Provo's wild bunch

"The women," Eames later wrote, "seeing our situation and expecting no better treatment, took to flight, taking their little ones along with them and running away from a scene of murder which it is impossible to portray."

Olive Eames (also Ames) ran and hid with the couple's children under a bluff in a little nook by the creek. Provo's future mayor wouldn't wait long to follow their flight.

"One young man standing immediately next to me was shot," he wrote. "Seeing no prospect before us but death . . . we thought it advisable for us to try to make our escape by running out of the shop and cross the mill dam."

Olive Eames witnessed his escape.

"No sooner had I concealed myself (under the bluff) than my husband, Mr. Ames, and old Father McBride ran past, hunting a place of concealment. He called to me as he passed, 'Have you all the children?' 'Yes,' I said, 'all four.'"

Ellis Eames later found a hole in the tail of his coat.

Not much is readily known about Eames' single term (1851-52) as Provo's mayor, but there are two interesting stories about him before he seemed to disappear from the history books that are contained in family records.

First, a defendant with a knife charged at Eames while he was serving with 14 others on a grand jury in March 1853. And later, the City Council voted in August 1853 to grant him "the right to make malt liquors or ale free of license."

Wild West, indeed.

Some historians thought Eames then disappeared from the record, which really meant that Utah and LDS historians lost track of him because he moved to California and left the LDS Church.

Family accounts show Eames took his two wives to San Bernardino, where he became the district attorney. It's clear he renounced polygamy, but a granddaughter's account is obviously overstated.

"My grandfather could not endure conditions there, as he did not believe in polygamy," Olive May Ames wrote. "Brigham had forced my grandfather to take another wife. It almost killed my grandmother but Brigham Young would have killed all of them as he was a complete dictator. My grandfather and grandmother in some way managed to get away. They made their way to San Bernardino. As soon as possible they sent the second wife back to her people in Utah."

Other ancestors portray it differently, saying it was the "second wife," Sarah Haskell, who left Eames after he joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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E-mail: twalch@desnews.com