The Given Family Massacre

In the spring of eighteen sixty-five, John Given brought his wife Eliza and their four children into Thistle Valley and built a cabin just west of this spot. Two neighbors, Charles Brown and Charles Leah, were helping the family plow and plant when, early on the morning of May twenty-sixth, a band of Ute warriors attacked. John, Eliza, and their son were shot.

The three Given girls, ages nine, five, and three, were killed where they lay. Brown and Leah ran roughly six miles for help, but it came far too late. The family's cattle and belongings were taken, and the dead were carried to Fairview for burial.

This was the deadliest single attack of the Black Hawk War, the long and bitter conflict between Mormon settlers and Ute bands that scarred central Utah through the late eighteen sixties.