Biography

On 18 June 1865, M. H. Brady baptized a boy in the South Cottonwood Ward, in the Fort Union area of the Salt Lake Valley, who was only identified in the LDS membership record as “Daniel of the colored race.” The record of baptism does not include any of the standard information such as a last name, a birth date, location of birth, or the names of Daniel’s mother or father. [1]

However, U. S. Census rolls for the 1860 and 1870 Fort Union area indicate that the “Daniel of the colored race” mentioned in the baptismal record had to have been Daniel Bankhead Freeman. There are a total of five men or boys named “Daniel” listed in the U. S. Census for Union in 1860. Of those five, Daniel Freeman is the only one who was black. In 1870 there are only two males named “Daniel” living in Union and again, Daniel Freeman is the only one who was black. He was listed in the Litchford household in 1870 where he was living with his mother Rose, his half siblings, and Miles and Vilate Litchford. [2]

Daniel Freeman Bankhead was born around 1854 in South Cottonwood to Rose Crosby, a former slave of Mormon convert William Crosby, and an unknown father, presumably a Bankhead. Local tradition sometimes suggests that Daniel was the first black child born in Utah Territory, but it is unfounded; there were at least a dozen black children born in the territory before 1854. By 1880 Daniel had married Celia Douglass and worked as a laborer in the Union area. The couple eventually had two daughters, Celia and Mary Adelle. [3]

Sometime after 1880, the family moved to Wellsville in northern Utah and then from there relocated to Corinne. At Corinne Daniel opened his own blacksmith shop and it was there as a blacksmith that Daniel died. Bankhead family members remembered that “a horse kicked him in the stomach” while he was shoeing it. The horse “just jerked its foot back, and hit him in the stomach, and that is what killed him.” [4]

Daniel would have been around age 11 at the time of his baptism. It is difficult to determine the level of his involvement in Mormonism as an adult. His wife Celia and his two daughters joined the Presbyterian Church at Corinne but there is no evidence that Daniel did too. [5] To date no record of his death has been found.

By W. Paul Reeve

Primary Sources

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection. South Cottonwood Ward, CR 375 8, box 6522, folder 1, image 21. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Leggroan, Celia Bankhead and Carrie Bankhead Leggroan. Interview, December 3, 1977. In Helen Zeese Papanikolas papers (1954-2001). Ms0471. Special Collections. J. Willard Marriot Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Church Register of the Presbyterian Church, Corinne, Utah. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 79, 127, 128. Microfilm 0906168. Family History Library. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

United States, Census. 1860, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Union.

United States, Census. 1870, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, South Cottonwood.

United States, Census. 1880, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Union.

Documents

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