[MORMON] Steptoe Expedition, Rufus Ingall's Attorney's Licence

"One of our party Captain Ingalls has been indicted and is now being tried in the City for abducting a pretty little girl – but it is damned absurd. She wanted to go." - Lt. Mowry of the Steptoe Expedition

Ornate, embellished manuscript certificate licensing (then) Captain Rufus Ingalls' ability to practice law in Great Salt Lake County in red and black ink. Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, 1 January 1855. Issued by the Honorable John F. Kinney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Utah Territory. Signed by WI Appleby, clerk.

Intriguing document certifying Captain Rufus Ingalls' ability to practice law in the Utah Territory, which he may have needed to defend himself against the charge of abducting a 13-year-old Mormon girl to marry.

This document was issued during Ingalls' time as the Steptoe Expedition's quartermaster. The Steptoe Expedition was led by Brevet Lt. Col. Edward Jenner Steptoe and had three principal aims: to deliver supplies to Pacific Coast, to investigate the October 1853 massacre of Capt. John W. Gunnison’s topographical engineering party that occured along the Sevier River, and to determine a better route from the Salt Lake Valley to California. While stationed in Salt Lake City, soldiers in Steptoe's Expedition caused civil unrest by engaging in public drunkenness, gambling, brawls, and inappropriate relationships with Mormon women (as well as prostitutes). The visitors activities so disturbed Utah Territory Governor Brigham Young, that he is said to have vowed to destroy Salt Lake City before he would allow the US Army there again.

One of the more notable incidents that caused tension between the citizens of Salt Lake and soldiers was the case of Captain Rufus Ingalls, who was accused of attempting to take a 13-year-old Mormon girl, Rachell Nowell, with him to California. Ingalls was arrested and indicted for abducting an underage female child. Ingalls would surrender Rachel to her mother, writing apologetically "your daughter returns to you as pure in every respect as when she left the City.” He was prosecuted by a legal team comprised of Albert Carrington, editor of the “Deseret News,” and Hosea Stout, judge advocate of the Nauvoo Legion. Ingalls’ defense attorney was Almon W. Babbitt, Utah’s delegate in Congress. Though the case was dropped, Ingalls was involved in an altercation over his behavior just weeks after his release near Carson Valley with Mormon Apostle, Orson Hyde. Ingalls drew a pistol on Hyde and may have killed him had it not been for the speedy intervention of Col. Steptoe, who de-escalated the situation.

Several hundred women reportedly left Salt Lake City with soldiers of the Steptoe Expedition, but Rachell Nowell was not one of them. The army's disruptive time in the "city of the saints" is often credited with being part of a series of events that culminated in the Utah War (1857-58).

Rufus Ingalls (1818-1893) was a career military officer best remembered for being Quartermaster General of the United States Army during the Civil War. His logistical acumen is believed to contributed greatly to Union victory.

[Mormon, Utah, Mormons, Latter Day Saint movement, Latter-day Saints, Manuscripts, Documents, Ephemera, Militaria, Women's History, Sex History, Sex Workers, Utah War, Western Expansion]