William Samuel Godbe was a British mine operator, Mormon convert and later a leading dissenter. He was a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). He led a faction of the LDS Church called the Church of Zion, better known as the "Godbeites".
Background
William Samuel Godbe was born on June 26, 1833, in London, England. His father, Samuel Godbe, a physician by training, turned to a more congenial profession and became a teacher and composer of music.
His mother, Sarah La Riviere, was the daughter of a French nobleman who escaped to London during the Revolution and there became a court violinist and instructor in dancing to the Queen.
Early in life, Godbe was brought under the tutelage of his father and uncles, but while still a boy, he bound himself to a ship’s captain.
Education
Godbe lived the adventurous life of a sailor, saw interesting bits of the world, then settled in Hull to complete his apprenticeship with a ship’s chandler.
Career
In Hull, Godbe capitulated to Mormon missionaries bearing reports of a land of promise in America and became a convert to the new faith.
Leaving London as a sailor, he crossed the ocean to New York, and then worked and walked his way to Salt Lake City, finally arriving in the fall of 1851. In the following years, he developed a prospering merchandise business, and as a commercial agent for the people, brought supplies to the territory from more or less distant posts.
Although Godbe in his earlier years adhered to the dictates of the Mormon Church, and is said to have accepted and practiced polygamy, in his more mature years, he opposed not only the marriage system but in general the restrictions imposed upon the life and thought of the Mormon people by their religious leaders, especially in those matters which he believed to be strictly temporal.
Conscious of the cultural value of wealth, and believing that the mineral deposits in the surrounding mountains could be of great value to the people of Utah, he chafed particularly under the Church’s edict that its members should not tap those resources.
Through the pages of a modest paper, the Utah Magazine, which he began to publish in 1868, he openly advocated the development of a mining industry. For this heresy, he was disfellowshipped in October 1869.
Despite the fact that he faced ruin at the hands of a hostile community unwilling to patronize his business, he replaced the Magazine with a daily, the Salt Lake Tribune, and published it - at a loss - for two years. It became the organ of the growing Liberal party, which Godbe championed, and which developed in opposition to the church party.
Thus the “Godbeite Movement, ” as it was known, was merely a phase of the problem of separatism in Utah. Meanwhile, Godbe had become interested in mining. Having secured options on some claims in the Sweetwater region of Wyoming, where gold had been discovered, he bought a quartz mill in San Francisco, had it shipped to San Pedro, then hauled it by wagon to the mines, a distance of more than a thousand miles.
In 1871, he organized in London the Chicago Silver Mining Company, capitalized at £75, 000, and on his return, opened and operated mines at Dry Canyon, Utah. Later, at mines at Rush Lake and near Frisco, Utah, he erected and operated smelting furnaces.
In 1879-80, he organized the Bullionville Smelting Company which bought the Raymond & Ely tailings at Bullionville, Nevada and produced more than a million dollars’ worth of bullion.
From 1880 to 1886, he was interested in the development of the gold placers at Osceola, Nevada, where thirty-eight miles of ditches and flumes were constructed, but drought brought failure to the venture. In 1882, he took hold of antimony mines in southern Utah from which he shipped the metal to the railroad by means of ox teams.
Three years later, he organized the Pioche Consolidated Mining & Smelting Company, which acquired among others the Raymond & Ely and Meadow Valley silver mines, adding later those at Jack Rabbit.
It was while these were in operation that Godbe urged the development of railroad facilities for the mines, but the silver legislation and the general depression of 1893 halted all operations which were in progress at the time.
He died at the home of one of his sons in Brighton, Utah.
Achievements
Views
Godbe was a strong supporter of the development of mining in the Territory and published an article endorsing it in his Magazine for which he was promptly excommunicated from the Church (1869).
Personality
In his business relations Godbe displayed unusual vision and acumen; in personal relations, he was kindly, gentle, and dignified.
Connections
Godbe was married three times. On November 10, 1856, he married Mary Hampton, in Salt Lake City, a daughter of Benjamin and Patience (Schull) Hampton. Then, he married Charlotte Ives Cobb Kirby and his last wife was Rosina Colborn.