into plural marriage by taking a second wife, Margaret Stuart Pope Hunter, a first cousin of Eliza, his first wife. For a few years thereafter, he lived primarily with Margaret, right next door to Eliza. By 1880, John was estranged from both of his wives and the census shows him living alone. In 1886, John married another woman, Altamiah Sophia Billingsley, and the two moved to Thatcher, Arizona the following year, where John remained until his death at age 82.