Christopher Merkley Brimhall: Private, Company E — One of Brigham City's Early Settlers After the Battalion March (1820–1889)

Christopher Merkley Brimhall was born August 10, 1820, in Ontario County, New York. He joined the Church and gathered to Nauvoo, and in July 1846 he enlisted in the Mormon Battalion, serving in Company E under Captain Daniel C. Davis.

Company E made the full march from Iowa to San Diego, and Brimhall was among those who completed it. The grueling nature of the final Company E march — through the same waterless desert and mountain passes as the other companies — tested every man to his limits. Company E's commanding officer, Captain Daniel C. Davis, later wrote that the men's faith was the single most important factor in their survival.

After discharge in July 1847, Brimhall returned to the Salt Lake Valley. He eventually settled in Box Elder County, Utah, becoming one of the early settlers of the community that would become Brigham City — named in honor of Brigham Young, the man who had called the Battalion into service.

Brigham City became one of the more prosperous early Utah settlements, known for Lorenzo Snow's cooperative economic system — the United Order — which made it a model community in the 1870s. Brimhall was part of the generation of settlers whose labor made communities like Brigham City possible.

Christopher Merkley Brimhall died May 2, 1889, in Box Elder County, Utah. He had been a soldier in 1846, a pioneer in 1847, and a builder for four more decades — a pattern shared by dozens of his fellow Battalion veterans.