Reddick Newton Allred: Mormon Battalion Quartermaster Sergeant Who Walked the Entire March and Lived to Write Its Account (1822–1905)

Reddick Newton Allred (1822–1905) served as Quartermaster Sergeant of the Mormon Battalion — one of the most critical administrative roles in the unit, responsible for the management of supplies, provisions, and equipment for nearly 500 men across a march of roughly 2,000 miles through desert, mountain, and wilderness.

Born in Tennessee in 1822 into the Allred family (a large and deeply committed LDS family — multiple brothers also served in the Battalion), Reddick enlisted alongside his brothers James Riley, James Tillman, and Reuben Warren Allred. Their collective enlistment was itself a statement of faith: an entire family of young men stepping forward at a moment when their community was in desperate need.

Allred's position as Quartermaster meant he saw, perhaps more than any ordinary private, the daily reality of the Battalion's physical state. He managed the rations that dwindled to one-third of normal. He accounted for the mules and oxen that died of thirst and exhaustion. He knew what was available when men were living on hides, intestines, and 'bird's eye soup.' And he saw, from that administrative vantage point, how consistently the supply held just enough — how the march that should by any military calculus have failed, did not.

Allred survived the entire march and went on to live a long life in Utah, dying in Chester, Sanpete County in 1905 at age 83. He left an autobiography in typescript form, recording his experiences and his faith. His family — the large Allred clan of Tennessee converts — became one of the foundational families of pioneer Utah.

The Allred brothers' collective service in the Mormon Battalion, led by their faith and their family loyalty, is one of the many quiet testimonies that the march was not just a military event but a covenant — sustained not by one remarkable leader alone, but by scores of ordinary, faithful men who simply refused to quit.