William Sisson Champlin

1. Birth & Family Background

William Sisson Champlin was born on 16 April 1794 in Shelburne, Chittenden County, Vermont, the third of nine children born to Joseph Champlin and Mercy Sisson. He entered the world during a turbulent moment in American history—just five years after George Washington's first inauguration, as the young republic struggled to define itself against the backdrop of revolution spreading across Europe.

Shelburne in the 1790s was frontier country, carved from the wilderness along the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. The town had been chartered just three decades earlier, and families like the Champlins were part of the steady stream of New Englanders pushing northward into Vermont's rich agricultural lands. The air would have smelled of wood smoke and pine pitch, the sounds of axes ringing through forests as settlers cleared land for farms and homesteads.

William grew up alongside his siblings Robert, Frederick, Lucy, Laverna, Anna, and three others. In a household of eleven, space would have been tight and responsibilities shared early. Vermont winters were brutal, with snow drifting higher than a child's head, and every member of the family contributed to survival—hauling wood, tending livestock, preserving food for the long months of cold.

His mother Mercy's maiden name, Sisson, became William's middle name—a common practice that honored maternal lineage and strengthened family bonds across generations. This naming tradition suggests a family that valued its connections and heritage, even as they carved new lives from the wilderness.

2. Childhood & Youth in Vermont

Young William would have grown up with the rhythms of rural New England life shaping his days. He would have woken before dawn to the lowing of cattle and the creak of floorboards as his parents rose to begin the endless work of a frontier farm. Breakfast would have been simple—cornmeal mush, perhaps, or johnnycakes with maple syrup tapped from the trees surrounding their homestead.

Education in frontier Vermont was sporadic at best. If William attended school, it would have been in a one-room schoolhouse during the winter months when farm work slowed. He would have learned his letters by candlelight, scratching on slate tablets, sharing benches with children of all ages. But the real education came from watching and doing—learning to read weather patterns, to judge timber, to work with his hands.

The early 1800s brought increasing tension between the United States and Britain. Trade restrictions and impressment of American sailors created economic hardship even in inland Vermont, while rumors of war filtered through taverns and meeting houses. For a boy approaching manhood, these distant conflicts would soon become intensely personal.

3. Military Service in the War of 1812

When war erupted between the United States and Britain in 1812, William Champlin answered his country's call. At eighteen years old, he enlisted for military service in the War of 1812, serving from 1812 to 1815.

Vermont occupied a peculiar position during this conflict. Sharing a long border with British Canada, the state found itself on the front lines of potential invasion. Lake Champlain, just miles from William's birthplace, became a crucial theater of war. Vermont militiamen and regular soldiers patrolled the border, guarded supply lines, and prepared for British incursions that could come at any moment.

For a young blacksmith—the trade William would carry throughout his life—military service offered both hardship and opportunity. Armies required constant metalwork: horseshoes needed fitting, wagon wheels needed iron tires, weapons needed repair. Whether William served as a combat soldier or in a support capacity, he would have witnessed the chaos and camaraderie of military life.

The decisive Battle of Plattsburgh in September 1814, fought on the waters and shores of Lake Champlain, ended the British threat to Vermont. If William was present—and his proximity to the action makes it likely—he would have heard the thunder of naval guns echoing across the lake, watched smoke rise from burning ships, and felt the relief that swept through the region when American forces prevailed.

The war's end in 1815 left William, now twenty-one, a veteran. He had seen violence and death, had learned discipline and endurance. These lessons would serve him well in the decades to come, though he could not have imagined the horrors that still awaited him.

4. Marriage & Family Formation

On 28 March 1816, at age twenty-one, William married Molly Ring in Hartland, Windsor County, Vermont. Hartland lay south of his birthplace, suggesting either that Molly's family resided there or that William had relocated after his military service. Spring weddings were common in rural New England—the worst of winter had passed, roads were becoming passable, and the demanding work of planting season had not yet begun.

Molly Ring became William's partner in a life that would span decades and thousands of miles. Her name suggests English ancestry, and like William, she likely came from hardy New England stock accustomed to hard work and uncertainty. Marriage in early nineteenth-century America was both a romantic and economic partnership—two people joining their labor, their hopes, and their futures.

William and Molly would have twelve children together—five sons and seven daughters—born between 1816 and 1837. This large family was typical for the era, when children represented both blessing and labor force. Each birth brought joy and risk; maternal and infant mortality remained high, and Molly would have faced the dangers of childbirth twelve times over two decades.

As a blacksmith, William possessed skills that were essential to any community. The ring of hammer on anvil would have become the soundtrack of his children's youth—the hiss of hot iron quenched in water, the acrid smell of coal smoke, the glow of the forge illuminating his workshop in the early morning hours. His children would have grown up watching their father shape raw metal into useful objects: plowshares, hinges, nails, horseshoes, tools of every description.

5. Westward Migration & Conversion

By 1830, William and his growing family had relocated to Brooklyn, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. This move represented a significant journey of over two hundred miles from Vermont, following the pattern of countless American families pushing westward in search of opportunity. Susquehanna County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, offered fertile farmland and growing communities hungry for skilled tradesmen.

At thirty-six years old, with a wife and numerous children depending on him, William would have weighed this decision carefully. Leaving Vermont meant leaving extended family, familiar landscapes, and established connections. But the promise of cheaper land and new customers for his blacksmith trade proved compelling.

It was during these years that William and Molly encountered the message of the Latter-day Saint missionaries. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, was spreading rapidly through the northeastern states. Its message of restored Christianity, modern revelation, and gathering to Zion resonated with many Americans seeking spiritual certainty in an age of religious ferment.

For William, a War of 1812 veteran who had already demonstrated willingness to sacrifice for his beliefs, the decision to join this new faith would prove fateful. The Latter-day Saints faced intense persecution, and joining their ranks meant accepting the possibility of violence, displacement, and loss.

6. Missouri & the Haun's Mill Massacre

By 1838, William and his family had gathered with other Latter-day Saints in Missouri, settling near Haun's Mill in Caldwell County. The journey from Pennsylvania to Missouri—over a thousand miles—would have taken weeks by wagon, crossing mountains and rivers, camping beside the road, watching the landscape transform from eastern forests to midwestern prairies.

Missouri was supposed to be a place of refuge. Church leaders had designated it as a gathering place, and thousands of Latter-day Saints had converged on the region, establishing farms and communities. But tensions with existing settlers ran high. Religious differences, economic competition, and political fears created a volatile atmosphere that erupted into open conflict in the fall of 1838.

On October 30, 1838, William Champlin was present at Haun's Mill when Missouri militia forces attacked the Latter-day Saint settlement. He was forty-four years old.

The afternoon had begun like any other. The blacksmith shop—where William may well have worked, given his trade—stood at the center of the small community. Children played while women prepared evening meals. Men went about their labors, unaware that approximately 240 armed militiamen were approaching.

At approximately four o'clock in the afternoon, the Missouri Militia rode into the Haun's Mill community. David Evans, a community leader, ran toward the militia waving his hat and calling for peace. His desperate plea for parley went unheeded.

Chaos erupted as gunfire shattered the autumn air. Most women and children fled into the woods to the south, their screams mixing with the crack of rifles. The men—including William—sought shelter in the blacksmith shop, not realizing it would become a death trap.

The widely spaced logs of the blacksmith shop enabled the attackers to fire directly inside the building. The militia gave no quarter, discharging approximately one hundred rifles into the structure. According to militia accounts, they fired seven rounds totaling upward of 1,600 shots during the attack, which lasted thirty to sixty minutes.

Inside that shop, William witnessed scenes that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Men he knew—neighbors, fellow believers, friends—fell around him as bullets tore through the gaps between logs. The air filled with gun smoke, screams, and the metallic smell of blood. Bodies crumpled to the earthen floor.

William Champlin survived by "playing possum"—lying motionless among the dead and wounded, feigning death as militiamen walked among the bodies.

Imagine the terror of those moments. William would have controlled his breathing, forced his body to remain utterly still, while armed men stepped over and around him. He would have heard the conversations of the killers, including the chilling words spoken over ten-year-old Sardius Smith.

William heard a militiaman known as "Glaze, of Carroll County" put his musket against young Sardius Smith's skull and kill the boy. He heard William Reynolds justify the murder by saying, "Nits will make lice, and if he had lived, he would have become a Mormon."

These words—spoken over a child's body, heard while pretending to be dead—seared themselves into William's memory. He lay among corpses, listening to men debate whether to murder children, unable to move, unable to help, forced to witness atrocity while his own survival hung by the thinnest thread.

William was eventually discovered alive, held captive for several days, then released.

The massacre claimed seventeen Latter-day Saint lives, including Sardius Smith (age 10), Charles Merrick (age 9), and elderly Thomas McBride (age 62), who was shot after surrendering and then hacked with a corn knife. Fifteen more were wounded. William was among the few uninjured survivors. The morning after the massacre, survivors faced the grim task of burying their dead. Fourteen bodies were slid from a plank into a large unfinished dry well and covered with straw and a thin layer of dirt—a hasty mass grave necessitated by the survivors' fear that the militia might return.

7. Exile & the Nauvoo Years

On 9 May 1839, William stood before officials in Adams County, Illinois, to file a claim for redress. He sought $105 in compensation for losses suffered due to Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs' extermination order.

That sum—equivalent to several months' wages for a skilled tradesman—represented everything his family had lost: tools, livestock, household goods, perhaps the modest home they had built with their own hands. The claim was largely symbolic; few Latter-day Saints ever received compensation for their losses in Missouri. But filing it was an act of witness, a formal declaration that injustice had occurred.

By 1840, William and his family had settled in Hancock County, Illinois. They would reside in Nauvoo, the new Latter-day Saint gathering place, from 1839 to 1846.

Nauvoo rose from swampland along the Mississippi River to become one of the largest cities in Illinois. For William, now in his mid-forties, it represented a chance to rebuild. His blacksmith skills were desperately needed as the city grew—every building required nails and hinges, every horse required shoes, every farmer required tools.

The Nauvoo years brought relative peace and prosperity, though shadows of Missouri lingered. William would have worked his forge, raised his children, and participated in the religious life of the community. He watched the Nauvoo Temple rise on the bluff above the city, its limestone walls representing the Saints' determination to build something permanent despite repeated displacement.

On 6 February 1846, at age fifty-one, William received his endowment in the Nauvoo Illinois Temple.

This sacred ceremony, performed just weeks before the Saints would be forced to abandon their city, held profound significance for Latter-day Saint believers. The temple had been completed through enormous sacrifice, and receiving ordinances there represented the culmination of years of faith and devotion.

Within weeks of William's temple experience, the exodus from Nauvoo began. Once again, the Champlins would be refugees, driven from their homes by hostile neighbors and governmental indifference.

8. The Journey West

By 1850, William and his family were living in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, part of the staging area where Latter-day Saints gathered before crossing the plains to Utah. At fifty-six years old, William had already endured more displacement than most people experience in a lifetime. Now he faced the prospect of a thousand-mile journey across prairies, deserts, and mountains.

The years in Iowa were years of preparation and waiting. Families accumulated supplies, repaired wagons, and gathered livestock for the journey ahead. William's blacksmith skills would have been in constant demand—repairing wagon wheels, forging spare parts, shoeing horses and oxen for the long trek.

In 1852, at age fifty-eight, William emigrated to Utah Territory with an unknown wagon train company.

The overland journey typically took four to five months, crossing the vast expanse of Nebraska, Wyoming, and finally descending through the mountain passes into the Salt Lake Valley. For a man approaching sixty, the journey was grueling. Days began before dawn and ended after dark. The diet was monotonous—beans, bacon, and biscuits. Dust coated everything. Rivers had to be forded, mountains climbed, and always the fear of accident, illness, or attack.

But William had survived the War of 1812. He had survived Haun's Mill. He had survived exile from Missouri and exile from Illinois. The plains crossing, however difficult, was simply another trial to be endured.

9. Final Years in Utah

By 1860, William had settled in Lehi, Utah Territory. Lehi, located about thirty miles south of Salt Lake City, was a farming community nestled in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. For William, now sixty-six years old, it represented something he had sought his entire adult life: a place where he could practice his faith in peace.

The Utah years brought a measure of stability that had eluded him for decades. The Saints controlled their own territory, governed themselves, and built communities without the constant threat of mob violence. William could work his forge, attend to his family, and worship without fear.

On 12 March 1860, at age sixty-five, William received a patriarchal blessing from John Murdock in Lehi. Patriarchal blessings are sacred pronouncements given to Latter-day Saints, offering guidance, promises, and declarations of lineage. For William, receiving this blessing near the end of his life would have provided spiritual comfort and closure.

His parents had both passed away years earlier—his father Joseph died in 1848, when William was fifty-four, and his mother Mercy followed in 1849, when he was fifty-five. These losses, occurring during the tumultuous years between Nauvoo and Utah, meant William likely could not attend their burials or properly mourn their passing.

10. Death & Burial

William Sisson Champlin died on 29 January 1861 in Lehi, Utah Territory. He was sixty-seven years old.

He passed away on the eve of the American Civil War, which would erupt just months later. The violence he had witnessed at Haun's Mill—the sectarian hatred, the dehumanization of enemies, the murder of children—would soon engulf the entire nation. But William would not live to see it.

His death was noted in an obituary published in the Deseret News on 6 February 1861, page 8. This public acknowledgment of his passing suggests he was known and respected in his community—a veteran of two wars, a survivor of massacre, a faithful member of his church.

William was buried in what is now Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Park in Lehi, Utah. His grave lies in the land he had crossed a continent to reach, among the people he had suffered alongside for decades. Unlike the hasty mass burial he had witnessed at Haun's Mill, his interment was proper, peaceful, and surrounded by family and friends.

11. Legacy

William Sisson Champlin's life spanned one of the most turbulent periods in American history. Born during George Washington's presidency, he died as Abraham Lincoln prepared to lead the nation through civil war. He witnessed the young republic's growing pains, fought in its second war for independence, and experienced firsthand the religious persecution that would drive tens of thousands westward.

He left behind twelve children—five sons and seven daughters—and through them, generations of descendants who carry his blood and his story.

His survival at Haun's Mill was not merely luck. Playing possum while murderers walked among the bodies required extraordinary nerve, the kind forged through years of hardship and tested in the crucible of war. The eighteen-year-old who marched off to fight the British in 1812 became the forty-four-year-old who lay motionless among corpses, and finally the sixty-seven-year-old who died peacefully in the mountain community he had helped build.

The words he heard that terrible October afternoon—"Nits will make lice"—represented the worst of human nature, the capacity to dehumanize and destroy. But William's life represented something else: the capacity to endure, to rebuild, to maintain faith despite overwhelming evidence that the world could be cruel beyond imagining.

He was a blacksmith, shaping metal with fire and force. He was a soldier, a husband, a father of twelve. He was a refugee multiple times over, driven from home after home by hatred and violence. And he was a survivor, one of the few who walked away from Haun's Mill to tell the tale.

His descendants inherit not just his genes but his story—a story of resilience, faith, and the unbreakable human spirit that refuses to be extinguished, no matter how dark the hour.