Arza Erastus Hinckley – Brief Life Sketch

ARZA ERASTUS HINCKLEY

Arza Erastus Hinckley was born August 15, 1826 in Leeds County in eastern Ontario, Canada.  His grandfather Nathaniel Hinckley, had fought the British in the Revolutionary War and his father, also named Nathaniel, was an officer in the War of 1812 against the Great Britain.

Arza’s father, Nathaniel Hinckley, died of tuberculosis in 1831, when Arza was 5, necessitating that he and a couple of older brothers go to live with their maternal grandparents, the Judds.  In 1836 the Judds encountered Mormon missionaries and joined the Church.  A year later Arza left Canada with some of the Judds to escape the suppression of a rebellion against British rule by American immigrants to Canada.

In 1838, Arza’s party headed to Missouri and he was baptized along the route in Illinois.  He arrived in Missouri in time to witness, as a 12 year old boy, the persecutions in that state.  He moved to Illinois in 1839 and lived in the Bloomfield and Springfield areas, tending corn.  It was not until 1842 that he arrived in Nauvoo, where he recorded in his diary that he heard Joseph Smith preach many times and always found it inspiring.  In 1845 he started to work on the temple so it could be completed before the saints headed west. 

Arza crossed Iowa with the vanguard group of saints to Council Bluffs where he assisted in building a ferry and loading wagons to cross the Missouri River until he enlisted in Company B of the Mormon Battalion, noting in his diary that President Young had told them to go and be faithful saints and soldiers and they would return to the bosom of the Church and their friends.

They journey to Santa Fe was arduous as they were destitute of funds and had many trials and hardships on the way.  Becoming ill with Mountain fever in Santa Fe, Arza left for Pueblo, Colorado, with the sick detachment.  They traversed mountains full of snow and weather so cold their feet, socks, and shoes were frozen together.  Arriving in Pueblo on December 22, 1846, Arza noted that it was “2,925 miles for me in 1846.”

The following spring, Arza and others traveled north to the Platte River, hoping to meet up with the first pioneer group headed by Brigham Young.  They found the trail and followed west a few days behind the main group, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley July 29, 1847.  A couple of months later, Arza headed back east to Winter Quarters and ultimately to Missouri where he found his brother Ira (the grandfather of Gordon B. Hinckley), who had stayed behind to tend their mother and her mother.  It was three years before he returned to Utah, this time with a freight wagon train.

Now an experienced teamster, Arza became a foreman under Daniel H. Wells (for whom the town of Daniel, Utah, was named) charged with caring for the Church stable of horses, mules, the teams and teamsters, the wagons, and the carriages.  He became the personal driver for Brigham Young and it was in this capacity that he headed east several years later to help rescue the Willie and Martin handcart companies.

He traveled often with Brigham Young as the Church leader went about the West organizing settlements of the Saints.  He guarded President Young’s office one night a week, was a city policeman, and a cavalryman in the Minute Men (the Utah Territory military militia).  In his spare time he built bridges and houses, provided telegraph poles for the new transcontinental telegraph line, protected the telegraph line from hostile Indians, and looked after Daniel Wells’ business when Wells went on a mission to England in 1863.

In 1863 Arza defended a 14 year-old boy from US soldiers going up Parley’s Canyon who then proceeded to beat Arza near to death.  While surviving, he took a long time to recover and suffered the effects for the rest of his life.

In 1866 he reprieved his handcart rescue, this time leading a relief wagon train to meet westward bound Mormon wagon trains that had been attacked by Indians.  One of the children in these trains was B.H. Roberts, who noted in his biography years later that the relief train was “led by Arza E. Hinckley, a man of seasoned compassion.”

In the late 1860s Arza moved his family to Coalville where he directed some of the church coal mines in the vicinity and was named by the territory legislature as probate judge of Summit County, which was described as deeply in debt, with five illegal toll gates on the highways, no public works, the county warrants worthless, and the court in ridicule.  He proceeded to right all these problems and the Union Pacific Railroad gave Summit County under Arza’s leadership credit for having the best order of any county on the railroad line.

While doing all this Arza survived an attack of small pox and his partner’s theft of the funds to pay a work force for helping build the transcontinental railroad in that part of the territory.  He paid the workers from his own funds and never saw or heard from the partner again.

In the 1870s Arza was asked by his brother Ira to help in the construction of Cove Fort in central Utah and later to manage it.  From this location he would travel to St. George when the temple there was opened to do temple work for his ancestors, of whom he was quite knowledgeable, his knowledge going all the way back to Samuel Hinckley’s arrival in 1634.

In 1882 while on a visit to Salt Lake City, Arza was called on a mission to the Indian tribes in Arizona.  While there a dispute arose between whites and Indians, who claimed their lands had been stolen,… imagine that!  Arza investigated and a Bishop’s Court was held where the whites were ordered to pay for the land and a serious war was averted.

After his mission, he was returning to northern Utah in 1884 to collect his family to move them to Arizona.  He stopped in Salt Lake City to report his mission and his next moves.  Not so fast the first presidency said and called him to move his family to the tiny new community of Rexburg, Idaho, first settled by his wife’s brother, Thomas E. Ricks.  According to the family the first few winters in Rexburg were nightmares and as far as is know they still are.

At first he had claims to large amounts of land, but lost some to land jumpers and had another instance where a partner reneged on a deal and refused to honor a land deal, depriving Arza of a second farm.

In 1887 Arza was ordained a patriarch in the Church and devoted most of the rest of his life to this calling.  He was instrumental in organizing what became Ricks College.

During his life Arza had 3 wives, 23 children and 84 grandchildren.  His later years were spent in pain and discomfort from illness and his beating at the hand of soldiers in 1863.  He passed away on one of his wedding anniversaries in 1901 at the age of 75.  Literally and spiritually Arza Erastus Hinckley had traveled many more than the 2,925 miles he had walked in 1846.