Robert Clift: Private, Company A — Marched at the Head of the Mormon Battalion Column and Settled Utah After Discharge (1820–1893)

Robert Clift was born around 1820 and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1840s. He enlisted in the Mormon Battalion in July 1846 and served in Company A — the lead company — under Captain Jefferson Hunt.

Serving in Company A meant marching at the front of the column: first through the tall grass of Kansas, first into the desert of New Mexico, first across the Arizona wilderness. Captain Hunt was a proven leader whose calm confidence in divine providence set the tone for Company A. His soldiers knew they were doing something that mattered — not just to the United States Army that had commissioned them, but to the God they served.

The marching order of Company A also meant that when the column camped, Company A's soldiers were first to pitch tents and first to begin the evening prayers that were a consistent feature of the Battalion's camp life. Robert Clift was part of that rhythm — a man shaped by months of daily spiritual discipline in the most physically demanding conditions imaginable.

After his discharge in July 1847, Clift returned to Utah and settled there. He married and raised a family in the Great Basin, participating in the pioneer community that the Battalion's march had helped make possible.

Robert Clift died around 1893 in Utah. His service in Company A, at the front of one of the most remarkable marches in American military history, is his permanent place in the story of the Restoration.