• William as served as a member of the Mormon Battalion, along with his brother, Ira Jones.  They both initially traveled to the Salt Lake Valley in Jonathan H. Holmes/Samuel Thompson Company in 1848 after their service.

  In 1865, William traveled to the Salt Lake Valley as Captain of the William S. S. Willes Company in 1865.

Jonathan H. Holmes/Samuel Thompson Company (1848)

• Age at Departure: 29

William S. S. Willes Company (1865)

• Age at Departure: 46
• Company Captain

Sources

• "Captain W. S. S. Willis' Company," Deseret News, 20 September 1865, 403.
• Find a Grave (Website)
• Green, Ephraim, Journal 1848 June-Sept. and 1849 Dec.
• Missionary Department Missionary Registers, 1860-1959, Volume 1.
• [Names of men who wish for land to cultivate who came from California with Jonathan H. Holmes], in Salt Lake Recorder's Office, Land records [ca. 1847-1860].
• Ricketts, Norma Baldwin, The Mormon Battalion: U.S. Army of the West, 1846-1848 , [1996], 222-23.
• "The Immigration," Deseret News [Weekly], 13 Sep. 1865, 397.
• Thompson, Annie Maria Kershaw, "History of Annie Maria Kershaw Thompson," in Danny Jessop and Marla W. Jessop, comps., Joseph Frederick Thompson Ancestry [1996], 38.
• Willes, W. S. S., to Brigham Young, 8 Sep. 1865, in Brigham Young, Office Files 1832-1878, reel 42, box 30, fd. 18.