My 3rd Great Grandfather - Edward Bunker, Sr.: Perpetual Pioneer

Edward Bunker, Sr.
1822 - 1901

This is a great tribute to my third-great grandfather, Edward Bunker, Sr., prepared by my own father, Jim Hartley. There are lots of lessons one can glean from this. However, I am particularly impressed with my great grandfather's sensitivity to divine guidance. Below are my father's words: 

Edward Bunker, Sr.: Perpetual Pioneer

Driven by a deep sense of mission and religious devotion, Edward Bunker, Sr. was a perpetual pioneer, who never seemed able to completely settle down. During his lifetime, Edward—

·       Crossed the 1,000-mile Midwestern prairies 5 times.

·       Enlisted in the U.S. Army for a 2,000 mile infantry march during the Mexican-American War.

·       After demobilization from the Army in San Diego, California, traveled 1,600 miles to retrieve his wife and son in Nebraska and take them to Ogden, Utah. (While traveling east through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, he helped bury the remains of the Donner Party’s rear wagon group).

·       Crossed the Atlantic Ocean twice to spend 3 years serving “without purse or script” as a Mormon missionary in England, Wales, and Scotland.

·       Led a handcart company of 320 Welsh immigrants across the rugged Midwestern prairie to their Zion in the Great Salt Lake Valley.

·       Helped settle six LDS pioneer communities including Ogden, Toquerville, and Santa Clara in Utah; Clover Valley and Bunkerville in Nevada; and Colonia Morelos in Sonora, Mexico.

·       Served three times as a Mormon bishop for a cumulative total of 26 years.

·       Faithfully entered plural marriage (polygamy) and supported three wives and 28 children. (Six of the children did not live to adulthood.)

Edward Bunker planted, cultivated, and built where no one had before. He survived persecutions, blizzards, floods, droughts, famines, epidemics, near-starvation, Indian raids, and even a vicious attack by a large herd of wild bulls. He negotiated with Indians, arranged coveted water rights with competing communities, and was an inspired religious leader and “father” to hundreds. He staunchly defended his beliefs when confronted with politics, practices, and doctrines that he could not support in good conscience.

In 1882, when Edward Bunker was nearly 60 years old, poor health was finally getting the best of him. He decided that he needed an extended trip into the Arizona Territory to regain his strength and, while there, he would visit relatives and friends. He was joined by his first wife, Emily (who was then 54 years old), their son Silas (nearly 19 years old), their daughter Loella (nearly 16 years old), and their youngest son, George (age 9). On April 4^th 1882, they loaded two wagons and embarked on a southerly route to Mesa.

After spending the summer in Mesa, they traveled for an additional 16 months visiting relatives and friends in at least 3 locations deep in the southeastern portion of Arizona—San Pedro (near St. David), San Bernardino Ranch (near Douglas, on the Mexican border), and Sulphur Springs Valley (about 50 miles northeast of San Pedro). Along the way, Edward also revisited some of the locations he passed through nearly 40 years earlier as an Army volunteer in the Mormon Battalion. But their travels in that region placed them squarely in the paths of outlaws, cattle rustlers, livestock smugglers, and renegade Indians.

In 1872, the U.S. Army drove the fierce Chiricahua [“Cheer-ah-COW-wa”] Apaches off of their traditional lands and forced them onto the San Carlos Indian Reservation near the southeastern border of Arizona. But, many of the Apaches refused to be confined there. Over the years, they staged numerous vicious attacks in eastern Arizona, western New Mexico, and northern Mexico. 

In 1882, Brigadier General George Crook was dispatched by the U.S. Army to subdue the Apaches and return them to the San Carlos Reservation. It took him 4 years to accomplish his mission. In his Resumé: Operations Against Apache Indians. 1882-1886, General Crook published this report on the Apaches:

“…the Chiricahua were the wildest and fiercest Indians on the continent; savage and brutal by instinct, they hesitated no more at taking human life, when excited by passion, than in killing a rabbit…. All efforts to conquer these tigers of the human race by force of arms, had been fruitless.”

In 1882 and 1883, when the Bunkers ventured near the San Carlos Apache Reservation, renegades by the names of Geronimo, Chief Juh, Na-tio-tish, Mangus, Natchez, and Chihuahua, were on the warpath throughout the region. They ruthlessly killed unsuspecting white and Mexican settlers and travelers, and stole their cattle, horses, and weapons.

In 1881, a small LDS settlement was started in Sulphur Springs Valley, less than 50 miles from the reservation. But, because of the danger from the Apaches, the settlement was abandoned in 1884. Despite the dangers, in 1883, Edward and his family spent several months there. Perhaps it was while traveling near Sulphur Springs that the Bunkers had their close encounter with the Apaches.

In the hot Arizona desert, the morning and evening hours were best for wagon journeys. One day during their travels, after stopping for supper, the Bunkers intended to travel a few more hours to a known watering spot where they would camp for the night. They loaded up both wagons. Everything was ready and everyone but Edward and young George were seated in the wagons. Suddenly, Edward announced, “We will not go on tonight.” After vigorous complaints and objections from Emily and the children, Edward repeated, “We are not going tonight.” That settled it. They unloaded the wagons and made camp where they were.

The next morning they moved on. A few hours later, as they approached the watering place where they had intended to camp the previous night, they saw smoke rising in the air. They found that Apaches had murdered a group of white people who had camped there and set fire to their wagons. The Bunkers were stunned by the realization that they would also have been victims of the massacre if Edward had not followed that strong impression the night before that told him to stay where they were.

Edward was a man who was close to God, and he had spent decades listening to those kinds of promptings. He knew from experience to follow them, even when they didn’t make any sense at the moment. By following this impression, he saved the lives of his family.

After 21 months in the Arizona Territory, Edward, Emily, Silas, Loelle, and George returned home safely to Bunkerville, arriving the day after Christmas, 1883.

But the fire of the pioneering spirit continued to blaze in Edward. In 1901, when Edward was 79, he and Emily, along with their son George and his family, moved from Bunkerville, Nevada to settle in a new LDS colony in Sonora, Mexico some 600 miles away. Sadly, later that same year, Edward died from a sudden illness and was buried at Colonia Morelos in Old Mexico, a pioneer to the end.

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Adapted by James E. Hartley from the Edward Bunker Family Association’s  Bunker Family History, Vol. 1, 1957 (edited by Josephine B. Walker, Delta, Utah); Gaylen K. Bunker’s Edward Bunker, A Study in Commitment and Leadership (2^nd Edition, 2011); FamilySearch, and various non-family historical resources.