I visited Grafton Cemetery the day after I’d hiked 10 miles through the Narrows in Zion National Park. The Virgin River’s crystal blue water and canyon walls dripping with ferns were a stark contrast from the dusty and dirty road leading into the ghost town of Grafton, Utah.
Although the river washed out most of the original 1860’s Mormon settlement, a few houses, schoolhouse, and cemetery remain. After exploring the remaining structures, my attention was drawn to the headstones and iron fencing. It was clear death came in rapid succession to those living there.
One of the first known graves is that of 9 year old Joseph Field who died in 1862 after being dragged by a spooked horse.
The joint marker of Loretta Russell and Elizabeth Woodbury recounts the tragedy of two young girls when they were killed while playing on an old cotton gin.
Others were taken by tuberculosis, old age, and friction with the Indians. When the Utah Territory was settled, it was already inhabited by Southern Paiute peoples. With the first arrivals the Indians were friendly and assisted them in working their lands and tending their flocks and herd, digging water ditches, cutting firewood, carrying water, finding plants for medicine and other similar chores. The markers with the names of “Willey”, “Puss”, and “Po-ink-um”, indicate the many years when both the old and new residents of this land lived in peace.
Eventually competition for land and resources led to disputes. These first settlers created resentment with the Indians because they brought many heads of cattle, horses and sheep which began to consume the Indians’ food source and this naturally led to hostilities and in 1866, the Utah Indian Wars began.
The most famous story is in part told in the small enclosed graves of Robert and Isabella Berry, and Robert’s brother Joseph. Shortly after Robert and Isabella buried their only baby, they, as well as Joseph, were murdered by Indians on April 2, 1866, while returning to their home.
Their bodies were taken to the schoolhouse in Grafton where Sarah York saw them and recorded this journal entry, “I went to the school house and the two men and the woman was laid out there. There didn’t seem to be anyone around so I walked in. There on a chair were the arrows that had been taken from their bodies. I don’t remember seeing their faces, but I stood there crying as if my heart would break.”
Sarah York lost four family members just months prior, buried next to the Berry family.
Many headstones are missing in the Grafton Cemetery; it’s believed up to 84 graves exist, but not all are marked or recorded.
