• 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.
• Ephraim Green journal, 1848 June-September and 1849 December.
• 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," Land records, circa 1847-1860, Salt Lake (County) Recorder's Office land records, circa 1847-1860.
• Norma Baldwin Ricketts, The Mormon Battalion: U.S. Army of the West, 1846-1848 (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1996), 222-23.
• "The Immigration," Deseret News, 13 September 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.
• W. S. Willes letter to Brigham Young, 8 September 1865.