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In Memoriam
William Grant Bagley, 1950–2021
Will Bagley, a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, died on September 28, 2021, at age 71. Bagley was a prolific and respected historian who wrote and edited over twenty books and published scores of articles and reviews in professional journals. He also will be remembered for his weekly column, “History Matters,” which appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune from 2000 to 2004, and for his service as an editor for numerous journals that focused on western and Mormon history.
In addition to becoming a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, Will received the Western History Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Western Writers of America’s Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature, and the Oregon-California Trails Association’s Lifetime Contributions to Overland Trail History. He also was a Research Fellow at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, the Huntington Library, and Brigham Young University’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, as well as a Wallace Stegner Centennial Fellow at the University of Utah’s Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center.
Will was born in Salt Lake City in 1950, but the family moved to Oceanside, California when he was nine years old. He was senior class president at Oceanside High School and won the state debate championship. Although Will was raised as a Mormon he acknowledged that he “never believed the theology since [he] was old enough to think about it” but that he still considered himself a “heritage Mormon” who was proud of his pioneer background.
Despite his unorthodoxy Will attended Brigham Young University for one year but transferred to University of California Santa Cruz where he earned a bachelor of arts in history. While attending college Will rafted down the Mississippi River, which he recounted in his final published book River Fever: Adventures on the Mississippi (2019). After graduating he worked as a laborer, carpenter, cabinet maker, and a country and bluegrass musician before joining Evans and Sutherland, a computer graphics firm, as a technical writer.
Will Bagley (right), pictured with Richard Turley and Barbara Jones Brown, at the Utah State Historical Society’s annual meeting, circa 2017. Courtesy Steve Mayfield.
Will became a good writer and in 1991 published his first history book, A Road from El Dorado, and then several others, before making the fateful decision in 1995 to become a full-time independent historian. The catalyst for his transition was an advertisement in the Salt Lake Tribune that put him on the pathway to writing Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2002), which became his magnum opus. Thereafter he often acknowledged he was “the world’s luckiest historian.”
In one of Will’s final essays, he nonetheless allowed that no book “blessed and haunted my career as much as Blood of the Prophets.” He acknowledged in his contribution to Writing Mormon History: Historians and Their Books (2020) that after he completed his research, he recognized that the “ambiguity of the surviving evidence still allows many alternative interpretations” and that he “tried to present that evidence fairly, so that others could draw their own conclusions.”
Will’s main criticism concerning prior accounts about the massacre was that they suffered from a lack of underlying documentation that had been destroyed or concealed. He noted that when asked “What are you trying to prove?” he responded, “I’m trying to figure it out.” That process included asking hard questions and developing a thesis that would explain the evidence. Ultimately, he determined that “our best guesses about what happened are the only answers we’ll ever have. Whatever took place is probably much worse than the known awful elements of this ‘awful tale.’”
When Blood of the Prophets was published it was praised by most reviewers and won numerous awards. These included a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, best book awards from Westerners International, John Whitmer Historical Association, Western History Association, and citations from the Utah Arts Council and Denver Public Library. But the book was criticized by a few Mormons, and Will was thereafter described as the “sharpest of all thorns in the side of the Mormon historical establishment.” Some of his critics in that establishment referred to him as a curmudgeon and bulldog, which did not offend him, although it did cause him to unwrap his classic laugh. His close friends and associates described him as a person of “unquenchable curiosity” who was tenacious, unrelenting, creative, fearless, and who could be impishly mischievous.
While he was still writing Blood of the Prophets, Will created and began editing the sixteen-volume series Kingdom of the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier published by the Arthur H. Clark Company from 1997 to 2019. In one of the books in the series, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre (2008), Will collaborated with his mentor David Bigler to publish a selection of the essential documents he had consulted and relied on in Blood of the Prophets, many for the first time. This volume included an afterword in which Bagley and Bigler presented their conclusions “based on sources slowly revealed over the years.”
In addition to the books Will wrote about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, he produced a wide range of studies concerning western history, including two books in a projected four-volume study of overland trails and western expansion. The volumes he completed were So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812–1848 (2010) and With Golden Visions Bright before Them: Tails to the Mining West (2012). Will received honors for both volumes.
His other publications included accounts concerning such diverse figures as Ephraim Green, Thomas Bullock, Samuel Brannan, James Ferguson, and Wilson McCarthy, as well as studies concerning the Mormon Battalion, the Utah War, South Pass, and Native Americans. He was also the project editor for three publications of the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Tanner Trust Publication Series.
Will supported the Utah State Historical Society through publishing articles in the Utah Historical Quarterly including his assessment of Wallace Stegner (one of Will’s favorite historians), the Utah War, and of course the Mountain Meadows Massacre. He also supported State History by participating in many of its annual meetings. At one of the most spectacular conferences held at the Rio Grande Depot (the home of the society), Will mounted the platform wearing his trademark pork pie hat, colored suspenders, and large bolo tie to deliver the keynote address in his baritone voice, with his infectious smile, to an overflowing audience.
In November 2019 Brad Westwood interviewed Will for Speak Your Piece: A Podcast about Utah’s History, in which he shared some of his perspectives concerning his life’s journey. He presciently observed that “I’ve reached the point in time in my age where I’m pretty much an old man now and all the great historical mentors that I’ve had through my life have died, and I am now getting the lifetime achievement awards that they deserved.” Will told Brad that
Will’s family—his wife Laura; his siblings Kevin, Pat and Lisa; his children Cassandra and Jesse; and his grandchildren Noah, Megan Cassandra, and Maya—and many friends will miss his honesty, integrity, and courage that form the foundation of his enduring legacy as a great writer, scholar, and son of Utah. Will was a faithful friend and mentor to many historians. Even when he was sure his thesis was accurate, based on the evidence he had reviewed, he was open to constructive criticism. He was always eager to get it right. Will believed in the power of history, and even though he has now left us we still have his thoughts and words to ponder and build on, into the future.
—Michael W. Homer
