The BakerโFancher party also called the FancherโBaker party , Fancher party , or Baker's Company was a group of American western emigrants from Marion , Crawford , Carroll , and Johnson counties in Arkansas , who departed Carroll County in April and "were attacked by the Mormons near the rim of the Great Basin, and about fifty miles from Cedar City , in Utah Territory , and that all of the emigrants, with the exception of 17 children, were then and there massacred and murdered" [ 1 ] in the Mountain Meadows massacre.
Sources estimate that between and men, women and children were killed on September 11, , at Mountain Meadows , a rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail , in the Utah Territory. Some children of up to six years old were taken in by the Mormon families in Southern Utah, presumably because they had been judged to be too young to tell others about the massacre. The BakerโFancher party consisted of several smaller parties that set out separately from the Ozarks in northwestern Arkansas , and then joined up along the way.
Many of the families in the group were prosperous farmers and cattlemen with ample financial resources to make the journey west. Some of the groups had family and friends in California awaiting their arrival, as well as many relatives remaining in Arkansas. Pleasant Tackitt, from the PoteetโTackittโJones train, was a Methodist minister who led the others in worship and prayer services while on their journey.
Some of the trains that joined the company may have been from other states, such as Missouri. The party was well outfitted with wagons, traveling carriages, a large herd of cattle estimated at close to 1, head, oxen, as well as numerous horses.
They joined the expedition for various reasons; some to settle permanently in California, some to drive cattle west for profit, and some to find California gold. Like other emigrant groups traveling to California, they took money with them and planned to replenish their supplies in Salt Lake City for the remainder of the trip.
