Ezra Hela Allen: Murdered at Tragedy Spring on the Anniversary of Joseph Smith's Martyrdom — June 27, 1848

Ezra Hela Allen was born July 28, 1814, in Madrid, St. Lawrence County, New York. He joined the Mormon Battalion in 1846 as a private in Company A and completed the march to San Diego.

After the Battalion's discharge in July 1847, Allen remained in California with other veterans to work and earn money before the journey to the Salt Lake Valley. When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in January 1848, he and other Battalion veterans were among those nearest the discovery.

In June 1848, a small company of returned Battalion members began the journey over the Sierra Nevada toward Salt Lake. Allen was part of a forward scouting party with Daniel Browett and Henderson Cox.

They were never seen alive again.

The remaining company, coming up behind, found their bodies. All three had been murdered — the circumstances were never fully documented, their killers never identified. They buried them near a small mountain spring.

The spring was named Tragedy Spring. It still bears that name today.

The date of their death was June 27, 1848.

Exactly four years to the day after Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith were murdered at Carthage Jail.

Ezra Hela Allen had survived the 2,000-mile march through desert and mountain without incident. He had served the full year of his enlistment faithfully. He was killed not in battle — not in any engagement the Battalion was promised it would never see — but on the way home, within sight of the Sierra Nevada, by unknown hands.

His grave at Tragedy Spring was later marked. He was 33 years old.