Biographies on Site - History of Utah, by Hubert Hugh Bancroft (1832-1918) (c) 1890 [listed in alphabetical order]
FRANCIS ALMOND BROWN. BEFORE I would prove
recreant to my wives and children and betray my trust, I would suffer my
head to be severed from my body. I have made up my mind that while water
runs, or grass grows, or a drop of blood flows through my veins, or I am
permitted to breathe the breath of life, I shall obey the supreme laws of
my God, in preference to the changeable and imperfect laws of man." These
stirring words were spoken in the District Court at Ogden, on Tuesday,
June 30, 1885. The speaker was Francis A. Brown, ex-Bishop of the
Latter-day Church, and former Probate Judge of Weber County, who, having
acknowledged that he was living with two wives, whom he had married in
obedience to what he deemed a divine law, was about to receive sentence
for unlawful cohabitation in violation of the Edmunds Act.
The heroic speech, of which the quoted sentences are a part, attracted
much attention and elicited unfeigned admiration, even from the Salt Lake
"Tribune," the organ of the crusade, which said at the time: "F. A. Brown,
the Mormon Saint convicted in Ogden on Tuesday last by his own testimony,
had the courage of his convictions. However much one may deplore such
wrong-headedness, the admission must be made that here is a man, one who
does not quibble and lie, and who scorns to show the white feather." The
manliness exhibited by Mr. Brown on that occasion was but characteristic
of his course and conduct through life. He was a brave, honest, outspoken
man, and nothing less than his stalwart attitude on that memorable 30th of
June was expected of him by his family and friends or would have been
acceptable and satisfactory to his own conscience.
He came of the old Puritan stock, and was born in Milford, Otsego County,
New York, November 14, 1822; the seventh child of Jesse Brown and his wife
Roxana Grant. His grandfather. John Brown, fought for American freedom and
independence. His father was a Connecticut farmer, but removed early in
life to the State of New York, where amid poor financial circumstances he
reared his family of nine children. Only the commonest rudiments of
education could be given them, and the boys in due time were apprenticed
to learn trades.
Francis at the age of ten was bound to Edson Barney, a wheelwright, but
being required to perform heavier work than he was fitted for, his father
had him released after a year's service, whereupon he walked home, a
distance of one hundred miles; a rather remarkable feat for a child of
eleven years, and one showing the will power manifested by him so
strikingly in after life. He was kindly received by his parents, but
promptly apprenticed again, this time to Chauncey Parsons, a tanner and
currier, by whom he was abused and mistreated, being compelled to work on
his master's farm instead of learning the trade to which he had been
bound. A year passed and he again secured his freedom. He next worked for
his brother, Elnathan Grant Brown, a wheelwright, remaining with him about
two years. At the age of fourteen he determined to battle through the
world for himself. He found employment at logging and floating lumber,
which vocation brought him in contact with the world in the great cities
of Philadelphia. Baltimore and New York.
The means saved by him he devoted to education, for he was almost an
enthusiast on that subject, and at the age of eighteen he entered the
Genesee Wesleyan Seminary at Lima, New York. He made rapid progress and
succeeded admirably in his studies. At the end of two years the
ex-timberman left the school with honor, fitted to enter the field as a
teacher of others. School-teaching was thenceforth his profession and to
it he devoted himself whenever possible.
While at school his mind had become awakened on the subject of religion
and he had become a member of the Methodist church. After leaving school
he attended a revival meeting at Dansville, and it was there that he first
heard Mormonism; presented to him by a young medical student named Joseph
West, whose parents were Mormons. The result was his conversion. He was
baptized February 11. 1844, by Elder John Lane. Be met the usual
opposition and calumny, but his inherent courage and hardihood did not
forsake him. Ordained an Elder, he labored in the ministry in Pennsylvania
and the surrounding region and was thus engaged when he heard of the
murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.
Early in October of the same year he set out with others for Nauvoo, and
by way of Kirtland and the Mississippi river reached his destination in
the latter part of that month. Late the same year he was ordained a
Seventy. He taught a district school ten miles west of Burlington, Iowa,
the same obtained for him by a gentleman who had assisted him and his
friends with means while on their way to Nauvoo. . After a successful
winter term he returned to Nauvoo, and in the spring of 1845 taught school
in the Music Hall, with marked success. In the fall of that year he spent
four months working on the Temple. At the time of the exodus he assisted
the first companies that left Nauvoo for the West, and then, in June,
1840, went to New York, stopping on the way at La Porte, Indiana, where he
baptized his brother Elisha and wife.
In the East he busied himself with any kind of honorable labor that he
could obtain, his chief occupation being lumbering. He was successfully
engaged in the manufacture of shingles. On March 19, 1848, he married
Elizabeth Lorinda Canfield, who with her sister had visited Nauvoo in the
latter part of 1845 or the beginning of 1846. The marriage took place at
Ossian, Allegheny County, New York, and the ceremony was performed by
Elder Joseph L. France.
The same spring he started for Utah, accompanied by his wife and other
relatives, but at Janesville found himself short of means and unable to
proceed farther. During the summer he engaged as a deck hand on a river
boat plying between St. Louis, St. Joseph and New Orleans, and the
following winter taught school at Council Point, Iowa, where he built his
first house, assisted by the people whose children were to be his pupils.
In that humble frontier habitation, he taught school until the spring of
1850, receiving the salary of nineteen dollars a month, without board. He
now removed to Council Bluffs, where he clerked in the store of Mr.
Cornelius Voorhis, remaining in that gentleman's employ until the spring
of 1831, when he arranged his affairs and obtained an outfit with which to
take himself and family to Utah.
All was about ready for the start when he received notice from President
Orson Hyde, then presiding over the Church on the frontier, that he was
wanted to fill a mission to Nova Scotia. He immediately sold his outfit
and set out upon his mission. The amount realized from the sale he
depended upon to take him to Utah at the close of his missionary Labors,
but he never received more than one hundred dollars of it, and this was
live years after the sale was consummated. His companion upon his mission
was Elder David Candland. He preached the Gospel industriously, and at
Cape Breton organized a branch of the Church. At Pope's Harbor, sixty-live
miles east of Halifax, he fell in with some Strangites, one of the Mormon
factions that left Nauvoo about the time of the martyrdom, and baptized a
Mr. Middlemiss and wife, two of the members of that body. A branch was
also established in Halifax. Rejoining- his family at Ossian in February,
185'2, he remained there about a year and then again set his face
westward.
Arriving at Council Bluffs he found employment in a store until the fall
of 1854, when he entered the schoolroom again, teaching successfully
during the following winter. A further engagement to teach was frustrated
by anti- Mormon prejudice, and the trustees reluctantly employed a new
teacher, who, falling into disgrace, was forced to flee, and the leading
citizens then hired the Mormon pedagogue to conduct a private school in
the courthouse. "Mormon High School — Knowledge is Power," was the bold
sign swung above the courthouse door by the fearless preceptor. lie now
became more popular than ever, his school completely superseding the
public schools of the place. His faithful wife Elizabeth had died in June,
1854, leaving him with three children, the youngest four weeks old. On
April 13, 1850, he married Harriet Canfield, at Council Bluffs, Iowa,
Elder William H. Kimball performing the ceremony.
Finally, on the 7th of June, 1856, he succeeded in leaving the frontier
and starting across the plains, bound for Utah. There were three
companies, each of twenty wagons, in this emigration, and Mr. Brown was
captain of the first company. His train reached Salt Lake City on the 10th
of September. He remained two weeks at Salt Lake City, and then removed to
Weber County, by invitation of Bishop Chauncey W. West, whose brother
Joseph bad been the means of converting him to Mormonism. Purchasing a
piece of ground at Slaterville, he there began to build, but no sooner was
his house begun than he was asked to remove to Ogden and take charge of a
school. He did so, and thus became the leader, if not practically the
founder, of education in Weber County. He taught each year during the
winter mouths for a period of nine years. At first his was the only school
in the city. At the same time he was the first county superintendent of
schools, and held that position until the year 1800. By his ability and
tact he gained the good will of parents and children as well as the esteem
of the teachers under him, and by introducing new methods, awakening
latent powers and placing in the schools the best available talent,
succeeded in creating a lively interest in educational affairs.
In 1857, at the time of the "Buchanan Expedition," Francis A. Brown took
the field as adjutant to Colonel David Moore, who had organized the Weber
County military district, of which Colonel Chauncey W. West was commander.
With Colonel Moure and others he made an incursion to Soda Springs, to
watch the mountain passes in that region, through which it was feared the
invading army would attempt to make its way. After returning to Ogden he
was ordered to Echo Canyon, where he shared the lot of the main body of
the militia. At the time of the move he was among those left behind to
guard the deserted homes and fields, and in case of continued hostility on
the part of the Government troops, to lay waste the land.
Peace being declared, Mr. Brown brought his family back from the Provo
bottoms, and during the summer of 1858 resumed his labors as teacher and
superintendent of schools. He also took a leading part in many public
improvements and enterprises. In the spring of 1800, in spite of hostile
Indians, who had destroyed every station from Diamond Springs to the Sink
of Carson, he went to California to visit his. only sister, whom he had
not seen for about fourteen years. On his way he assisted in burying two
station hands who had been killed. He returned in the latter part of
September, bringing with him his brother-in-law, Dr. William L. Mclntyre,
for many years a leading medical practitioner in Ogden City.
From the spring of 1865 to the fall of 1868 Elder Brown was absent on a
mission to Europe, laboring in Holland two years and in England one year.
In the former country he had as his companion Elder Joseph Weiler. They
acquired a fair knowledge of the Dutch language, added sixty persons to
the Church, translated the "Voice of Warning," and apprised the king of
Holland of the nature of their message as Mormon missionaries. In England
Elder Brown presided over the Nottingham conference. After Ins return home
he taught school one term, and then served five years as clerk for Z. C.
M. I., at the same time taking a leading part in public affairs.
From January, 1861, to April, 1863, he served Weber County in the capacity
of probate judge, and from February, 1861 to 1879, excepting the period of
his foreign mission, was an alderman of the city of Ogden. He acted as
justice of the peace in the Ogden precinct for several years, and for
fifteen years was a director and the president of the Ogden City Bench
Canal Company, serving without remuneration. For five years he was
secretary of the Wilson Irrigation Company. A number of years he was
president of the Central Canal Company, aiding to get the water from Weber
river to the vast area of dry land between Ogden and Kaysville, a district
destined to become fruitful. From 1880 he was engaged principally in
farming operations until the establishment of A. H. Cannon's book store,
when he took charge of that business.
As early as April 2, 1857, he had obeyed the principle of plural marriage
by wedding Miss Martha Ellen Anderson, a daughter of Captain William
Anderson, killed at the battle of Nauvoo in September, 1846. When the
crusade under the Edmunds Act opened he was among the first in Weber
County to answer before the courts. Arrested May 15, 1885, for unlawful
cohabitation, he was arraigned before Judge Powers in the First District
on the 30th of June. Rather than have his family undergo the mental
torture usually inflicted in such cases, he furnished the evidence for his
own conviction, in a speech noted for its heroic fearlessness and
steadfast devotion to principle. The most of this speech, a few lines of
which are quoted at the beginning of this article, may be found in chapter
sixteen of the previous volume. On the 11th of July he was sentenced to
imprisonment for six months and fined three hundred dollars. He served his
term, with an additional thirty days for his fine, and was released from
prison January 13, 1886, receiving the full benefit of the Copper Act for
good behavior.
In 1889 he was called to fill another mission to the Netherlands, this
time being appointed to preside in that land. He left home on the 16th of
January and arrived at Rotterdam on the first of March. During this
mission he published the Book of Mormon (previously translated into Dutch
by Elder John W. F. Volker, assisted by Elder Daniel F. Collett) and
placed two thousand copies on sale in the leading cities of Holland. He
caused, one copy to be beautifully bound, and sent it, with a "Voice of
Warning," an Epistle of the Twelve, some tracts and an accompanying
personal letter, to the king of the Netherlands, asking him to present the
book to his worthy consort, Queen Emma, with the compliments of an
American citizen. During his administration one hundred and twenty-eight
persons were added to the Church, and one hundred and twenty were
emigrated to Utah. He returned home early in 1891.
He continued to reside in Ogden, and still remained a member of the High
Council of Weber Stake, in which capacity he had acted for many years.
While on his last mission his health became impaired, and he never
regained his usual strength and power of endurance. He died June 9. 1894.
He was the father of fifteen children, all but five of them living at last
accounts. His fourth son. Captain William Brown of the Ogden police force,
was killed while attempting, with others, to capture two desperadoes, in
the mountains near that city, in April, 1899.
pages 543-546
CHARILLA ABBOTT BROWNING. MRS. BROWNING came
to Utah in 1849. A native of the State of New York, she was born at
Hornellsville, or Arkport, in Steuben county. July 4, 1829. Her v parents
were Stephen and Abagail Smith Abbott, the former from Luzern county,
Pennsylvania, the latter from Ontario county, New York. They were
industrious, well-to do-people, engaged in a variety of occupations —
farming, furniture making the manufacture of potash, and the turning out
of the finest products of the woolen mill. Their daughter received a fair
education, attending school both in New York and in Illinois, to which
state the family moved when she was about seven years old.
They went down the Alleghany river on a flat boat, touching at Pittsburg
and Cincinnati, and thence proceeded by steamboat and wagon to their
destination, Perry, Pike county, Illinois. There Mr. Abbott bought a
quarter-section of land, built a log house — the second one in the place —
and started to farming. He afterwards built a two-story frame house, a
furniture shop and a woolen factory. Charilla's natural tendency was to
school teaching and dress making, but as the boys of the household were
not old enough, she and her sisters had to do the work of boys and chore
about the farm, planting corn, gathering eggs and selling them by the
barrel in the neighboring market; meanwhile attending also to household
duties.
When she was about thirteen years of age her parents, who were Latter-day
Saints, moved to Nauvoo, and she then resided a couple of months with her
uncle, James Abbott, nursing her invalid grandmother. Finally, after
staying with various relatives and acquaintances, she followed her parents
to Nauvoo. She was baptized into the Church by the Prophet Joseph Smith in
May, 1843. She at once became a member of the Relief Society which he had
founded. In October of the same year her mother was left a widow with
eight children and Charilla went to work at fifty cents a week to help
maintain the family.
In the exodus she drove her mother's ox team wagon, leaving Mosquito Creek
July 7, 1849, and crossing the Missouri at Winter Quarters. They traveled
in the general emigration of that season under the direction of Captain
Case, Elisha Everett and George
A. Smith. Along with them went a Welsh company under Captain Dan Jones.
One Welshman was lost for three days, causing much labor and anxiety among
his friends, until he was found in one of the companies ahead. Precious
time was lost by this incident, and at South Pass the company was
snow-bound for three days. The snow drifted nearly to the tops of the
wagon covers and the wagons had to be dug out. The cattle stampeded and
some were found standing among the willows, belly deep in snow, frozen to
death. Some of the vehicles, having no cattle, had to be abandoned. Two or
three families were put into one wagon and many persons walked, weeping
and despairing, until met and helped in by teams from the valley. All
arrived in safety on the 25th of October.
Two days after their arrival the Abbott family continued their journey
northward, reaching, in the evening of October 27, Captain James Brown's
fort on the Weber; the site of the present city of Ogden. There they
settled permanently. Charilla's time was occupied in teaching school,
killing crickets and helping her mother and the rest of the family make
cheese and butter, much of which they sold to emigrants passing through to
California. She remembers a terrible flood in the spring of 1850, when the
Weber river rose so high that the water entered the houses, floated the
furniture and compelled a temporary removal by means of boats, oxen, etc.
She helped civilize the Indians in her vicinity, and took part in the
organization of relief societies for the care of the poor and the
gathering of means to maintain those who stood guard during Indian
troubles or went to the frontier to bring in the regular fall immigration.
Says she: "It fell to my lot to teach the first school in my section. It
was in a small log house plastered with mud, having two small windows, and
literally a ground floor. The benches were of slabs. We had few books, and
pens were made of chicken quills. I gathered the alphabet from scraps of
paper and pasted the letters on paddles for the A, B, C class. In winter
paths were made for the pupils by taking oxen and dragging logs through
the snow." She describes the long, tedious journeys to Salt Lake City,
where wagon loads of grain were exchanged for store goods, and customers
had to put down their names, with lists of the things they wanted, and
take their turn at trading. Sugar was fifty cents a pound, calico fifty
cents a yard, and other articles in proportion. She tells how the early
settlers utilized weed blossoms, bark and roots for dye-stuffs; cat-tails
and hay for beds; greased paper or cloth for window glass; rushes and dirt
for shingles; and how
they gathered salaratus from the gulches for bread and soap making, and
salt from the lake to season their frugal meals.
"From 1849 to 1854," she continues, "we suffered great annoyance from the
Indians, having to stand guard nights in order to protect our lives and
property. Though kind as a rule, they had their rebellious spells, when
our folks would have to get their chief, 'Little Soldier,' and his
associates, confine them in a corral, and guard them there until they
agreed to be peaceful and let our stock alone. They were great hands to
slip around the house when the men were away, and if the latch-string was
out, come in and stand against the door and make the women and children
give them what they asked for. We were glad to go to the fields with the
men in order to escape such visits. Once a year the Indians had their time
for hunting game and gathering service berries, which they had a' way of
drying far superior to ours. Everybody was glad to trade with them for
their berries, and for elk, deer and antelope skins to make clothing and
moccasins for the men. Occasionally one tribe would fight another and come
back riding, whooping and yelling through the streets, singing war songs
and exhibiting scalps on long poles. They ate crickets and grasshoppers,
first drying them and then grinding them between two flat rocks, after
which they made them into soup. The gulls also helped us to get rid of the
crickets, which were so thick at times that we could not move without
stepping on them. The Indians said that the gulls were never seen here
until we came. Our people built a wall out of day and dirt, ten to fifteen
feet high and a mile square, with bastions and port holes for defense
against hostile Indians. It was a great help in that direction, but it
hindered greatly the progress of our farming."
It was in the midst of such primitive conditions that our heroine entered
the state of wedlock, marrying on January 27, 1853, David Elias Browning.
The ceremony uniting them was performed by Lorin Farr, mayor of Ogden City
and president of the Weber Stake of Zion. Eight children blessed their
union, and from these have sprung numerous descendants. The Browning
family were in "the move" of 1858, camping on the Provo bottoms for a
couple of months, destitute of all comforts, and then returning to their
northern home. "Since those times," says Mrs. Browning, "we have had our
ups and downs and have had to be 'jacks-of -all-trades,' as the saying is;
we have worried through with railroads, booms, bonding and high taxes,
until we are pretty nearly used up by such 'improvements.' ''
During the fall of 1893, in company with her husband and her
daughter-in-law, — her son Stephen's wife — she had the pleasure of
visiting her mother's relatives in Birmingham,
Michigan, eighteen miles from Detroit, where they were received with great
kindness.
On their way back to Utah they visited the World's Fair at Chicago, and
escaping two great railroad wrecks, returned in safety to their homes.
Mrs. Browning is now a widow, but is still one of the prominent women of
Weber County.
591-593
DAVID ELIAS BROWNING. DAVID BROWNING'S parents,
Jonathan and Elizabeth Stalcup Browning, were converts to Mormonism in
early days. The father was a blacksmith and gunsmith, also a buyer and
seller of lauds, from which occupations he derived a good
living and placed his family beyond the reach of want. The son,
mechanically inclined, followed for a number of years, the trade of his
sire. Jonathan Browning bore the distinction of being justice of the peace
in every county where he resided. David, who was born January 19, 1829, in
Davidson County, Tennessee, passed his early days on a large farm in Adams
County, Illinois. He espoused the religion of his parents December 9,
1840. In 1842 he moved to Nauvoo, where he attended night school and
grammar class, and during his boyhood and budding manhood, succeeded in
acquiring a fair education.
The exodus of 1840 carried the Brownings to the frontier, where, in 1847,
they built a two-story log house, about one and a half miles from Trader's
Point, in the vicinity of Council Bluffs. They worked at blacksmithing
until July, 1852, when they started for Utah, beginning their journey on
the second day of the month. They were equipped with six wagons, drawn by
oxen, cows and young steers, and were under the direction of Captain Henry
Miller, Orson Hyde and Jonathan Browning. David was included in a company
of hunters, organized to supply the emigrants with game. The usual
experiences, cattle stampedes and buffalo herds, were encountered. "I have
seen as many as forty thousand buffalo in one herd," writes Mr. Browning.
"We met a herd one day and killed three, two of which, drawn up alongside
the corraled wagons, made our company a good meal. We placed a notice on
the carcass of the third animal, for the third company to help themselves
to beef, giving the time when it was slaughtered." He arrived at Salt Lake
City, September 27, 1852, and three days later settled at Ogden, which was
ever after his home.
On January 27, 1853, David E. Browning married Miss Charilla Abbott;
President Lorin Farr, of the Weber Stake of Zion, performing the ceremony.
During the summer and fall of that year, the young husband was occupied
with others in guarding the trail and entrances to Weber valley, against
the Indians. He stood guard the last night before the practice was
abandoned. The Indian chief, "Little Soldier," became a fast friend of the
family, after the troubles were over. David was dubbed by the red men
"Browning's papoose." He repaired their guns and pistols, and by such acts
won and retained their friendship.
An adobe house, still standing on twenty-seventh street, was built by Mr.
Browning in 1853. There his eight children were born. He purchased from
his father a piece of land on the South Bench, paying for it the sum of
one hundred and twenty dollars. Twenty acres that he owned sold for six
thousand dollars, at the time of the boom, but the same land would not now
bring the sixth part of that amount. The present home of the Browning
family, south of the Union depot, was erected in 1874-5.
In 1881 Mr. Browning was involved in a legal difficulty, growing out of a
land transaction. He had bought a piece of land for one thousand dollars,
and the water right was included in the purchase, but a company, after he
had improved the land, claimed that he had no right to the waters of Birch
Creek, for using which, a criminal action was instituted against him. He
was fined in the Justice's court, but appealed to the District court, and
a jury trial resulted in his discharge. On June 18, 1888, he brought suit
against the company to recover for the time during which he was restrained
from the use of the water, and for what they had used of it. He succeeded
in obtaining judgment but later sold the water to the company for $1,750.
Mr. Browning has spent most of his life at home, but in April, 1879, he
and a part of his family toured southern Utah and Nevada, returning in
time to attend the funeral of his father, on June 22nd of that year. In
1893 he went East with members of his family, visiting the World's Fair
and other points of interest. His official record comprises membership in
the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society, which he joined in
October, 1860. The same year he was appointed captain and adjutant in the
Weber military district, and afterwards was sergeant-major on the staff of
Colonel W. N. Fife. In 1875 he was chosen sealer of weights and measures
for Ogden City, and served the public in that capacity up to within a
short time of his death, which took place a few years since, at his home
in that town.
499-500
FRANK JENNE CANNON. SENATOR CANNON is a
native son of Utah and was born at Salt Lake City on the 25th day of
January, 1859. Until thirteen years of age his boyhood was passed in and
around his native place. The writer remembers him when, as lads together,
they attended a little school taught by a German pedagogue in the
Fourteenth Ward, that being the quarter in which Frank's parents, George
Q. Cannon and his wife Sarah Jenne, resided. He was their eldest child.
The pedagogue in question was one trained in all the strictness and
rigidity of the Teutonic school. "A man severe he was, and stern to view,"
showing little mercy to the truant and idler, but gentle as a woman to any
one he loved, and ready to recognize merit, and to commend and promote it.
Frank J Cannon was one of the youngest and brightest of his pupils. He was
then but six years of
age, yet such were his intelligence and attainments, that he stood abreast
of and even towered above many of his schoolmates, his seniors by several
years. Exceedingly sensitive, he would quiver like an aspen if spoken to
harshly or subjected to any nervous
strain. Nevertheless, he was courageous, as more than one act of his
subsequent life testifies. His quick apprehension and readiness made him
the envy of his fellows, and in
after years, when his marvelous fluency, both as a speaker and a writer,
became known,
the admiration of his associates. He was an amiable, good-natured lad,
kind-hearted and generous to all.
Frank had entered that period of his life which the average boy proudly
points to as
his "teens," when he went to Ogden, to be employed in the office of the
County Recorder,
Franklin S. Richards, his mother's cousin. In his leisure hours he read
law with Mr. Richards, who was a rising attorney, and profited much by
that gentleman's studious example and systematic discipline. He had
intended to practice law, but because of the
strong views expressed by President Brigham Young, in opposition to that
pursuit for
Frank, his father indicated his disapproval, and the son reluctantly
acquiesced in the decision. While he did not adopt the legal profession,
in which he would have shone with
lustre, his studies along that line laid a good ground work for his future
career as a journalist. As deputy recorder of Weber County he served with
brief intermissions until he was eighteen, when he returned to Salt Lake
City to complete his education.
While pursuing his studies in the University of Deseret, he worked as a
compositor in the office of the "Juvenile Instructor," having learned the
printer's trade during boyhood. He thus earned money to pay his tuition at
the University, from which he was graduated at the age of nineteen.
Shortly before this event he married, on the 8th of April, 1878, Miss
Martha A. Brown, an Ogden girl, daughter of Hon. Francis A. Brown, and
granddaughter of the heroic Captain William Anderson, who was killed at
the battle of Nauvoo. She became the mother of five children, (the first
dying in infancy) and in her devotion to them and to her husband she has
exhibited qualities that prove her in every way worthy of her ancestry.
Immediately after leaving the University, Mr. Cannon, having resolved upon
journalism as a profession, entered the "Deseret News" establishment as a
reporter. fie remained there but a short time, however, as better
opportunities opened elsewhere. After working some months as a reporter
for the "Ogden Junction," he became connected with the Junction Publishing
Company, under whose auspices the "Logan Leader" was established. Of this
paper, the predecessor of the present Logan "Journal," Frank J. Cannon was
editor and manager.
In 1880 he exchanged the life of a suburban editor for that of a reporter
upon the "San Francisco Chronicle." Within three months he was a member of
the editorial staff of that spirited and influential journal, and
continued in this capacity as long as he remained in California. Returning
to Ogden in 1882, he became deputy clerk and recorder under Lorenzo M.
Richards and Charles C. Richards. Two years later he was elected county
recorder. The winter of 1883-4 he spent in the city of Washington, as
private secretary to Hon. John T. Caine, who had succeeded Frank's father
as delegate.
In February, 1886, occurred the episode of the assault upon United States
Attorney Dickson, related in the previous volume; an event growing out of
the catechization, before the grand jury, of Mrs. Martha T. Cannon, one of
the wives of President Cannon, who had been arrested for unlawful
cohabitation. Although Frank did not strike Mr. Dickson, he was one of the
parties responsible for the act, as he confessed in court, chivalrously
taking upon himself the entire blame. He was fined and imprisoned, and
during the period of his incarceration was engaged in literary work.
In the spring of 1887 he became editor of the "Ogden Herald," which had
succeeded the ''Junction," and was converted by him from an evening into a
morning paper. The "Herald" was in turn succeeded by the "Standard,"
established by him in June, 1888. Meantime he had become further
associated with affairs at the national capital. While there in 1884, he
had formed the acquaintance of many leading men, to whose favor his
father's name was a ready passport, and at the suggestion of his sire, had
taken pains to cultivate editors, statesmen and politicians known to be
unfriendly to the majority of Utah's people. During the year last
mentioned he assisted Delegate Caine and Hon. John W. Young in defeating
an anti-Utah measure similar in its provisions to the Edmunds Tucker Act.
From February to July, 1888, he worked energetically to secure a
modification of the harsh methods by which the anti-polygamy laws were
being enforced. For this purpose he visited President Cleveland many
times, and succeeded in convincing him. His labors, with others, finally
bore fruit in the adoption of a more lenient policy, as indicated by the
appointment of Chief Justice Sandford and other conservative officials.
In May, 1890, Mr. Cannon argued before the Senate and House Committees on
Territories against the Cullom-Struble Bill, by which it was proposed to
disfranchise the great majority of Utah's citizens, simply because they
were Mormons. He applied in person to the Secretary of State, Hon. James
G. Blaine, and besought him to use his powerful influence against the
proposed legislation. An argument used by Mr. Cannon with the Agamemnon of
the Republican forces, was that Utah was "not hopelessly Democratic." that
many of her people were indoctrinated with Republican principles, and that
it would be suicidal to disfranchise the element that might yet make Utah
a Republican State. "Go home, young man,'' said the plumed knight,
sententiously, "and tell your people that no bill disfranchising any
portion of the voters of Utah will pass the present Congress." Blaine kept
his word; the "Manifesto" followed, and nothing more was heard of the
pending disfranchisement of the Mormon people.
In the latter part of 1890, Mr. Cannon, at Ogden, took a prominent part in
the "citizen's movement," whereby the non-partisan ticket, supported by
the strongest business elements of the town, redeemed it in February,
1891, from Liberal misrule. Chosen
a member of the city council, he served as chairman of the board of public
buildings and
grounds. This victory of the non-partisans in the Junction City may be
regarded as the
first of the merely political entering wedges that split the old parties
asunder and paved
the way for the local division on national party lines. Frank J. Cannon
was the first editor in Utah to advocate a dissolution of the People's and
the Liberal parties, and the
establishment here of the national organizations.
The Republican party of Utah, as it now exists, was organized in May,
1891. In December of the same year, Mr. Cannon, whose political
affiliations were that way, went with others to Washington to secure party
recognition from the National Republican Committee, which met there and
selected Minneapolis as the place for holding the next great convention.
The desired recognition having been given, the Utah Republicans met at
Provo and selected 0. J. Salisbury and Frank J. Cannon as delegates to the
Minneapolis Convention. The Republican wing of the Liberal party (which
had not then disbanded) also sent two delegates — C. C. Goodwin and C. E.
Allen. Both delegations were seated by the convention.
The fall of 1892 witnessed the nomination of Frank J. Cannon for Delegate
to Congress. When asked to allow his name to go before the convention —
held in the Salt Lake Theatre — he replied: "Not if Judge Zane will accept
the nomination." He recognized that the nomination of Judge Zane would do
more than anything else to settle the old controversy, break up the
Liberal party, and establish Republicanism in Utah. Judge Zane, however,
declined, and Frank J. Cannon was nominated. He was defeated at the polls
(Rawlins, the Democrat, being victor that year) but succeeded, in a
campaign unparalleled for the number of meetings held, in cutting down the
Democratic majority.
In November, 1893, he retired from the editorship of the "Standard," and
helped to
inaugurate the Pioneer Electric Power Plant in Ogden canyon, an enterprise
second only
to the electric power plant at Niagara, and containing several more
original features. Its
cost was one and a half millions. The projectors were Wilford Woodruff,
George Q. Can non, Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Fred J. Kiesel, A. B.
Patton, and other prominent citizens. C. K. Bannister was the engineer. In
the interest of the company Frank J. Cannon visited the Eastern States and
Europe.
At Provo, in the autumn of 1894, he was again nominated by acclamation as
the Republican candidate for Delegate, and on the 6th of November was
elected, defeating Mr.
Rawlins by a majority of over eighteen hundred votes. The Liberal party
was now a thing of the past, having disbanded in the latter part of 1893.
Most of its members were Republicans by tradition and tendency, and were
among those who now carried the party
banner to victory. During the remainder of her Territorial career Mr.
Cannon served Utah as Delegate, and was present at the White House when
President Cleveland, on the 4th of January, 1896, signed the bill
conferring Statehood upon the Territory. The same month the retiring
Delegate returned to Utah, and at a caucus of Republican legislators then
in session, he was nominated by acclamation as their first choice for
United States Senator. This choice was ratified on the 23rd of January, by
the unanimous vote of the Republican majority in the joint assembly.
Senator Cannon immediately entered upon his duties at the seat of
government. In June of that year (1896) the National Republican Convention
met at St. Louis, to nominate their candidate for the Presidency. Among
the delegates from Utah were Senator Frank J. Cannon, Representative
Clarence E. Allen, and Hon. Thomas Kearns, all staunch bi-metallists. Mr.
Cannon was a member of the committee on resolutions. Knowing that the
committee which would frame the platform intended to insert a plank
favoring the single gold standard and repudiating bimetallism, many
delegates from the West met in caucus and resolved upon leaving the
convention if it ratified the committee's report. The preparation of the
document embodying the protest of the bi-metallist delegates, and the
delivery of the "speech of defiance" hurled by them at the convention
after the adoption of the report, were entrusted to Senator Cannon. It was
a tense and thrilling situation, the excitement of the vast throng being
wrought to a high pitch. During the delivery of his impassioned speech, in
which he shook the silver gauntlet at the golden towers, the Senator was
repeatedly warned by the chairman in a low voice to desist; that officer
fearing some violent outbreak from the body of the convention, whose
members, pale with anger and agitation, listened breathlessly, or
endeavored to drown with hisses, the ringing voice of the faithful Abdiel
of the bi-metallic cause. The speech at an end, the champions of silver —
Messrs. Teller, Cannon, Kearns, Allen, Dubois and the rest — retired,
walking majestically through the crowded hall, past the tiers on tiers of
benches, filled with frowning faces and swaying forms, towering above
their heads like the cliffs of the Colorado river. It was a rare moment, a
dramatic episode, and it stamped as brave men the principal actors
therein.
Senator Cannon supported the Democratic ticket in 1896. In December of
that year the National Silver Republican party was organized for the
purpose of maintaining in line such seceding Republican elements as were
not yet ready to enter the Democratic organization. The national leaders
of the Democracy advised this course, hoping to effect a substantial
junction of forces in 1900; and it was by agreement with them that Senator
Cannon refrained from entering the Democratic party after the campaign of
1896. On the floor of the Senate, in 1897, he spoke against the Dingley
Bill, of which speech five million copies were circulated throughout the
United States by the Equitable Tariff Association. He took the ground that
agriculture was not protected by the bill, and that the trusts had
dominated its schedules. His severance from the Republican party had
already occurred, he having refused to enter any caucus of Republican
Senators after the adjournment of Congress, in June, 1896. In the fall of
1897 he visited the Orient, spending some time in China and Japan.
In 1898 he carried the County of Weber for what was known as the Cannon
legislative ticket, against both the Democratic and Republican parties,
and at the legislative session of 1899 he was a candidate for re-election
to the United States Senate. During this session he made a speech in the
Salt Lake Theatre on the subject of "Senatorial Candidates and Pharisees,"
answering criticisms against his candidacy. No election of Senator took
place, and his seat remained vacant for two years, when it was filled by
the election of Hon. Thomas Kearns, as a Republican.
In 1900 Mr. Cannon formally entered the Democratic party, acting that year
as temporary chairman of the Utah State Convention. Two years later he was
made State Chairman of the Democratic party, and fought a splendid though
unsuccessful campaign.
In November, 1903, he joined Major E. A. Littlefield in the establishment
at Ogden of the "Daily Utah State Journal," and became the editor of that
live Democratic paper, which he has made, as he previously made the
"Standard," a publication of which any American city might well be proud.
At the State Convention of the Democratic party in June, 1904, Mr. Cannon
was elected a delegate to the St. Louis Convention, serving as chairman of
the Utah delegation, and as one of the committee on platform and
resolutions.
Ex-Senator Cannon has long been recognized as one of the finest orators,
not only in Utah, but in all the West. His wealth of vocabulary is only
equalled by his wonderful readiness of thought and voluble eloquence of
delivery. A master of repartee, his retorts are instant and telling, and
he speaks with thrilling and convincing fervor. A sample of his loftier
flights and more thoughtful style is furnished in his memorial address on
the life and character of his fellow Senator, Hon. Joseph H. Earle, of
South Carolina, delivered in the United States Senate, May, 1897, soon
after the death of that distinguished statesman. Here is the speech in
full, as taken from the "Congressional Record."
Mr. Cannon. Mr. President, Joseph H. Earle, the soldier, the Senator, has
answered the last roll call of this world. If the bravery of his career on
earth is any assurance of the composure with which he will confront the
judgment seat, we may well believe that he will stand there serene in the
strength which knows no faltering, willing to receive the appointed decree
for all the thoughts and all the words and all the deeds which marked his
little day on earth. It is a splendid hope that the grandest quality of
the human soul — steadfastness — can not be lost in the transition from
this life of death to the deathless life.
"Greater than the affection which prompts us to devote this hour to an
expression of
eulogy for the citizen departed, for the friend gone to the other Mansion,
for the battle-nerved arm quieted in the coffin, for the honest voice stilled in the soft
night time of the
grave, is the duty upon us to pause in this solemn instant in our
country's career and
contemplate the brevity of mundane experience and the speeding toward us
all of that
sunset hour when earthly hope and earthly life are enveloped in the
shadows. The sense
of death hallows the judgment of men and sanctifies the purpose of
nations.
"Let us in this view of our larger duty devote to this memorial service
the time which
belongs to the country. Joseph H. Earle and his fellow-Senators met in
this official sphere as birds meet at sea, giving but the signal of a
fluttered wing as they drive along through swirling tempests, and scarcely
pausing to turn an eye to watch each other's flight beyond opposed
horizons. I knew this departed one but briefly, and yet admiringly, for he
was a soldier-gentleman, so considerate of all the high requirements of
social and official intercourse that every contact with him seemed but to
more endear him to his fellows. I knew him best as the reconciled
representative of a reconciled people, as one who felt that the cause for
which he had offered his life was won when it was lost.
"No words from human lips can add to the dignity of that epitaph which his
own career has written; Joseph H. Earle, the orphaned lad, offering his
heart's best blood to the State he loved; Joseph H. Earle, the United
States Senator, offering his soul's best thought to the people of the
country which he loved more. That which we can say must be for the comfort
of remaining humanity and not to bless him. It is an instructive thought
that not all the words which earthly pens can trace, nor all the
sentiments which human lips can utter, can add one jot to or take one
tittle from the character which was the formation of his fifty years, as
we count earthly time.
"He was a man. And in this one man was folded all the universe, with its
dark abysms of eternal silence, its immeasurable spaces filled with the
mysteries of unknowing and unknown, and with ail its lighted worlds of
heavenly harmony, its processional march of infinite power, and its
sublimer mystery of some time knowing all as we are known.
"As the breathing flower, as the wind-stirred leaf, as the upspringing
grass blade contains within its tiny self the problem of progression and
its solving, and as it has its individual and impregnable identity amidst
all its fellows, so man, every man, bears within himself, in the
illumination of his soul, the possibility of all knowledge, all virtue,
all law by which the universe is and is governed, all processes by which
the worlds are framed, and, in its darker chambers, all the possibilities
of woe and destruction and infinite gloom; and he has his own
individuality, in which, through all the eternity, there cannot come the
unholy intrusion of any other essence.
"This order is not complex; it is of all things most plain — that man of
his Creator born, the chief of all things created, is of the creative
power an eternal part. From him, in earthly life, springs the majesty of
nations and the downfall of dynasties.
"If we could know of that hidden thing, the first man, and could lay bare
to finite knowledge the wonder of his possibilities, we would see that in
him was the germ of all that was to be — the song of love and the shriek
of hate; the whisper of peace and the trump of war; the crucifixion and
the crucified: the home of hope, where innocence with instinct
supernatural calls all things good because they are and because they are
of God, and the slaughter pen of infamy, where innocence perishes,
doubting of mercy because it seems to be withheld, and doubting of mercy's
God because He does not seem to speak; the palace and the hovel; the
plenty and content which flow from wisdom, and the want and degredation
which come of laws denied; the liberty-crowned domes beneath which freemen
speak for freemen, and the dungeons of the secret tyranny; the fight of
savage
men to overcome a savage earth; the triumph of that intellect which, in
the evolution of
this life, has grown too large for the limitations of our poor measure of
time and space;
the unions and the revolutions; the wandering stars, gathered into one
field of blue and
made the flag of a consecrated people, inspired with a holy purpose to
redeem the world
for its exaltation as a heavenly home.
"All good, all evil, is his. It is the whisper of his own immortality that
asks him on to deathless deeds; it is the clog of his own earthliness that
holds him in the mire of things that die in their doing. As immortality
step by step conquers the earthliness, the man of the now is rising into
realms of greater light, and upon him is dawning the day of reflected
infinite knowledge that peace and order are the law of that universe of
which he holds the essence. To this end he is marching, led on by
inspiration, led on by that eternal impulsion which makes the generations
go from good things into better, until — surmounting all — from him, in
eternal life, springs the majesty of worlds, peopled and glorious.
"In every evolution which has marked his passage he can see, if he will,
the unassailable certainty of that eternal time for him. Earthly evolution
is but the type of spiritual
evolution. It is the monition of a lesson which we sometimes try to
forget, but which comes to us in the silent watches of the night, in the
hour of loneliness at sea, by the bedside of friends departing, and, more
sacredly and certainly than all, in the hope to meet again the friends
already gone.
"This life, as a part of the eternity to which it belongs, is not even as
a speck of cosmic dust to the infinite space to which it reddens under the
crimson sun. There is a future, as there was a past. As the past is lost
to our remembrance lest we lose our energy by retrospection, so the future
is mercifully hidden from us lest we rush from life with heedless haste or
feel a saddened discontent with earth. But that it is, and that it is forever, as it was forever, all the best moments of man bear witness.
"No human soul is satisfied with the hopeless horror of oblivion. To have
emerged from nothingness, to have gasped this earthly air for the fretting
instant of a fretted human life, and then to have entered the domain of
nothingness, is to have been of a humanity damned from birth to death with
causeless, useless struggle in a wretched world of nothingness. The grave
is not extinction; it is the door of home; it is God's portal through
which we pass from this little light of life to the greater light of
better life. Just so surely as we live to die, just so surely do we only
die to live.
"Doubt of eternal life would be a self-inflicted cruelty, if there were
room for doubt. But this is true: It is either oblivion before we were,
nothingness now, and oblivion after we are, or it is life forever. Of
these two, every man from whom a dearer than himself has passed away will,
in the holiest chamber of his thought, beneath the stony front which he
presents to all the world, hold fast the hope which is knowledge, that it
is life forever.
"Earthly science has its vast domain, in which it triumphs and subdues;
but beyond the measure of its widening achievements, and beyond the
bounded realm of certainty, abides the unbounded realm of holy faith.
Passing all comfort that human lips can offer — balm to the wounded heart,
sustenance to the poverty-stricken, justice for the oppressed, benediction
to the orphaned and the widowed and all who mourn — is the prophetic
vision which stands for us through the ages:
" 'Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of
herbs, and
the earth shall cast out the dead.' "
682-686
WILLIAM CRITCHLOW. THE late William
Critchlow, ex-justice of the peace for Weber County, was the son of David
and Margaret (Coe) Critchlow, and was born July 8, 1809, in East Deert
Township, Allegheny County. Pennsylvania. He came of a long line of
Presbyterian ancestors, out in 1824 his parents were converted to the
Baptist faith under the preaching of Andrew Clark, one of Sidney Rigdon's
co-laborers. In 1830 William also joined the Baptists, as did subsequently
his wife, Harriet Hawkins, of Indiana County, whom he married February 14,
1832.
His life from the first was busy and eventful, and he endured much
suffering and privation. At nine years of age his system received a severe
shock, through bathing in cold water while in a heated condition, and as a
result he was confined to his bed for a whole year, and could then walk
only on crutches. After his recovery he lived with his grandfather until
his father's death in 1828. At nineteen he became the support of his
widowed mother and eight children, his elder brother Benjamin having left
home to study for the Presbyterian ministry. This condition of affairs
lasted four years. After his marriage he left his father's family in the
care of his brother Joseph, and moved to Leechburg, in Armstrong County,
where he built a home. Soon, however, he removed to Saltsburg, and labored
on the Pennsylvania canal. While at work on July 27, 1838, he was
accidentally thrown from the top of the lock gate to the bottom of the
pit, a distance of eighteen feet, his back striking on the mitre sill of
the gate, inflicting severe physical injuries and rendering him a cripple
for life.
In May, 1839, three months after first hearing Mormonism preached, he was
baptized by Elder Samuel James, and ordained an Elder in the following
August. In May 1840 he was called to preside over the Leechburg branch of
the Church, which position he held for three years, and then traveled and
preached among his relatives and friends. April 21, 1844. was the date of
his arrival at Nauvoo, where he first met the Prophet Joseph Smith. The
same year he purchased a farm of twenty-five acres at Hancock,
twenty-seven miles south of the city, and lived there with his family
until September, 1845, when they fled to Nauvoo for safety from the mobs
that were plundering and burning Mormon homes. While at Nauvoo he was
successively ordained a Seventy and a High Priest.
In the exodus from Illinois he and his household pitched tent at Garden
Grove, Iowa, from which place he went into Missouri to seek employment. He
taught school for two years in Missouri, and for three years he and his
wife taught school at Garden Grove, where he was elected justice of the
peace, and during the last year of his stay presided over the local
branch. May 17, 1851, was the date of his departure for Utah. He arrived
at Salt Lake City on the 24th of September.
A few days later he proceeded to Ogden, where he took up a permanent
residence, which was maintained till the day of his death. He was an
active, prominent and faithful public servant. As early as August, 1852,
he was elected justice of the peace; re-elected in 1854. In March, 1853,
he was chosen alderman of the First Ward. As clerk and recorder of Ogden
City he served for eleven years. In August, 1856, he began twelve years of
service as recorder for Weber County. In all these offices the
remuneration was small, but Mr. Critchlow never complained. In his
physical affliction — a confirmed cripple — he was equally stoical,
recognizing the hand of providence in his calamity. He was the father of
four sons and one daughter. He died June 7, 1894, nearly eighty-five years
of age, and holding the office of a Patriarch in the Weber Stake of Zion.
568-569
JOHN CROFT. JOHN CROFT, of Morgan County,
came to Utah, from England, in September, 1860. He was born at Primrose
Hill, Bingley Parish, Yorkshire, July 16, 1836. His father, John Croft,
was a coachman. His mother, Ann Howland Croft, was a decendant of John
Howland, who came over to America in the "Mayflower." The subject of this
sketch had an only brother, two and a half years younger than himself.
This brother, Howland Croft, crossed the Atlantic in 1867, and in 1894 was
manager and senior proprietor of the Linden Worsted Mills, Camden, New
Jersey.
When John was two years old, he moved with his parents to Wilsden, in
Yorkshire. When he was six years of age his father was killed by an
accident. Soon after this, the boy was put to work in a worsted mill,
working as a ''half timer," eight hours a day, and attending, two hours a
day, the national school at Wilsden. When he was twelve, his mother died,
and he went to live with his eldest sister, at Huddersfield. There he was
put to work in a large tobbacco factory. He was the only employee of the
establishment that did not use the weed. During this period, he attended
night school and Sabbath school. At seventeen he was apprenticed to a
joiner and builder, and at the end of three years was released and went to
Liverpool to work at his trade. He was a natural mechanic. After a few
months service, he was appointed foreman for the firm that employed him.
It was at this time that he first heard the doctrines of the Latter-day
Saints, taught by one of the workmen, and after duly investigating the
same, he was baptized June 27, 1856. His employer was much displeased,
when he learned what had taken place, and offered him substantial
inducements to leave the Latter-day Saints and join the Episcopalians, but
Mr. Croft declined the offer. Giving up his situation at Liverpool, he
went to Manchester, where he worked on the Exposition building, and
labored as a traveling Elder in the Manchester conference. On January 1,
1858, he was made president of that conference. Just a week later he
became a married man, wedding Miss Amelia Mitchell, of Manchester. He
presided there until released to come to Utah. Accompanied by his wife, he
crossed the ocean in a ship-load of Latter-day Saints, presided over by
Elder J. D. Ross, whose assistant he was during the voyage. It began at
Liverpool on the 30th of March, and ended at New York on the 1st of May,
1860. On the plains he was captain of the guard. The journey from Florence
to Salt Lake City terminated on the 2nd of September.
Mr. Croft resided, for a while, in the Eighth Ward, and was a carpenter on
the Public Works. In April, 1861, he moved to Weber Valley, which was then
in Davis County, settling at Weber City, now Peterson, Morgan County, with
John Bond and others. There he followed farming, with occasional jobs of
carpentering, for a livelihood. He experienced the usual vicissitudes of
pioneer life, sometimes being without flour for several months, and
subsisting upon pigweeds and potatoes. He assisted in surveying Weber City
and Enterprise, and helped to construct the ditches that supply those
places with irrigating water. He was watermaster of the Enterprise Bottom
ditch, and the original promoter of the Enterprise Bench ditch, the latter
seven miles long and mostly on the mountain side. It is the longest
irrigating canal in Morgan County. By means of it, several hundred acres
of arid land have been made valuable for farming purposes. The cost of
construction was over four thousand dollars.
Mr. Croft has always been interested in education. He favored a free
school system, and for twenty years worked faithfully for its
establishment. He helped to build the first school house in Weber Valley,
and was elected one of the original board of school trustees. He opened
the first Sabbath school in Weber Valley in 1863, and became first
assistant superintendent of Sunday schools for Morgan Stake. He was a home
missionary of that Stake for several years, and was first counselor to
Bishop John K. Hall, of Enterprise Ward, from its organization up to the
year 1888. From 1877 to 1878, he was justice of the peace for Peterson
precinct; and from 1879 to 1881, a selectman for Morgan County. Among his
recent labors are the search for, and discovery of, artesian wells and
coal mines, in the development of which he has spent thousands of dollars.
He has always been a liberal donor for public purposes. One of his latest
official appointments was that of postmaster of Peterson. Mr. Croft is the
father of eleven children.
429-430
RALPH H. HUNT. RALPH H. HUNT of West Weber,
was born February 3, 1845, at Poughkeepsie, New York, and was the son of
John Jackson Hunt and his wife Mary Ann Hills. His father, a machinist by
trade, was superintendent of the Garnerville Paint Works.
He was in good circumstances and his son received a fair education. His
early boyhood was passed at Haverstraw, Rockland County, in his native
state, and he was kept at school until he was fifteen. A natural carpenter
and farmer, he chose these vocations as a means of livelihood.
He came to Utah when he was sixteen, accompanying his parents, who were
Latter-day Saints. Mormonism was also his religion. With three yoke of
oxen, four cows and a wagon loaded with provisions and other necessaries,
the family left the frontier on the 1st of July, 1861, in a company
commanded by Captain Read and including such well-known names as John
Druce, Allen Frost, James Freeze and John Blakemore. The Indians were very
troublesome, and much night herding was necessary to prevent the cattle
from being stolen. The company had a hard time crossing Green River, where
young Hunt was in the water five hours. They arrived at Salt Lake City on
the 16th of September.
The family settled first in the Seventh Ward, but about six months later
moved into the Sixth Ward, and in September, 1863, into the Fourteenth
Ward, where they continued to reside until they went to Weber County.
Ralph's first occupation in Utah was wood hauling from the canyons, first
for the family supply of winter fuel, and afterwards for the public
market. In 1862 he hauled wood for Camp Douglas. It sold at ten dollars a
cord, and three days with an ox team were required to make a trip to the
canyon and back, when hauling from over the Big Mountain. In 1863 he
worked with his father at house carpentering, and in 1861 labored in City
Creek canyon, getting out lumber for the Tabernacle. He was employed by
Joseph A. Young in 1865, and in 1866 again assisted his father. The old
gentleman died in October of that year, and Ralph then worked for Captain
Hooper as a carpenter until 1869, when he was employed by Latimer & Taylor
in their sash and door factory. He now married, choosing as his partner
Sarah Skelton, who has borne to him six children. The date of his marriage
was October 9, 1869. Six months later he moved to West Weber, where he has
ever since resided.
His course of life in that locality has been that of a general colonizer.
Besides working at his trade, and at farming, he has engaged with his son
in the cattle and sheep business. He has helped to build bridges,
construct canals, dig ditches, and has taken an active part in all public
enterprises in his neighborhood. He has been a school trustee and a
trustee of the Hooper Irrigation Company, also secretary and treasurer of
the West Weber branch of that concern. He has always been charitable and
open-handed to the poor. His office in the Church is that of an Elder, to
which he was ordained in 1869. Prior to 1891 his political affiliation was
with the People's party, but since the division on new lines he has been a
straight Republican.
410-411
DAVID JENKINS. DAVID JENKINS, civil engineer, a
surveyor for many years in Utah and in Idaho, was born September 27, 1813,
in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. His father,
David Jenkins, was a native of Maryland, though of Welsh parentage, and
his mother, Jane Ferguson Jenkins, was of Scotch descent. Her father. John
Ferguson, came from Edinburgh to Philadelphia in time to be present at the
taking of Quebec. Her mother, Mary Craig Ferguson, was born in England.
David's grandfather. Thomas Jenkins, was born either on the ocean coming
from Wales, or very soon after his parents landed in America.
David's father died in November, 1816. The boy was a cripple from two
years old. When he was eight years of age an Indian came to his father's
house and offered to "doctor" the lad. He waited on him for three months
and helped him considerably, after which he departed as mysteriously as he
had come. The family never heard of him again. David was kept at school
until about eighteen, when he left home to make his own way in the world.
His first position was with a man who conducted a large malting and
brewing establishment, where part of his duty was to keep the office
books. A year later he worked for another man, some forty miles away. He
accumulated one hundred and sixty dollars in cash, and then went to
trading, buying and selling anything that brought a profit. He soon
doubled his capital, which gradually increased until he was in comfortable
circumstances.
David Jenkins first heard the Latter-day Gospel from Elder Henry Dean in
1839. Having learned that a Mormon was going to preach at "the brick
schoolhouse," he, out of mere curiosity, mounted his horse and rode to the
place. A large crowd had gathered outside the door, which was locked, but
it was soon forced open, and all filed in filling the house. He took a
seat on the stand beside the speaker, in order to be certain of what was
said. Convinced of the truth of the doctrines advanced, he was baptized
shortly afterwards by Elder Elisha Davis, who in Utah lived many years at
Lehi. Mr. Jenkins was the only one in the congregation that joined the
Church. The year 1840 found him at Nauvoo, where he became acquainted with
the Prophet Joseph Smith. He left there tor Council Bluffs in 1847, and
came on to Utah in 1850.
He made his home at Ogden. He was elected surveyor of Weber County in
1852, and for thirty-five years surveying was his regular business. He ran
the first line for the Bear River canal, the company now working that
enterprise following his line closely, as he ascertained by personal
inspection. He has engaged in various pursuits, and claims to have
operated the first distillery in Utah, as early as 1851. At last accounts
Mr. Jenkins was in excellent health, except for his life-long lameness,
and though between eighty and ninety years of age his eye was not dim, and
he had never found it necessary to use spectacles.
472-473
THOMAS WILKINS JONES. OF Welsh parentage, Mr.
Jones was originally a Canadian, born in the city of Quebec, September 12,
1834. His parents, James Bray Jones and Elizabeth Brown Wilkins Jones,
were natives of Caerphilly, Glamorganshire, Wales, but emigrated to Quebec
soon after their marriage, which took place March 23, 1832. The father was
an engraver and copper plate printer, and on arriving in Canada he opened
an establishment, which he conducted until his death, an event that
occurred on the day that
Thomas was seven years old. After the death of her husband Mrs. Jones,
with her children, returned to Wales, where in March, 1846, Thomas was
apprenticed to a tailor, Mr. William James. Having served his regular
apprenticeship, he began business as a journeyman tailor in the town of
Cardiff, and was thus engaged when in 1850 he heard the Gospel preached by
Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Converted to
the faith, he was baptized by Elder William Willes in the river Taff , at
Cardiff, the same year.
He came back to America in 1853, sailing from Liverpool on the 5th of
February, and landing six weeks later, after a pleasant voyage, at New
Orleans, where he took steamer for Keokuk, Iowa, via St. Louis. From
Keokuk he came by ox team to Salt Lake City, arriving here on the 19th of
September. He spent the first winter at Kaysville, and in 1851 went to
Ogden, where he has ever since resided. That now beautiful and thriving
city, when first he looked upon it was a mere country village, half
covered with sagebrush, and with scarcely a decent tenement to be seen.
He had resided in Ogden about a year, when on July 23, 1855, he was
ordained to the office of a Seventy, made a member of the seventh quorum,
and sent with others upon a mission to Fort Supply, now in Wyoming, but
then in Utah. Having occasion to return to Ogden, he with several
companions, all mounted, started for that place on the 7th of March, 1856.
Snow had fallen to an unusual depth that winter, but just how deep it was
the travelers did not learn until they reached Bear River, where it lay
piled up in great banks, and became deeper and deeper as they proceeded.
In Weber Canyon they were compelled to turn their animals loose to shift
for themselves, while the riders performed the rest of the journey on
foot. It took them ten days to traverse the remaining distance, ordinarily
a journey of two or three days.
Mr. Jones' main purpose in making this arduous and perilous trip was soon
apparent. On the third day of the following month he married Miss Sarah
Jane Foy, the bride's father performing the ceremony. The heavy snows
having abated, the young husband returned to Fort Supply, taking his wife,
and they remained there until the post was broken up on the approach of
Johnston's army. They then returned to Ogden.
This was in 1857, in the fall of which year Mr., Jones was mustered into
service in the militia. He accompanied his brigade to Marsh Valley, Idaho,
to intercept the United States troops under Colonel Alexander, who was
making a detour from Black's Fork, with a view, it was supposed, to
entering Salt Lake Valley from the north. Mr. Jones afterwards served in
Echo canyon until operations came to a standstill, the government troops
going into winter quarters at Fort Bridger and most of the militia
returning to their homes. Mr. Jones returned to Ogden on the 4th of
December. In the move of 1858 he went to Spanish Fork, and after peace was
declared returned to Ogden to settle down and make a permanent home for
his family. In 1862 his mother came from Wales and settled at Ogden, where
she died December 29, 1891, in the eighty-sixth year of her age.
In the year 1870 Mr. Jones opened a merchant tailoring establishment,
which, beginning small, grew to be the largest concern of its kind in
Northern Utah. He employed a number of skilled workmen, had a good local
patronage, and was extensively supported in numerous other towns along the
lines of the railroads, east to Wyoming, west to Nevada, and north through
Idaho into Montana. His business included men's furnishing goods, and his
establishment was in every respect first class.
On the 10th of May, 1873, Mr. Jones suffered a severe loss in the death of
his wife, who had borne him nine children. On March 2, 1874, he was united
in marriage with his present wife, who was then Miss Louisa Good ale. She
is the mother of eleven children. In the midst of his more practical
pursuits Mr. Jones found time to cultivate the intellectual and artistic
side of his nature. For a period of ten years he was connected with the
local Home Dramatic Association. As a successful business man, honest,
energetic and industrious, a law-abiding and progressive citizen, and a
man true to his religious and political convictions, he is honored and
respected by his fellow townsmen, and may justly be considered one of the
representative men of the Junction City.
474-475
JOSEPH THOMAS KINGSBURY. NO man born and
reared in Utah has made a better record consistent with his abilities and
opportunities than the present educational head of the University of Utah;
a man esteemed for his many amiable qualities, his thorough-going
honesty and integrity, his achievements in science and his unselfish
devotion to the cause of education. Diffident in the extreme when a boy,
Dr. Kingsbury suffered on this account much embarrassment and annoyance,
and in view of that well-known propensity it is almost a marvel in the
eyes of his early associates to see him in the high and responsible
position that he now occupies. That he merited it is beyond question; that
he sought it no one can truthfully say. It came as the natural reward of a
commendable ambition, supplemented by determined, persistent and
successful endeavors to discipline and develop his faculties and make
himself useful in the world. He has overcome his diffidence to a great
extent, but still retains the modesty and amiability that characterized
his younger years.
The son of Joseph C. Kingsbury and his wife Dorcas Moore, he was born at
East Weber, Weber county, Utah, November 4, 1853; but his boyhood was
passed in Salt Lake City, where he has since almost continuously resided.
His mother, a delicate and sensitive woman, died when he was sixteen, worn
out by the toils and hardships of pioneer times. His father's biography is
given in this volume. Joseph's parents were in poor circumstances in his
early childhood, but later they were more comfortably situated. Before
deciding to become an educator he spent the greater part of his time in
farming:, canyon work and teaming. He also did some book-keeping, and was
active in Sunday schools, and in literary and debating societies.
His education was but fragmentary until he entered the University of
Deseret, and at the time that he began to appreciate the value of
learning, it was almost impossible to obtain at home any beyond that given
in the common schools. After three years at the institution named he went
to Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, where for parts of two school
years he pursued a course in physics and chemistry. Subsequently he took
non-resident work in the Wesleyan University, Bloomington, Illinois,
winning the degrees of Ph. B., A. M., and Ph. D. In 1878 he became
connected with the home University as instructor in chemistry, and was
finally called to the chair of chemistry and physics. In August, 1879. he
married Miss Jane Mair, who is the mother of his six children.
In 1892, upon the resignation of Dr. John R. Park, he became acting
president of the University, and during a trying period of two years,
successfully and satisfactorily discharged the duties of that office,
besides doing most of the work imposed upon him by his professorship. Upon
the election of Dr. James E. Talmage as president he retired, but
did so with the full confidence of the Regents and the faculty, to devote
his entire time to
the field of physical science. In fact he retired of his own volition, and
welcomed the election of his successor, in order to concentrate at one
place and under one management
the higher education of the State; his desire in that direction being
greater than any ambition of his for personal aggrandizement. In this the
great effort of his life for which he
sacrificed so much, he had accumulated much data, consisting of letters
from many leading educators throughout the nation, in support of his ideas
upon the proposed concentration. In April, 1897. when Dr. Talmage
resigned, Dr. Kingsbury was elected president of the University of Utah.
This institution was incorporated by the Provisional Government of
Deseret, February 28, 1850; hence its original title — University of
Deseret. The control of it was vested in a chancellor and twelve regents,
to be elected at each annual session of the Legislature; and it was to
receive an annual appropriation of five thousand dollars from the public
treasury. The first meeting of the board of regents was held March 13,
1850, when a committee was appointed to officiate with Governor Young in
the selection of a site for the University and in choosing locations for
primary schools, as "feeders" to the so-called "Parent School." At this
time no common school law had been enacted. The Parent School opened
November 11, 1850, in a private home in the Seventeenth Ward, and held its
second term in the Council House, at the corner of Main and South Temple
streets. The first instructor was Dr. Cyrus Collins, A. M., a sojourner in
Salt Lake City, on his way to California. He was soon succeeded by the
chancellor, Orson Spencer, assisted by Regent W. W. Phelps. At the Council
House the tuition was reduced from eight dollars to five dollars a
quarter, and the original design of having a separate school for women was
abandoned, both sexes being now admitted. In October, 1851, Regent Orson
Pratt was added as an instructor. For a while the school was held in the
Thirteenth Ward, where a University building was projected. Shortly after,
owing to a lack of funds and the absence of "feeders,'" it was suspended,
and fifteen years elapsed before the chancellor and board of regents,
regularly elected by the Territorial legislature, felt justified in again
instituting school work under the auspices of the University. Meanwhile,
however, they were authorized by the Assembly to appoint a superintendent,
who acting with them and under their direction, devoted himself to the
task of building up a primary public school system throughout the
Territory.
The University resumed work in November, 1867, under the supervision of
David O. Calder, who, until March, 1869, conducted it successfully as a
commercial school, its quarters being in the Council House. Mr. Calder
having resigned, the board of regents chose as his successor Dr. John K.
Park. The institution now entered upon a career of comparative prosperity.
The work was laid out in five courses, preparatory, normal, commercial,
scientific and classical. The enrollment of students the first year was
223; the second year, 546. The University became very popular; it was well
patronized directly by the people, and fostered and encouraged by liberal
appropriations from the Legislature. After a sojourn of several years in
the Council House it took up its abode in the Union Academy building,
opposite Union Square, a valuable ten acre block subsequently bestowed by
Salt Lake City upon the University for a building site.
Then came the erection of a building, the first the University had owned,
progress upon which was arrested midway by the unfortunate
misunderstanding between Governor Murray and the Legislature, related
elsewhere. By the Governor's veto of the appropriation bill the University
was left without funds either to complete its building or continue its
educational work. Its very existence was threatened, but in this extremity
the president and professors promptly offered their services free, until
something- could be done to
relieve the situation. Members of the board of regents and other public
spirited citizens
as promptly came forward with their private means to the rescue and
support of the imperilled institution. Governor Murray's successor.
Governor West, was a man of more
liberal ideas, and by his action, in connection with the Legislature,
funds were furnished
the University with which to reimburse its rescuers, complete its building
and liquidate
all obligations against it.
In 1884 the legislature amended the charter of the institution, giving it
definite power to confer degrees, and in 1892 a new charter was enacted,
reducing the membership of the governing board from thirteen to nine, and
changing the title "University of Deseret" to "University of Utah." June
of that year witnessed the resignation of Dr. Park, who as president and
an active professor of the institution had done more than any one else to
place it upon the plane designed by its founders and give it prestige and
influence among the educational establishments of the country. Joseph T.
Kingsbury, the senior professor, succeeded Dr. Park, under the title of
acting president. How he retired in 1894, to make way for the election of
Dr. Talmage, whose three years of efficient work as president was followed
by Dr. Kingsbury's election in 1897, has already been told.
Thus from a beginning so small that the entire work of instruction was
performed by a single teacher, the University has grown steadily to its
present creditable proportions, when it has over six hundred students
enrolled in preparatory, normal and collegiate
courses, with twenty-four professors and instructors, exclusive of the
instructors in the
training school. Its courses in general science, liberal arts, letters,
mining and advanced
normal work lead to the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of
Science. In April, 1894. the institution received a valuable endowment
from the Salt Lake Literary and Scientific Association, which endowed the
chair of geology in the amount of sixty thousand
dollars; and about the same time Dr. Park donated to the University his
splendid private
library of nearly four thousand volumes, also a collection of natural
history specimens. In 1890 the legislature transferred to it the
miscellaneous works of the Territorial library. The University's latest
bequest was another munificent gift from Dr. Park, who at his death in
September, 1900, caused it to inherit the bulk of his estate.
At this writing the University of Utah is occupying its new and permanent
home, on a magnificent site of sixty acres, formerly a part of the Fort
Douglas Reservation, and granted by act of Congress to the young and
growing institution. Lying at the foot hills of the Wasach range,
overlooking city, valley and lake, a more commodious or more beautiful
campus could not be found in Salt Lake valley or any where else in Utah.
The Legislature of 1899 appropriated two hundred thousand dollars for the
removal of the University to its present site, where suitable buildings
have since been erected and occupied. One of these buildings in 1902 was
accidentally destroyed by fire, but it has been rebuilt. The University is
now in a flourishing condition.
pages 355-357
JOSEPH MARRIOTT. JOSEPH MARRIOTT, of Murray,
was born April 4, 1838, in the village of Sutton, Nottinghamshire,
England. His parents were Henry and Esther Marriott, and he was their
eldest son. He was eleven years old when his father and mother were
baptized into the Sutton branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. A year or two later he went to work in the Plesley
cotton mills, and while there suffered much petty persecution on account
of the religion of his parents. On one occasion four of his fellow
employes, young men, members of the Reformed Methodist church, seized him,
saying derisively that they would anoint him with oil and brush him clean.
Thereupon they poured mill oil over him and put his head under a revolving
brush, used for brushing cards, pulling his hair and making his skin very
sore. This was the first time he ever used profane language. "You d-----
curses," he exclaimed, as he writhed and struggled in the hands of his
tormentors. This ill treatment determined him to be a Latter-day Saint,
and he was baptized by his father at Mansfield Wood House, where the
family then resided, June 11, 1853.
Two years later his father sailed for America, and during two years more
the mother
lived as best she could, assisted by the labors of her children. Joseph,
after leaving the cotton mills, worked in the potteries and coal mines. In
1857 his mother and sister came to America, and he and his brother Thomas
then lived with James Briggs, and subsequently with John Woodhead, the
latter at Pilley in Yorkshire. Here was a branch of the Church, in which
Joseph was ordained a Priest. He remained there until the fall of 1859,
and then went to Clay Cross, where he and his brother stayed as long as
they remained in their native land.
In a company of Latter-day Saints presided over by Elder J. D. Ross, they
sailed for America, April 1, 1860, and a month later found Joseph Marriott
in New York City. He proceeded to his fathers home in Alton, Illinois, but
left there on the 4th of July, setting out for the East on foot, alone,
without a cent in his pocket, and with nothing in his hands but a
concertina, which he played by the wayside. He was a good singer, having
sung in choirs in the old country, and managed to pick up a living by his
music. At Chicago he hired out to Perry Jones, of South Grove, to work in
the harvest field. His associates were very hard upon the Mormons, one old
man saying that if he saw a Mormon crossing his field he would take his
gun and shoot him down. In this unfriendly atmosphere he remained until
the middle of April, 1861, by which time he had changed his mind about
going East and had determined to come to Utah. Proceeding to Florence,
Nebraska, he crossed the plains that season in a company arriving at Salt
Lake City about the middle of September. He was met by Uncle Benny Green
of Draper, a great friend of his father's who had come to meet his boys in
this company. He invited young Marriott home with him.
Until March 1, 1862, he worked for board and clothing at Draper, and then
came to Salt Lake City, where he dug ditches, herded cows and went to work
in the city pottery. On the 1st of December, the same year, he married
Elizabeth, widow of Joseph Wardell. In June, 1864, he moved to West Weber,
but in 1870 gave up his farm at that place and moved to Honeyville, and
thence to Corinne, where he ran a job wagon until the spring of 1872.
Business falling off, he had to move again, this time to West Jordan,
where he drove team till fall, and then took up a homestead a mile east of
Sandy. He lived in a tent until snow came, and was about to build a house
and execute a contract on the big canal west of the Jordan, when his wife
died, June 11, 1873. He greatly missed his kind and faithful companion.
She did his reading for him, he being uneducated at that time. Six weeks
after his wife's death, her infant died also. Deprived of his wife's help
in reading, the bereaved husband set to work determinedly to learn to read
for himself, and after much labor he succeeded.
Having built upon his homestead and cultivated his land, discovering and
utilizing a water supply that made him independent of his neighbors, he
entered again into the state of wedlock, marrying August 20, 1876. Martha
Larkins, a member of the "'Reorganized Church," with which he had become,
or was about to become connected. She died March 28, 1888. His house being
lonely and desolate, he married a few weeks later Elizabeth Wiechart, a
widow with five children. She died November 20, 1895, and on February 9,
1896, he married another widow, Mrs. Mary Nelson, who had two children.
About the year, 1881. Mr. Marriott began to study medicine, and after
getting a good knowledge of herbs, he started to sell medicines among his
neighbors. He traveled by team, carried a large stock of drugs, and
business increased with him until he had a route all through Salt Lake
County. In April. 1885, he sold his homestead to Thomas Graves, and bought
from him a saloon at Murray, which he forthwith converted into a drug
store. In 1889 he was a student in the National School of Pharmacy, and
though he studied at home, as before, his rating in pharmacy was sixty per
cent. When the Utah Pharmaceutical Association was organized, April 5,
1892, Mr. Marriott became a member of that body. In July, 1894, he
received from the medical board of examiners a certificate authorizing him
to practice medicine as a non-graduate practitioner. In politics he is a
Democrat. He claims to have brought to Murray the first printing press;
also to have been the first school assessor and collector for the Sandy
district. At intervals between farming and practicing medicine he has
labored with his father as a preacher of the Re-organized Church among the
southern settlements of the County.
480-482
ALFRED WILLIAM McCUNE. IT was a golden
utterance of the lamented Garfield, that he never met a ragged barefooted
urchin but he felt like taking off his hat to him, for he never knew what
possibilities might be buttoned up beneath his tattered coat. The
sentiment was particularly appropriate from one, who, a ragged urchin
himself at the outset of his career, had risen from the lowliest walks of
life to some of its most exalted stations. Had General Garfield, who
visited Utah in the summer of 1872, antedated that visit with one tenor
twelve years earlier, and made himself personally acquainted with the
settlements south of Salt Lake City, he might have met a ragged,
barefooted little boy. who used to tend sheep in the vicinity of Salt
Creek, now Nephi. That boy was "Alf" McCune, the
present rich mine owner and railroad man, a sketch of whose busy career
will now be
laid before the reader.
Mr. McCune is not a native of Utah, though he has lived here nearly all
his life. His father, Matthew McCune, originally from the Isle of Man, was
a British soldier, stationed
at Calcutta, and it was there, in the citadel of Fort William, that A. W.
McCune was born,
June 11, 1849. His mother, Sarah Scott McCune, was from London, where she
and many
generations of her ancestors were born and bred. She was the mother of
seven sous and
one daughter, named as follows: Alexander J., Agnes J., Henry F., Alfred
R. William
T., George, Alfred W., and Edward J. All were born in India, where their
parents had
resided since 1835, and all the children but the four boys, Henry T.,
George, Alfred W. and
Edward, died there. Alexander, when seven years of age, fell a victim to
the bite of a
mad dog, and Agnes died in her infancy. Alfred R. and William T., aged
four and two
years respectively, were carried off in one day by Asiatic cholera.
Early in the "fifties" Mormon missionaries appeared upon the scene, and
converted among others the McCune family, who, when Alfred W. was about
five years old, moved from Calcutta to Rangoon, Burmah, where the soldier
sire was next stationed. There Alfred attended a little school, taught in
his father's house by William Willes, the Mormon missionary. Other Elders
from Utah in India at that time were Nathaniel V. Jones, A. Milton Musser,
Chauncey W. West, Richard Ballantyne, Elam Luddington, Truman Leonard and
William Fotheringham. Joining the Church to which these Elders belonged
was but the prelude to coming to Utah, a project determined on by the
McCunes soon after their conversion.
Captain McCune — for that was the father's rank, won during twenty-four
years of service in the British army— resigned his position in the
artillery corps, and set sail from Calcutta December 6, 1856. This was
shortly before the breaking out of the great Sepoy mutiny. That he
emigrated just when he did, was regarded by Captain McCune as
providential, for had he delayed his departure a few weeks longer, he
would have found it difficult if not impossible to leave. He and his
family might have shared the fate of other Europeans massacred by the
Sepoys during that perilous period. They sailed in an American ship, the
"Escort," Captain Hussey, and were one hundred and eight days upon the
sea, landing at New York early in March, 1857. They disembarked in the
midst of a snow storm. "My mind is very clear upon that point," said A. W.
McCune to the writer, "for I had never seen snow before: I took it for
salt, while my brother Ed thought it was sugar."
The family remained in New York about three months, and then proceeded by
way of Chicago to Iowa City. Crossing the Missouri River at Florence, they
pursued the usual route up the Platte, two ox-teams, and two Schuttler
wagons, well loaded with supplies, comprising their outfit for the journey
to the Rocky Mountains. Captain McCune drove one team and his son Henry
the other. They traveled in a company led by Jacob Hoffein. It was the
year of the Echo canyon war trouble, and Johnston's army was on the march
to Utah. The McCunes and their company passed and repassed the troops at
different points, but were not molested by them, and arrived safe at Salt
Lake City on the 21st of September.
For some weeks they occupied a house belonging to Elam Luddington, in the
eastern part of town, but late in the fall, or early in the winter, they
removed to Farmington, where they took the farm of Truman Leonard, to work
it on shares. Alfred's brother Henry spent the winter in Echo canyon,
helping to repel the invaders. In the move of 1858 the McCunes went to
Nephi, where they permanently settled. There the mother and father both
died, the former in 1877, the latter in 1800. Father McCune was a
pensioner of the British government to the end of his days. There also
died his son George, at the age of twenty-four, leaving a widow and two
children; and there the eldest and youngest of the surviving brothers,
Henry and Edward, still reside.
It was at Nephi that A. W. McCune grew to manhood. His first employments
were sheep herding, farming and stock-raising. At nineteen he worked on
the Union Pacific railroad, then being constructed through eastern Utah,
trundling a wheelbarrow, and at times wielding pick and shovel, on Sharp
and Little's contract in Echo canyon. Afterwards he went into the cattle
business with his brother Edward, in Juab county and on the Sevier river,
and continued in it as long as it was profitable. The construction of the
Utah Southern — the first railroad south of Salt Lake City — gave Mr.
McCune an opportunity to show some of his ability as a financier. He first
made money by running a grain car and following up the extension of the
road. His partner was Joel Grover, of Nephi. Subsequently they took in a
third partner, Walter P. Read, of that town, and filled a contract for
railroad building between Milford and Frisco. At the former place Grover,
McCune and Read had a store. These enterprises, with business trips to
Pioche, St. George, Silver Reef and other points, netted the firm in 1879
about eighteen thousand dollars. By this time Mr. McCune had entered into
a contract of another kind, having married Miss Elizabeth Ann Claridge, of
Nephi. The date of their union was July 1, 1872.
In the fall of 1879, Mr. McCune and his partners engaged in railroad
building in Colorado, taking contracts on the Rio Grande road, along the
San Juan river. (Due contract extended into New Mexico. It threatened at
first to end disastrously, owing to the heavy winter, but as usual with
McCune's ventures, it turned out a success. The next contract taken by
them was on the Denver and South Park line. They also built fifty-four
miles of the Denver and New Orleans road, between Colorado Springs and
Pueblo. Grover, McCune and Read were next heard of in the north,
constructing in 1882 twenty miles of the Oregon Short Line, west of
American Falls, Idaho. Seventeen miles of his contract was very heavy
work, full of cuts and fills, and much of it through solid rock. At the
same time they engaged to deliver twenty-five thousand cords of wood to
the Lexington mine, at Butte, Montana. This contract and others of a
similar kind led to the dissolution of the partnership existing between
the three friends, Messrs. Grover and Read, fearful of failure, selling
out to McCune, who, after vainly endeavoring to persuade them to continue
with him, all undismayed "went it alone."
It was in the winter of 1882 that he thus launched out by himself. His
good luck did not desert him, and he soon realized the fruits of a
prediction made by him to his ex-partners, that they would regret their
separation from him. He made money at every turn. He bought out Joseph
Broughton and Company, a thriving mercantile house at Walkersville, a
suburb of Butte; contracted with the Alice Mining Company to furnish
twenty thousand cords of wood; and after filling that contract, furnished
the same company with many thousands of cords more. About a year after the
dissolution of his old partnership, he formed another with John Caplis, of
Butte, who was with him in the mercantile business, in wood contracts and
in railroad building, until he also thought it prudent to retire, and let
McCune "go it alone." The latter went on making money. He was a veritable
Midas — whatever he touched turned to gold.
His next railroad contract covered two hundred miles of the Montana
Central, from Great Falls to Butte. This was in 1885-6. His partners were
Hugh Kirkendall, of Helena, John Caplis and Walter P. Head. The venture
was entirely successful. McCune also built branches for the Union Pacific
company, from their main line (the O. S. L.) to the Alice, Anaconda and
other mines. A very important contract, from which he realized a large
amount of money, was one taken from the Anaconda company to furnish timber
for their mines. It necessitated the construction of an immense V-shaped
flume, and the diverting of waters from the eastern to the western side of
the great continental watershed, a distance of twenty-six miles. Many
predicted failure, but McCune saw money in the enterprise. He bought out
Caplis and took in Marcus Daly, representing the Anaconda company, as his
partner in the contract. It lasted for eleven years, and paid in dividends
seven hundred and sixty thousand dollars. During that time many thousands
of cords of wood were flumed down from the mountains to the mines.
After getting this great work under way, Mr. McCune turned his attention
to mining. He sent Mr. Al. Wheeler, of local baseball fame, up into
British Columbia, where, at Ainsworth, on Kootenai lake, the latter
located for his employer some fifteen or twenty claims. The most important
of these was the "Skyline," so named from its lofty altitude, more than
five thousand feet above the lake. In 1891 he purchased through his
manager, Scott McDonald, a half-interest in the celebrated Payne mine, the
first claim located in the Slocan district, B. C. In 1896 he had a law
suit over this valuable property with a partner, Steve Bailey, and
compromised by buying him out, purchasing from him at the same time three
other claims in the district. On the 6th of December, that year, the Payne
began shipping ore, and thenceforth averaged from fifty thousand to one
hundred thousand dollars a month in dividends. Up to February 1, 1899, the
mine was owned by three men — two-fifths by Mr. McCune and the rest by
William L. Hoge and Scott McDonald. Subsequently Mr. McDonald sold out
entirely, and Messrs. McCune and Hoge in part to a Montreal syndicate for
a very large sum of money. Mr. McCune also invested in several mines in
the Trail Creek district (Roseland, B. C.) One of these, the Nickel Plate,
sold for $225,000; and another, the War Eagle, after paying handsome
dividends, for $750,000. He retains possession of many claims in the same
camp, and is also the owner of valuable mines in Utah and Montana.
In the latter part of 1888 the McCunes became residents of Salt Lake City,
purchasing as their home a handsome dwelling erected by Mr. Joseph
Jennings, at the corner of Second West and South Temple streets. In April
following, Mr. McCune became connected with the Salt Lake City railroad,
Utah's pioneer street car line, one-third of which he acquired by
purchase. Simultaneously with his election as a director and
vice-president of the company, came a new era in the history of the road,
electricity being substituted for horse power, and other improvements
made, costing in the aggregate about a million dollars. This outlay, with
the changes in equipment and conduct, placed it
fully abreast of enterprises of
its class in all parts of the country. The Salt Lake City Railroad company
finally absorbed its rival, the Rapid Transit company, and in the
consolidated concern Mr. McCune is a heavy owner. He is also largely
interested in the Utah Power company, and in the jewelry business of the
J. H. Leyson company. He was for some time a part owner of the Salt Lake
"Herald."
In the spring of 1898. after returning from an extended tour in Europe
(visited previously by Mr. McCune) he and his wife with their family
entered into a rented occupancy of the famous Gardo House, the parlors of
which they adorned with choice specimens of marble statuary purchased by
them in Italy. In August of the same year Mr. McCune, with William L.
Hoge, of Anaconda, Montana, and David Eccles, of Ogden, Utah, inaugurated
the Utah and Pacific railroad, designed to be built from Milford, the
southern terminus of the Oregon Short Line, to Los Angeles, and thence on
to the coast. The construction of the new line began in September, and
work was completed to the State line about the 1st of July, 1899.
In the fall of 1898 Mr. McCune decided to become a candidate for the
United States Senate, in which a vacancy was about to occur through the
expiration of the term of Senator Frank J. Cannon, elected by the
Republican majority of Utah's first State Legislature in January, 1896.
Owing to the attitude of the Republican party on the silver question,
which had caused Senator Cannon and other Republican champions of free
silver to bolt the St. Louis convention, the Legislature of 1899 was
overwhelmingly Democratic, and Mr. McCune, a staunch Democrat, who had
worked zealously for and contributed much to the party's success in Utah,
entered upon the race for the senatorship with very fair prospects of
success. His main competitors were Judge William H. King, Utah's
Democratic Representative in Congress; the veteran Democratic leader,
Judge Powers; and Senator Cannon himself; the last named the avowed choice
of the Weber county legislators, elected on a fusion ticket containing the
names of Democrats, Republicans, and Populists. The Republicans, who had
but fifteen of the sixty-three votes of the joint assembly, maintained a
partisan solidarity, as usual in such cases; voting as a unit, with one or
two exceptions, for one prominent Republican and then another, merely as a
compliment to the nominee. The contest was spirited and stubborn, but
finally Mr. McCune led the race and was within one or two votes of
election, when, just before the casting of the one hundred and
twenty-second ballot, on Saturday, the 18th of February, a most unexpected
denouement occurred — Representative Albert A. Law, of Cache county, a
Republican who had bolted his party caucus and joined with the fusionists
in supporting Senator Cannon, arose in his place and hurled charges of
attempted bribery against Mr. McCune, alleging that he had offered him for
his vote the sum of fifteen hundred dollars.
An investigation was at once ordered by the Assembly, and a committee in
which the three elements — -Democratic, Republican and Fusionist — were
represented, was appointed to conduct the same. During the course of the
inquiry, which was thorough, Mr. McCune indignantly and emphatically
denied Mr. Law's charge, and alleged that it was a conspiracy to ruin his
chances of election. The committee, after hearing the evidence and
arguments of counsel, and carefully weighing the same, reported their
findings. Five of the seven committeemen united in a decision to the
effect that the charge of bribery had not been sustained, while the
remaining two filed a dissenting opinion. The reports were read to the
Assembly on Monday, March 6, 1899, and the committee was discharged with a
vote of thanks for its labors.
The balloting continued from day to day until midnight of the 8th of
March, the last day of the legislative session. Most of Mr. McCune's
supporters stood loyally by him, and he still remained the leading
candidate. Not even the introduction, at the last moment, of the powerful
name of Hon. George Q. Cannon, as a Republican candidate for the
senatorship, could sweep him off his feet, though it temporarily
diminished the number of his supporters. Most of those who fell away came
back to him, and with the rest went down with him, flags flying, he and
all the other candidates failing to secure the required majority. The
final ballot — the one hundred and forty-ninth — being cast, the vote
stood
thus: Alfred W. McCune, 25; William H. King, 12; George Q. Cannon. 15;
Frank J. Cannon, 7; George Sutherland, 3. The joint assembly dissolved
without electing a United States Senator. Mr. McCune accepted his defeat
gracefully — if defeat it could be styled, since no one was victorious —
and the evening after the adjournment of the Legislature he invited its
members, the senatorial candidates, and his political friends and foes in
general, to a reception and banquet at the Kenyon. A few weeks later,
accompanied by Mr. Fisher Harris, his campaign manager, Mr. Waldemar Van
Cott, one of his attorneys, and other intimate friends, he took a trip to
Europe to recruit his mental and physical energies, which had been heavily
taxed by the excitement, agitation and anxieties of the campaign.
Since returning from Europe in June, 1899, Mr. McCune has been kept very
busy, buying and selling mines, building and conducting railroads, and
watching over the many and
varied enterprises in which his wealth is invested. In September of that
year he went to
New York, and was present at the magnificent reception given by the
citizens of the metropolis to the great naval hero, Admiral Dewey. His
latest venture is the building of a
railroad and the development of vast copper mines in far away Peru, which
country he
first visited in June, 1901. Returning some mouths later, he moved his
family from the
Ellerbeck home in the Eighteenth Ward — temporarily rented by them after
leaving the
Gardo House — into the splendid new mansion erected by him on the spur of
the hill at
the head of Main Street; a palatial property second to none in Utah in
beauty of design
and delightful situation.
Mr. and Mrs. McCune are the parents of nine children: Alfred W., Jr..
Harry B., Earl Vivian, Raymond, Fay (Mrs. Raymond Naylor), Frank C.,
Jacketta (Mrs. Ernest Greene), Marcus and Elizabeth C., all living but
Harry and Frank. At this writing, Mr. McCune is again in Peru, conducting
the mighty enterprise inaugurated by him in that land.
505-508
ROBERT McQUARRIE. OF Gaelic origin, and inherting
the sturdy qualities of his race, the subject of this sketch was born
August 17, 1832, at Bruntylen, North Knapdale, Argyleshire, Scotland. His
parents were Allan and Agnes Mathieson McQuarrie. Robert was
the eldest of seven children, and the one upon whom devolved at an early
age the duty of helping to support the family. They were very poor. The
father was a farm laborer, but became disabled owing to a lame leg, which
after years of suffering he was compelled to have amputated. Work with him
was then a thing of the past, and the mother, assisted by her sons Robert
and Hector, toiled hard for a living. Robert received a very limited
education. He was naturally inclined to mechanism, but his early labors
were at gardening and farming. His boyhood and early manhood were passed
at Kilmalcolm, in Renfrewshire, where he was employed successively by a
Mr. Davidson, by the Rev. John Parker, and also on the Castlehill farm,
owned by his grand uncle-in-law, Robert Holm.
Robert McQuarrie became a Latter-day Saint October 19, 1853. Three and a
half years later, with means left them by the death of Robert Holm and his
wife Mary Graham, he, with his father, mother, brothers John and Neil and
sisters Agnes and Mary, emigrated to America. They started from Greenock
on the river Clyde March 19, 1857, and went by way of Liverpool to Boston,
and thence to Council Bluffs. Their company on shipboard was commanded by
James P. Park, and on the plains by Jesse B. Martin. They left Iowa city
on the 3rd of June, and after some exciting experiences in stampedes,
during which two persons were killed and others, including Mrs. McQuarrie,
injured, reached Salt Lake City on the 12th of September.
This was the year of the invasion by Johnston's army, which was not far in
the rear of the emigrants on the way to Utah. The day after the McQuarries
arrived at Salt Lake City occurred the historic interview between Governor
Young and Captain Van Vliet, relative to the proposed wintering of the
Federal troops in Salt Lake Valley. Mr. McQuarrie settled permanently in
Ogden. From 1860 to 1870 he acted as a ward teacher, and was then
appointed president of the second ecclesiastical district, now the Second
Ward of that city. On May 28, 1870, he was made Bishop of the ward. By
this time he was a married man, having wedded on April 29, 1860, Mena
Funk.
Bishop MeQuarrie's official record, if written in full, would be quite
voluminous. As early as April, 1863, he was a lieutenant in the militia,
and from 1869 to 1871 on the Ogden City police force. From May, 1872. to
May, 1874, he was absent on a mission to his native land. Having returned
home, he was appointed treasurer for Weber County in November, 1875, and
was elected to that office in 1876 and 1880. From February, 1877. he was a
city councilman, until appointed alderman for the Second Ward, March 15,
18S2. He was elected to the same office in February, 1885. For two years
he was treasurer of Ogden City, and for three years a selectman for Weber
County. He is a man much esteemed by his neighbors and the community in
general, and has always been true to every trust.
402-403
CHARLES COMSTOCK RICHARDS. A LAWYER of
repute, a legislator of experience, and a political leader whose abilities
are recognized as of the first order, Hon. Charles C. Richards,
ex-Secretary of Utah Territory, is a man who excites interest, not only
for what he has accomplished but for what he may accomplish before his
career closes. While among the leaders of his profession, he is still
young, full of lofty ideals and far-reaching ambitions, and inherits a
full measure of the strength of will and tenacity of purpose for which his
ancestors have been noted.
He was born in Salt Lake City, September 10, 1859, and was the youngest of
six children, his parents being Franklin Dewey and Jane (Snyder) Richards.
To a liberal education he has added persistent and continuous study,
realizing that there is no royal road to success, and that advantages are
worthless unless accompanied by unremitting labor and care; so that Mr.
Richards, while he has built up a fine practice, is still a student, still
a worker, still delving in the caves of knowledge, and adding treasures to
his store.
After his school term, he began working in Zion's Co-operative Mercantile
Institution, at Ogden, to which place his parents had removed while he was
under ten years of age; and in that establishment he remained until 1873,
when he went to work under his brother Franklin S., who was County Clerk
and Recorder of Weber County. In August, 1881, he was elected County
Recorder and in August, 1883, County Clerk. The former office he held
until he rescued it in 1884, and the latter, after being twice re-elected,
he resigned in May, 1888. The experience gained in these positions, during
a service of fifteen years, has been of great value to Mr. Richards in his
eventful career.
He early developed the native tact and shrewdness so necessary to success
in the legal profession and in politics, and while acting as his brother's
deputy he studied law. In June, 1884, after examination by a committee
appointed for that purpose, he was admitted to practice in the Supreme
Court of the Territory of Utah. Two months later he was elected
Prosecuting Attorney for Weber County. To this office he was twice
re-elected, and then declined renomination. In December, 1887, he was
admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.
As a delegate from Weber County, he sat in the Constitutional Convention
of 1887, and in the fall of that year was elected to represent Weber
County m the lower house of the Legislature, serving in the session of
1888. Some of the best laws framed and enacted during that memorable
session — when the Liberal element made its first legal showing in Utah's
legislative halls, and the Governor's absolute veto was still the dread of
the representatives of the people — owed their existence to the fertile
mind, unflagging persistency and shrewd diplomacy of Charles C. Richards.
In the fall of 1890 he was elected
to the Council of the Legislative Assembly, and served in the session of
1890, being chairman of the Committee on Judiciary and of the Committee on
Municipal Corporations and Towns; also a member of the special committee
that framed Utah's first free school law.
It was while he was serving his term in the House that the law was passed
establishing the Territorial Reform School and the Agricultural College.
In the face of opposition that would have daunted most people, but only
made him the more determined, he succeeded in getting the former
institution located in Weber County, and later served as a member of its
Board of Trustees. He has taken an active part among the educators of
Utah, and for several years was a member of the Board of Regents for the
Deseret University, now the University of Utah.
Mr. Richards early became a leader among Utah's practitioners at the bar.
After the passage of the Edmunds Law, there arose the noted mandamus suit
brought by James N. Kimball against Judge Franklin D. Richards, under the
Hoar amendment to that law, involving the Probate Judgeship of Weber
County. The plaintiff had been appointed to the office by Governor Murray,
under the construction of the provisions of that act, and it was resisted
by the defendant. This became a test case, and had relation to many of the
officials in the Territory. The Governor's appointees were expecting to
take the offices, not by popular choice, but by virtue of their
appointment under this extra-legislative act, whereby every vestige of
representative rule in Utah would have disappeared and the situation might
easily have assumed the proportions and characteristics of a crisis. To
oppose a statute of Congress was to furnish the Liberals with more
ammunition for their campaign, unless it could be doue strictly within the
prescribed rules of legal procedure. The case was a delicate one to
handle, but Franklin S. and Charles C., two of Judge Richards' sons,
managed the case so skillfully, that when the proceedings were ended, the
terms of office of the Governor's appointees had expired, and the old
incumbents were succeeded by persons duly elected by the people.
But it was during the crusade which raged during the greater part of that
decade, and in which a large and respectable element of the community were
subjected to relentless prosecutions, imprisonment and fines, for refusing
to abandon a feature of their faith, that the subject of this article came
most conspicuously into prominence. He was attorney for that class of
people within his district and for some outside of it., defending them
with untiring energy and unfailing zeal. He was in the harness
continually, some times for days and nights without intermission. Numerous
instances might be cited, illustrative of the stress of this sore struggle
and the indefatigable valor and skill with which the hunted refugees were
defended and vindicated by this sterling champion of their rights. It is
an epoch never to be forgotten or repeated, and out of it all no name
shines with more lustre than that of Charles C. Richards.
In the midst of it all, his political intuitions were not ignored, but
merely held in restraint until the proper time fcr their development and
application should arrive. Utah's conflicting political elements must be
divided by the means prevailing elsewhere, instead of religious
differences as the line of demarcation. But he would not move in so
importaut a matter till the season had come and conditions were ripe; till
the slow but steadily moving hand of time had brought about such
amelioration of the bitter strife, that when the change began nothing
could successfully oppose it. And even then, it took acumen, matured
judgment and executive capacity to properly effect the transformation.
The ranks of the People's (or Mormon) party contained not a few whose
devotion to the cause was great, and who regarded their political
organization as a bulwark against present aggression and threatened
subjugation; while the Liberals (or Gentiles), whose numbers had been
steadily growing, and the consummation of whose purposes seemed to be near
at hand, were in many eases loth to give up the chase just as the goal was
in sight. At these times, Mr. Richards was exceedingly active. Much of his
time and attention were taken from business and patriotically bestowed
upon the movement having in view the abolition of existing conditions and
the installation of better things looking to statehood and independence.
Not only did he engage diplomatically with leading Geutile Democrats at
home, but placed himself in communication with some of the great leaders
of the Democratic party in the nation. He raised sufficient money and
brought the necessary influence to bear to have such men as Chauncey F.
Black, Lawrence Gardner and William L. Wilson, respectively president,
secretary and chairman of the National Association of Democratic Clubs: U.
S. Senator Charles J. Faulkner, of West Virginia; and William D. Bynum.
member of Congress from Indiana, come here and by word of mouth and
personal influence add weight to the movement. Mr. Richards labored
assiduously with the local leaders, those who were most progressive and
least stubborn, gaining point by point, one concession after another, till
at last the way was cleared and the craft successfully launched.
During February and the entire spring of 1891, when the new division
movement was inaugurated, he took an active part in organizing the
Democratic party in Utah. With other prominent local Democrats, he spent
the month of February, 1892, at Washington, D. C, working with Senators
and Congressmen, explaining the changed conditions in Utah, and making
arguments before the Senate and House committees on Territories in favor
of local self-government and statehood. He urged them to pass what is
known as the Home Rule bill, knowing that as soon as they decided to pass
that measure, they would substitute an Enabling Act, and Utah would thus
become a state.
At the Democratic State Convention held in Ogden, in May, 1892, Mr.
Richards was elected chairman of the Democratic State Committee, and as
such he did splendid service with the National Committee and the delegates
to the National Convention at Chicago, in favor of seating the regular
Democratic delegates, Messrs. Caine and Henderson, and excluding the
Tuscarora delegates. He sent to each member of the committee and to each
delegate, numbering nearly one thousand, a personal letter and a printed
circular, setting forth the case. He won gloriously, giving evidence in
this important contest of his rare abilities as apolitical leader. As much
may be said of his successful conduct of the fall campaign of 1892, when
Joseph L. Rawlins was elected over Frank J. Cannon, Delegate to Congress.
During the summer preceding this election, Mr. Richards was appointed by
Governor Chauncey F. Black, president of the National Association of
Democratic Clubs, a member of the executive committee of that association,
representing Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado, which position he
still holds.
His next important appointment was as Secretary of the Territory of Utah,
an appointment made by President Grover Cleveland, May 6, 1893, and
promptly confirmed by the Senate when it met in the following December.
This was the first time a Mormon had been appointed to any important
Federal position in Utah for nearly forty years. He received the
endorsement of such great Democrats as Hon. J. Sterling Morton, Secretary
of Agriculture: United States Senators Gorman and Faulkner, Congressmen
Wilson and Bynum, Governor Black, and many others. His personal
acquaintance with President Cleveland, who knew of and appreciated his
splendid work for the Democratic party in Utah and adjoining states, had
much to do with his appointment. It was not only a high compliment to Mr.
Richards, but through him the undoubted and unequivocal expression of
confidence in the people of whom he was the representative, expressed by
the representative of all the people of the United States. To say that the
trust was faithfully kept, that the class of which he was a type were
gratified, not only with the appointment, but with the appointee and his
method of discharging the duties of his high and responsible station,
would be to recite history. Mr. Richards was an efficient and obliging
secretary, and magnified his office to the satisfaction of all concerned.
After the passage of the Enabling Act, it fell to him, as Acting Governor,
to issue the proclamation calling an election of delegates to a convention
to form a constitution for the proposed State of Utah. This election was
held in the fall of 1894. and the Constitutional Convention met in the
March following. He continued to serve as Secretary and Acting Governor
uutil relieved by the admission of the State, January 4, 1896. Two days
later he rode with Governor-elect Heber M. Wells, in the inaugural parade,
and presided at the ceremonies in the Tabernacle, whereas Acting Governor
he delivered over the executive offices to the Governor of the new State.
Mr. Richards has always been a Democrat, though under the old regime a
member of the People's Party; and has ever been interested and active in
politics. He is now devoting himself strictly to his profession.
In business circles he has occupied a prominent place at Ogden, his
enterprise and push having been the means of adding much to the
metropolitan characteristics of that growing city. It was through his
efforts and investments that the largest, most commodious and most modern
business block in the State at the time of its erection— the Utah Loan and
Trust Building — was conceived, engineered, and brought to a successful
finish; although the enterprise being ahead of its time and in advance of
the requirements of the town, when the boom burst, he lost more money than
he made; but no one complains of this less than himself.
Mr Richards' married life dates from December IS, 1877, when he wedded
Miss Louisa Letitia Peery, daughter of Hon. David H. Peery, ex-President
of Weber Stake, and one of Utah's prominent capitalists and business men.
They are the parents of six sons and two daughters, one of the latter
being dead. The eldest son, Charles C., Jr., has filled an honorable
mission to Germany. In his Church Mr. Richards holds the office of a
Seventy, to which he was ordained in January. 1884.
Personally, he is tall and well built, his countenance being decidedly of
the intellectual type and altogether comely. He is somewhat reserved in
demeanor, does not seek publicity or court applause, and is a fluent and
forceful speaker, rising at times to stirring eloquence. With great
executive ability and a natural aptitude for legislation, it will not be
surprising if he is found in the councils of the government in the not
distant future.
557-559
EMILY S. RICHARDS. IN nothing does Utah glory
more than in her superb and charming womanhood. The beauty, purity,
intellectual and spiritual endowments of her daughters have no superiors
the world over; and nowhere than in the metropolis of the State have they
received and developed these gifts and graces more abundantly. Prominent
among the possessors of such attributes, and numbered with the leading
women of the commonwealth, is Mrs. Emily Sophia Richards, born within a
stone's throw of the southern suburb of Salt Lake City, and for many years
and at the present time a permanent resident of this place.
South Cottonwood was her birthplace; her natal day May 13, 1850. Her
parents, Nathan and Rachel W. (Smith) Tanner, were originally from the
State of New York, where their progenitors were people of wealth and
refinement. The father was a man of rugged character and of pronounced
faith in man's spiritual origin and celestial destiny; and the mother,
likewise, was of strong religious nature, possessing prophetic power,
vivacious, yet of philosophic endurance in days of trial. It is not
surprising, therefore, though her early environment lacked the influence
which fashionable society invites and approves, that their daughter grew
up in grace and graciousness, in knowledge and refinement, partaking as
she did of the spiritual element in her devout parents.
In her rural home, at the base of the snow-crowned Wasatch mountains, she
passed the first six years of her life, developing into girlhood as a
flower, blossoming in sweet simplicity and purity, her mind expanding as
her soul grew in grace. She was then taken by her parents to Salt Lake
City, where teachers of talent and learning had charge of her education.
When eighteen years of age. she became the wife of Franklin S. Richards,
one of her former schoolmates, now a leading attorney of the State. The
date of their marriage was December 18, 1868. Five months later the young
couple removed to Ogden, and there the public career of Mrs. Richards
began.
Her first appointment was to the position of assistant secretary of the
Weber County Relief Society. She had previously been connected with the
Relief Society at Salt Lake City. Next she was made president of the Young
Ladies Mutual Improvement Association of Ogden, and vice-president of the
county organization of the same, serving ten years in that capacity.
During this time she made frequent visits to the national capital, in
company with her husband, who argued many important cases before the
Supreme Court of the United States. There she had the opportunity of
attending many women's conventions, and other interesting meetings held at
the seat of government.
In 1888 it was deemed desirable to make the Relief Societies and the Young
Ladies Associations auxiliary to the National Women's organizations, which
was done, and Mrs. Richards was appointed to represent them in the first
International Council. Its sessions were held at the Albaugh Opera House
in the city of Washington. The event is well described in the following
article from the pen of an able newspaper writer of that period:
"The leading woman workers of the world were present, and the sessions
continued several days, the local papers being filled with pictures and
speeches of noted women. Just about that time a committee of Utah men was
in Washington urging Statehood on the basis of the constitution formulated
and adopted by a convention in Utah in 1887. The Utah admission question
was before Congress, and it had become a subject of public interest in
Washington, being discussed pro and con in the papers and in private
circles. Just at the time of the Woman's World Convention the Utah
question attained its highest pitch, the custom of polygamy and woman
suffrage in Utah being at the moment revived in the public mind in the
most aggravated form. At this juncture it was announced that a Utah lady
would address the World's Convention as a representative of Utah. It was
perfectly natural that the immense concourse of people attending the
Convention should forecast the character of the lady who should address
them as some masculine heroine who could wield a battleax or any other
weapon in behalf of Utah, in keeping with their own exaggerated notions of
Utah life. And the lady herself, at the hour she had to appear, could but
feel the extreme tension in the public mind; for the morning papers were
bristling with denunciations of Utah institutions. There was an ominous
pause in the great throng when it was anuounced from the platform by the
presiding officer that the lady delegate would address them. Soon the lady
appeared, moving forward among the throng on the rostrum and taking her
place beside the narrow reading desk. What au apparition! It was not a
feminine Boanerges, not an Amazon, but a delicate, refined lady, trembling
slightly under the scrutinizing gaze of the multitude, yet reserved,
self-possessed, dignified, and as pure and sweet as an angel. Her
appearance was a powerful antithesis to their preconceived impressions,
and the change of feeling in the audience was almost instantaneous. The
lady's voice began its utterances on a scale of gently tremulous pathos,
and without rising into high pitch, its tenderness subdued every whisper
uutil its words reached every ear in the auditory. The tenor of the
address was what might have been expected by Utah people, an orderly,
scholarly presentation, such as would serve to recite facts and principles
and disarm prejudice. It was not the words themselves, but the gentle
spirit, that, like the morning dawn, went with the words and carried
winning grace to every heart. It was wonderful how sympathies were
engendered and asperities removed. When the lady concluded, after half an
hour's reading, there was many a moist eye, and many a listener felt
thankful that this gentle appeal had given them a new, more refreshing and
more kindly impression of Utah people and institutions. It was the mighty
force of the gentle sunlight, that unlocks the iceberg from its moorings
and sets it afloat upon the broad ocean. We sat near the speaker, but had
never seen her before. We learned afterwards that she was a Mrs. Richards,
wife of Lawyer Richards, of Salt Lake City."
Mrs. Richards herself refers to the occasion as one of the most
interesting, not to say
critical experiences of her life. Her name, for some reason, had been
passed upon the
program, and another lady announced, who was to speak upon the Indian
question:
whereupon, she sent a note to the chairman, asking the cause of the
omission. The mistake was at ouce rectified, and Miss Susan B. Anthony met
Mrs. Richards at the wing and escorted her to the platform with every
demonstration of respect. It was feared that the lady from Utah would not
be able to make herself heard throughout the hall — other speakers having
failed in that regard — but to the general surprise and delight, her clear
tones penetrated to the remotest recesses of the building, and her speech
was a veritable triumph.
At an executive session of the same convention of women, a president and
vice-president were appointed to organize suffrage associations in Utah;
Mrs. Froiseth, president, and Mrs. Richards, vice-president. A very
prominent Southern woman opposed the nomination of Mrs. Richards, saying
that "Mormonism" and polygamy were synonymous terms, and feeling that the
nomination of Mrs. Richards would mean the sustaining of that principle.
This was all quite unexpected by the latter, but she responded in a short
talk, refuting the statement, and giving the names of several Utah men,
including Delegate John T. Caine, saying that they were Mormons, or
Latter-day Saints, but not polygamists. At the close of Mrs. Richards'
talk. Miss Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslin Gage
and other leading suffragists spoke in favor of her nomination, remarking
that when George Q. Cannon sat in Congress, they did not feel, because of
his presence there, that they were sustaining polygamy. Upon Mrs.
Richards' return to Salt Lake City, Mrs. Froiseth decliued to act, saying
that suffrage was not good for Utah, and Mrs. Richards thereupon issued
the call and organized the associations, with Mrs. Sarah M. Kimball,
president, herself as vice-president, and Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells as
secretary.
At the time of the World's Fair in Chicago, Mrs. Richards was appointed
president of the Utah Board of Lady Managers. A Chicago paper then said of
her: "The President of the World's Fair Board of Lady Managers from Utah
is a handsome woman. Utahn by birth, but of New York descent, She is Emily
S. Richards, wife of Franklin S. Richards, a lawyer of Salt Lake City, who
achieved distinction in the law, and has argued some very important cases
before the Supreme Court of the United States. Not even in metropolitan
New York and cultured Massachusetts can the superior of Mrs. Richards be
found in originality of work and independence of thought.''
While in Chicago she appeared before the World's Congress of
Representative Women and gave a talk on organization; also a paper on the
"Women of Mormondom" before the Woman's Branch of the Parliament of
Religions. She was vice-president of the California Mid-winter Fair, in
1893-4. Under appointment of Governor Caleb W. West, she was
vice-president of the Board of Lady Managers of the Cotton States and
International Exposition at Atlanta, Georgia, in 1895, and was delegate to
the Woman's Suffrage Association, held at the same place.
Mrs. Richards prepared the memorial and led the victorious campaign for
equal suffrage at the time of our Constitutional Convention in the spring
of 1895, the president of the Suffrage Association, Mrs. Wells, being
absent in Washington. She was elected an alternate to the National
Democratic Convention, which at Chicago in 1896 nominated William Jennings
Bryan for President. She was also appointed a national organizer of
suffrage associations, and spent several weeks in Idaho, working for equal
suffrage in that State. In 1896 she forestalled by private declination the
nomination that would have made her Utah's first lady State Senator. Among
many important positions held by her are those of trustee of the
Agricultural College of Utah; director of the Salt Lake City Free Library;
director of the National Relief Society; director of the Orphan's Home
(appointed upon the recommendation of the First Presidency); president of
the Mothers Congress; vice-president of the Press Club; director of the
Woman's Club; and president of the Utah State Council of Women, which she
represented at the recent Suffrage Convention in Washington.
Mrs. Richards' powers have increased with the added experience and wisdom
of the years. While wrapped up in her public work, she is in no sense "a
new woman," in the common acceptance of the term. She seeks not to
supplant man in any of his spheres of activity, but simply vies with him
in his efforts for the welfare of the race. She is a woman of the good old
fashioned type, whose home is her earthly paradise. She is the mother of
three sons — Franklin Dewey Richards and Joseph Tanner Richards, both
attorneys at law: and William Snyder Richards, who died in infancy. In
addition, two daughters have blessed the home, Wealthy Lucile, now Mrs.
Oscar Jensen; and little Emily, the youngest of the household. To her
husband Mrs. Richards is a most congenial companion, and for her children
she has all of mother love that the heart can hold. Though a leader among
women, she is gentle, gracious and refined, possessing the esteem and
admiration of her people, and commanding respect in the councils of women
throughout the world.
604-606
FRANKLIN SNYDER RICHARDS. A NATIVE of Salt
Lake valley, born while Utah was yet a wilderness, inhabited by wild
beasts, savage tribes and a few white settlers, who, some two or three
years before, had been flung as outcasts from the face of civilization
across the bosom of nature's wastes, the subject of this sketch, Hon.
Franklin S. Richards, has lived to see the desert blossom, has witnessed
all the stages of growth and development through which the place of his
nativity has progressed from the most primitive condition to its present
proud, prosperous and happy state. Not only has he beheld that growth, he
has contributed to it, assisted in it, and in his way has done as much in
that direction as any son of Utah within her borders. A thoughtful student
from his
earliest year, a lawyer of note during the past quarter of a century, a
frequent pleader at the bar of the highest tribunal in the land, defending
with eloquent voice the rights and liberties of his people, a lawmaker and
a political leader, Mr. Richards has made a name and fame that shine with
lustre, not only here but elsewhere. Though of prominent aud influential
parentage, he is not one of those who owe all to their lineage and nothing
to themselves. His promotion, though rapid at times, has not been "through
the cabin window." He has faithfully earned and fairly won his laurels.
Franklin S. Richards, the eldest living child of the late President
Franklin Dewey Richards and his wife Jane Snyder, was born at Salt Lake
City on the 20th of June, 1849. The so-called "city'' was then a mere
infantile colony, with which the parents had become connected eight months
before. The mother had been a great sufferer, having lost her first two
children in the exodus from Nauvoo, and after the birth of this, her third
child, it was feared for a time that not only his life, but her own would
succumb to the hardships and unpropitious circumstances surrounding them.
But the mother was not destined to die thus prematurely, and the babe born
under these primitive and painful conditions was fated also to survive. He
grew and prospered, and though never robust, waged frem boyhood up to
manhood a successful battle against all the obstacles to his physical and
mental progress.
Inheriting from both parents intellectuality, perseverance and
concentration, this studious boy was early placed at the best schools in
his neighborhood, and while yet a child laid the foundation for the
education and culture that were to follow. He was only
seventeen years old when his father, an Apostle, departed upon his last
mission to Europe, but was so well advanced scholastically that he was
able to take charge of a large and select school, which he taught during
the next three years. Meanwhile he pursued his own higher studies under
private tutors.
On the 18th of December, 1868, he entered the state of wedlock, the
partner of his choice being Miss Emily S. Tanner, of Salt Lake City. She
was a very congenial companion and their married life has been prosperous
and happy. For many years Mrs. Richards has been numbered among the
notable women of Utah. Her sons, Franklin Dewey and Joseph Tanner
Richards, are prominent members of the bar, having been admitted to the
Supreme Court of the United States, as well as of Utah and California.
Early in 1809, the newly married couple, as a portion of the family of
President Franklin D. Richards, who had been appointed to preside over the
Weber Stake of Zion, removed to Ogden, and it was there that Franklin S.
began to study law, abandoning a previously formed purpose of pursuing the
study of medicine and surgery. What helped to determine his choice between
the two professions, and caused him to embrace the former after partly
fitting himself for the latter, was the advice of President Brigham Young,
aud the great need existing in his locality for a competent legal adviser
and practitioner. Ogden at that time had no resident lawyer, there were
but few established legal forms, the railroad had arrived, and the public
lands were just coming into market. Appointed clerk of the Probate Court
and subsequently elected county recorder, he applied himself to the
difficult and important task of formulating methods and devising systems
for keeping the public records, to bring order out of chaos in the
department over which he presided. He was signally successful, winning
encomiums for the excellent condition of the records in his care aud the
able manner in which he discharged the duties of his office, from
President Young and many others. He served eight years as recorder, nine
years as clerk, and then retired, declining re-election.
Much of the time of this official tenure he was engaged during his leisure
hours in readiug law, not with any law firm but entirely by himself and
without the opportunity of attending a single law lecture. He studied
comprehensively and mastered thoroughly the different branches of the
science, becoming especially interested in the subject of constitutional
law. On the 10th of June, 1874, he was admitted to the bar of the Third
District Court, at Salt Lake City, and in the afternoon of the same day to
the bar of the Supreme Court of the Territory. "Rather rapid promotion,"
critically commented Chief Justice McKean, when the veteran attorney Frank
Tilford. without solicitation on the part of Mr. Richards or any of his
friends, presented his name for admission to the Supreme Court, only a few
hours after his admission in the District Court. '"True, your honor,"
replied Tilford, "but the gentleman deserves the promotion. He would do
honor to the bar of any court." No further question was raised, and the
chief justice blandly said: "Mr. Richards, we take pleasure in admitting
you to the bar of this court, and we trust your progress in the profession
may be as rapid as vour promotion has been today."
The hope thus graciously expressed was abundantly realized, the young
lawyer's progress being as rapid as his warmest friends could wish. His
first case in court was one in which he defended a man charged with
murder, and in which the prosecution was conducted by a very able and
eloquent California lawyer. Nothing daunted by the reputation and ability
of his opponent, young Richards fought with such skill and vigor as to
astonish his friends, vanquish the opposition and secure his client's
discharge. His success brought him into immediate prominence in the
profession, and not long after he was chosen to act as attorney for Ogden
City and Weber County, which dual position he held for many years.
The spring of 1877 found him on his way to Europe as a missionary,
crossing the Atlantic in company with President Joseph F. Smith, then one
of the Twelve Apostles. They arrived at Liverpool on the 27th of May.
During the summer he visited and sojourned in parts of France, Italy,
Switzerland, Germany and other countries, absorbing with the keen zest of
the intellectual tourist and shrewd practical observer the sights and
scenes of those historic lands. After returning to England, he sojourned a
while in London, and then went to the south coast, but his health failed
under the rigors of the climate, so he was honorably released, and
returned home in the fall of 1877, with Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith.
It was during the successive administrations of President John Taylor and
President
Wilford Woodruff that Mr. Richards attaiued to his greatest prominence as
attorney for
the Church in the long aud expensive litigation that characterized and
rendered peculiar
that eventful period. First came, in 1879, the litigation over President
Young's estate,
which brought Mr. Richards to the front in all the legal business of the
Church. He had as a law partner at that time Judge Rufus K. Williams,
formerly chief justice of the supreme court of Kentucky, the name of the
firm being Richards & Williams. To the history of that litigation, an
entire chapter is devoted in the second volume of this work. It may be
said here, however, that the skillful conduct of the case for the Church
and the satisfactory and permanent settlement effected with the litigant
heirs of the President, were due in no small degree to the intelligence,
tact and diplomacy of the rising young attorney. In the spring of 1881,
Mr. Richards was admitted to the bar of the supreme court of California.
In the summer of 1882 he represented Weber County in the Constitutional
Convention, and at the close of its labors, in which he took a very active
part, he was elected one of the delegates to present the Constitution to
Congress; Hons. John T. Caine and David H. Peery being his associates.
This was several months after the enactment of the Edmunds law and about
two years before the penal phase of that statute began to be enforced in
Utah and the adjoining Territories. While at Washington, Mr. Richards made
the acquaintance of hundreds of noted men, Senators, Congressmen,
government officials and others, and formed a close and lasting friendship
with the eminent constitutional lawyer, Judge Jeremiah S. Black, who came
to the capital to confer with him on legal business in behalf of the
people of Utah, whose liberties were assailed by the recent congressional
legislation. Mr. Richards, after leaving Washington, visited Judge Black,
by invitation, at "Brockie," his beautiful home near York, Pennsylvania,
where he remained for several days, the recipient of every courtesy and
consideration, while he and his host consulted upon the great question of
the rights and remedies of the people of Utah under the Constitution.
There were three great questions for them to determine: (1) the
situation, involving a knowledge of the history of the people and of the
local statutes; (2) to determine therefrom and from the laws of Congress
what were the constitutional rights of the people; (3) the legel remedies,
or how to maintain those rights.
November, 1882, found Mr. Richards again at the national capital, in
company with his colleagues, Messrs. Caine and Peery, and ex-Delegate
Cannon, all working earnestly for statehood. It was Utah's application at
this time that gave Judge Black an opportunity to deliver his great
argument before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives
upon "Federal Jurisdiction in the Territories." During this visit to
Washington, Mr. Richards, upon the motion of Judge Black, was admitted to
the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, January 30, 1883.
Journeying homeward in February, with his wife, they had as fellow
travelers from New York to Salt Lake City Sergeant William Ballantyne, the
famous English barrister, and Mr. Phil Robinson, the noted war
correspondent of the "London Daily Telegraph," who was on his way west as
special correspondent of the "New York World.'' It was a happy chance that
threw the three gentlemen together, and the opportunity to impart to the
distinguished visitors correct information regarding Utah and her affairs
was not lost by their companion.
In August, 18S3, Judge Black died, much to the sorrow of Mr. Richards and
the vast majority of the people of these parts, whose cause he had so
soulfully and powerfully championed. The following October, Mr. Richards,
with Hon. George Q. Cannon and Delegate Caine, went east to secure other
eminent counsel to plead the cause of the
people of this Territory, thousands of whom had been disfranchised by the
arbitrary
rulings of the Utah Commission. Senator Vest, of Missouri, was retained by
them. Before returning home, Mr. Richards reuewed his acquaintance with
General Thomas L. Kane, another true friend of Utah, whose death soon
after was also deeply lamented. Mr. Richards was again at the seat of
government, laboring in the same cause, with Hon. Moses Thatcher, in
January, 1884, but was obliged to return home within a few weeks to take
his seat in the Legislature, he having been elected to the Council from
Weber and Box Elder counties.
He was now tendered the office of attorney for Salt Lake City, and
accepting the place, was appointed thereto on the 18th of March, 1884. He
forthwith removed from Ogden to Salt Lake, thus resuming his residence in
his native city after an absence of fifteen years. He held the office of
city attorney, to which he was re-elected every two years, until February,
1890, when, through the coming into power of the Liberal party, the
municipal control changed hands.
The determination of the government to enforce the anti-polygamy statutes,
as shown by its own expressions and in the policy of its local appointees,
seemed to crystalize when the Edmunds bill became a law, and with the
advent of Chief Jnstice Zane the most searching thoroughness and
indiscriminate persistence were inaugurated. Not only was the
relentlessness of former attacks renewed, but new elements were injected into the contest, and many unfamiliar
phases appeared. The demand was. surrender or be ground to powder. At the
head of the hostile movement were personified the sternness and
uncompromising disposition already known to the people, aloug with a
judicial capacity and breadth of legal comprehension with which they were
not acquainted. To reresist the onslaught, it was necessary that able and
skillful defenses should be made. For a defender to be a complete master
of the principles and practice of law, was not enough; to lie in full
accord with those proceeded against, knowing their principles and purposes
and thus comprehending the entire situation, was not alone sufficient. Nor
were these united considerations adequate, unless their possessor's mind,
heart and soul were in the work. It is needless to say that such men are
rare, but Utah had a few, and a leading one in the person of Franklin S.
Richards. A nomination, which meant an election to Congress, was put
aside by him at a time when a great reputation could have been made with a
smaller outlay of mental and physical application, and, perhaps, greater
financial returns secured, in order that his whole time and talents might
be the more unreservedly given to the harassed and hunted people, whose
cause was his cause, and who looked to him with a confidence which was
nobly sustained throughout the long and terrible struggle.
The first trial under the new regime was that of Rudger Clawson, for
polygamy, and in which the open venire process for securing a jury was
brought into requisition. In this and the case of Murphy vs. Ramsay,
involving a test of the legality of the wholesale disfranchisement wrought
by the Utah Commission, as well as the case of the United States
vs. Angus M. Cannon, embracing a construction of the term, "unlawful
cohabitation," Mr. Richards was a prominent and effective attorney; but
his most trying labors were yet to come, and these witnessed the ushering
in of what might properly be termed the '"reign of terror." the climax of
a crusade, than which none more persistent, far-reaching and dangerous
ever overtook any community in the name of law.
Lorenzo Snow, the Apostle, had been indicted three times for the same
offense (unlawful cohabitation), and under the "segregation" ruling of the
trial court, had been convicted; he was serving out a sentence of six
months imprisonment on the first of these, and his case on appeal had been
taken to the Supreme Court of the nation — and lost! The highest tribunal
held that it had no jurisdiction, and dismissed the writ of error, thus
saying in substance that the accused people of Utah were at last
hopelessly in the toils of the Philistine, with every avenue closed
against them. The decision was also in the nature of an announcement that
no further cases of that character need be brought up, the rule being
final as to all. The crusaders did not attempt to conceal their
gratification, which, in some cases, amounted to actual jubilation. They
thought they had the hounded victims completely in their power, and they
looked upon the situation as the beginning of the end; which, indeed, it
was, but not in accordance with their program. With grand juries, acting
in strict obedience to the mandates of the court, having unlimited power
to indict for every month, week, or day that a man had lived in the
prohibited relation, during the period prescribed by the statute of
limitation; and a trial jury acting in strict harmony with the grand jury,
it was quite practicable to make an offender's incarceration in the
penitentiary cover his entire life, and work a complete confiscation of
all his property, through the invariably accompanying fines and costs. In
this dire exigency, Mr. Richards had the sympathy of even his opponents,
his up-hill struggle being waged so zealously and unflinchingly against
such merciless and apparently invincible odds. He often worked twenty
hours a day, and some nights had no sleep at all. He was thinking,
studying, devising, planning. Surely, he thought, there must be a road out
of the wilderness somewhere — this grand and magnanimous government may
consent to harsh measures in order to prevent violations of law, but it
cannot mean to invoke such extreme methods of subjugation and spoliation;
and as if by inspiration, the means of escape came to him. When the
Apostle's first term of imprisonment had expired, his attorney applied to
the trial court for a writ of habeas corpus, on the ground that the
offense of which the defendant had beon convicted was expiated by the full
service of the sentence, and further punishment was unconstitutional. The
writ was refused, of course, and an appeal was again taken to the United
States Supreme Court, which, after a full hearing, decided that the writ
might issue, and so ordered. Lorenzo Snow was discharged, and the
"segregation" bubble burst. The crisis was now passed, and the fragments
of the broken cloud floated gradually away. Those who had "taken to the
wilderness," surrendered themselves, with cheerful alacrity; sentences
were served, fines were paid, and a better understanding between the
General Government and the people of Utah prevailed than had ever been
known before.
Mr. Richards was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1887, and
chairman of the delegation sent by it to present the Constitution of the
proposed State of Utah, to Congress, and work for the admission of the
Territory iuto the Union. During the two succeding sessions of Congress he
was at the national capital most of the time, and became personally
acquainted with nearly all the Senators and a majority of the Members of
the House of Representatives, including all the leaders of both branches
of Congress. He appeared before committees of the Senate and House, and
made some of the strongest arguments that were presented to them in behalf
of the people of Utah. It can be justly said, that, during the critical
period, no man was more valiant in the cause than he, and none did more to
protect the rights of the people and pave the way for Statehood.
Mr. Richards represented nearly all the leading Mormon defendants, and was
counsel for them, as well as for the Church, in all the noted trials of
the period ensuing upon the
enforcement of the Edmunds-Tucker law, including the confiscation suits
brought under
that law. He even appeared in cases that arose outside of Utah, notably
the Idaho test
oath case, argued for the appellant before the United States Supreme Court
by Mr. Richards and Judge Jeremiah Wilson, in December. 1889. It is worthy
of note in this connection, that the brief of appellant contained the
Church's "Articles of Faith." While they were appropriately a part of the
case, as showing the creed of the Church, whose adherents were
disfranchised for being members of it, and made the issue more lucid and
comprehensive, one can but admire the ingenuity of counsel in placing them
so conspicuously before the court; and we are led to reflect how results
sometimes come
about in the most unexpected ways — how it is that Gospel principles find
their way to all
manner of people, the exalted as well as the lowly. In some of the cases
before the Supreme Court he appeared alone, and in others he had eminent
counsel associated with him, such as Hon. James O. Broadhead, Senator
Joseph E. McDonald, Wayne McVeigh, Senator George G. Vest and George
Ticknor Curtis.
In the great political campaign of 1889-90, which ended in the capture of
the government of Salt Lake City by the Liberal party, Mr. Richards
marshaled and disciplined the forces of the People's party, or in other
words managed their campaign. While it was impossible to defeat the foe,
it is due to Mr. Richards and his assistants to say that they "fought a
good fight,'' such a one, in fact, as Salt Lake City had never known. As
stated, the Liberal victory ended his connection with the city government.
The same year he represented Salt Lake County in the Legislature, and was
chosen President of the Council.
At the close of the crusade, when Mormons and Gentiles resolved to bury
past differences, wipe out old political lines and become Democrats and
Republicans in the era then opening upon Utah, Mr. Richards was among the
most active in bringing about the changed conditions that have since
prevailed. A staunch Democrat, he gave warm and zealous support to his
party, and in days when its prospects seemed dark and many of its leaders
were disheartened he was ever found with his shoulder to the wheel pushing
uphill, preventing any retrograde movement,
and from the platform, in public and in private, giving forth
encouragement and good cheer; but he has steadfastly declined office,
although easily within reach of anything within the gift of the people.
In the autumn of 1894, Mr. Richards was elected a member of the
Constitutional Convention, representing the Fourth Precinct of Salt Lake
City, where he resides. In the Convention, which opened on the 4th of
March following, he served on various important committees and rendered
valuable aid in framing the fundamental law of the proposed State of Utah.
He will best be remembered, however, for his learned and logical address
in defense of woman suffrage, which, after a spirited and protracted
debate, was incorporated in the State Constitution.
When statehood, the object for which he had labored so long and
faithfully, was realized, Mr. Richards partially retired from active
politics, and devoted himself more closely to his profession, which he had
been forced to neglect, in order to perform his political obligations. At
the opening of 1898, the law partnership which had existed for several
years between him and his son Joseph was dissolved, the latter becoming
the head of another legal firm, and, in January, 1899. another one was
formed between the senior partner and Hon. Charles S. Varian, under the
firm name of Richards & Varian. This partnership ended with the advent of
1904, when our subject became associated with his son Joseph and Mr.
Edward S. Ferry, as senior of the law firm of Richards, Richards and
Ferry. Mr. Richards also continues to be attorney for the Church. He has
conducted many of the most important cases that have been tried in this
State, especially those involving questions of constitutional law and
water rights, he being recognized as a leading authority on these
subjects.
As a Church member, he has always been consistent and zealous. Besides
honorably filling a foreign mission, he was for many years a member of the
High Council and a home missionary in the Weber Stake of Zion, and has
been a home missionary in the Salt Lake Stake ever since he returned from
Ogden, in 1884. He is a great lover of home, of family, of kindred, and
while a staunch friend to his friends, is not an enemy to his opponents.
He is also noted for his pronounced public spirit, showing a marked
interest in every enterprise that promises to promote the welfare of the
community in which he lives. He is quick to recognize and encourage
enterprises of this character. As for patriotism, love of country, loyalty
to the government and to American institutions, he inherits these
qualities from his Revolutionary ancestors. Prudent and practical, he is
nevertheless enthusiastic, and has the power of communicating his
enthusiasm to others whom he wishes to impress. He is a man of sentiment,
of ideality and at the same time a man of action, energetic, industrious,
shrewd, tactfnl and wise. Silent and reserved, like most students, and
often misjudged because of his abstraction — so easily mistaken for
aristocratic exclusiveness — he is genial and even jovial at times, and is
one of those choice spirits who, when best known, are most appreciated. He
has a cultured mind, an eloquent tongue, and ranks among the ablest and
brightest members of his profession.
532-537
JANE SNYDER RICHARDS. THE history of the
Mormon community reads like a tragic poem, and the heart and soul of that
poem is in the lives, labors and sacrifices of the heroic women of the
community. The present does not and caunot appreciate them; no present
ever appreciated itself; but the future, that great reviser and corrector
of contemporaneous judgments, will recognize their true worth and class
them among the noblest spirits of the past. A condensed life sketch of one
of these latter-day heroines is here given.
At the little town of Pamelia, Jefferson County, New York, on the 31st of
January, 1823, a babe was born who lived to become Mrs. Jane Snyder
Richards; for many years and up to the present time one of the notable
women of this commonwealth. She was the daughter of Isaac and Lovisa
Comstock Snyder, the former a native of Vermont, the latter of
Massachusetts. Her father was a prosperous farmer and stock-raiser. He led
an exemplary life, but belonged to no religious body until he embraced
Mormonism. The mother was a thrifty housewife and a devout Methodist.
They were the parents of nine sons and two daughters, and of the latter
Jane was the younger.
The family were living at East Camden, in the Province of Ontario, Canada,
when, early in 1837, they formed the acquaintance of Elder John E. Page, a
missionary of the Church of Jesus Cnrist of Latter-day Saints. He preached
several times in their neighborhood and baptized two of their number,
namely, Mrs. Sarah Snyder Jenne, Isaac Snyder's married daughter, and his
son Robert, then an invalid, who was restored to health by bis baptism.
Robert subsequently visited Kirtland, became acquainted with the Prophet
Joseph Smith and returned to Canada as a Mormon missionary. By him and
others the rest of the family were converted, and all were baptized in
Canada, excepting Jane and her brother Jesse.
The Latter-day Saints having migrated to Missouri, the Snyder family,
about the 1st of November, 1838, set out for that land, but were detained
by sickness for several weeks at La Porte. Indiana, where they learned of
the cruel expulsion of their people from the first named State. Word came
to them that Commerce, Hancock County, Illinois — where
afterwards arose the city of Nauvoo — had been selected as a new gathering
place, but the
information was supplemented by a message from the Prophet to the effect
that they were
to remain at La Porte for a time, and make a home for the Elders who came
that way.
Pursuant to this counsel, they continued to reside there for about two
years.
Up to January, 1840, Jane Snyder had not connected herself with the Church
of which most of her father's family were members. She was a practical,
firm-willed little body, with a mind of her own, and at the time of which
we write, not yet seventeen years of age. Conscious of no wrong-doing, she
saw no necessity for baptism, so far as she was concerned. Her zealous
brother Robert often importuned her upon the subject, beseeching her to be
baptized for the remission of her sins. "What sins have I committed?'' she
asked. "Have l not always obeyed my parents?" During the winter of
1839-40, however, Jane passed through a serious illness, during which she
was paralyzed and brought to the brink of the grave. Through the prayers
and administrations of her brother Robert and other members of the
household, she regained her speech, and then, for the first time,
manifested a desire to be baptized. The next day was appointed for the
ceremony. Her illness being known through the neighborhood, when the news
spread that she was going to be immersed on a mid-winter day in the icy
waters of Lake La Porte, it created considerable excitement and there were
threats of arresting Robert Snyder if he should thus imperil his sister's
life. Three hundred people assembled at the water's edge to witness the
baptism. The ice was thick and a large square hole was cut in it. Robert
let himself down into the opening, and his brother George assisted Jane
into the water. Without a tremor she went in, and was then and there
"buried with Christ by baptism," Immediately on coming out of the water
she said in a loud, firm voice: "I want to say to all you people who have
come out to see me baptized, that I do it of my own free will and choice,
and if you interfere with the man who has baptised me, God will interfere
with you." Elder Snyder was not molested. His Sister, instead of being
injured, was miraculously healed by the sacred ordinance.
About six months later Jane Snyder met the man whom she was destined to
marry, Franklin D. Richards, the future Apostle, who, in company with
Elder Jehial Savage, arrived at La Porte from Nauvoo as a missionary. These
Elders stayed at the Snyder home and were kindly and hospitably
entertained. They had traveled afoot and Elder Savage was sick with chills
and fever. He had been acquainted with the Snyder family in Canada, where
he had traveled with Robert in the ministry, and on one occasion had
jestingly promised Jane that he would bring her a husband. The promise
thus lightly made was literally fulfilled, for, in the fall of 1841,
something more than a year after their first meeting, Franklin D.
Richards, the young unmarried missionary, and Jane Snyder were betrothed,
and a little over a year later, married. The wedding took place at Job
Creek, near La Harpe, Hancock County, Illinois, to which point the family
had removed about the time the young couple plighted their troth. The
ceremony uniting them was performed by Elder Samuel Snyder, brother to the
bride and president of the Job Creek branch. The date was Sunday, December
18, 1842.
The newly wedded pair took up their abode at Nauvoo. where, on the 2nd of
December, 1843, their first child was born. She was a bright and beautiful
spirit and was named Wealthy Lovisa, after both her grand-mothers. With
this child in her arms Mrs. Richards attended the special meeting held on
the 8th of August, 1844, where President Brigham Young stood transfigured
before the congregation, many of whom in consequence recognized him as the
lawful successor to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Mrs. Richards is a living
witness to the marvelous manifestation. She was sitting in the meeting and
had bent over to pick up a small plaything dropped by her little daughter,
when President Young uttered the first words of his address. His voice was
that of the Prophet. On hearing it, she was so startled that she dropped
the article she had just taken from the floor, and on looking up beheld
the form and features of the martyred Seer.
The Richards family remained at Nauvoo several months after the main body
of the Church had evacuated the mob-threatened city. On June 11, 1846,
they themselves crossed the Mississippi and started west. They camped for
a while on the river bottoms near Montrose, Iowa, and then wended their
way to Sugar Creek. Their traveling outfit consisted of an old covered
wagon drawn by oxen, and they were also supplied with a tent and a
sufficiency of clothing, provisions and cooking utensils. Philo
T. Farnsworth
was their teamster and was a kind and faithful friend. The privations and
hardships of
the journey were materially enhanced for Mrs. Richards from the fact that
she was about
to become a mother. At a certain point a pair of unruly steers yoked to
her wagon ran
away, and for some moments the utmost consternation reigned, as the
infuriated beasts
dashed wildly on, imperiling the lives of those in the vehicle. Mrs.
Richards had just
imprinted on the cheek of her little daughter a farewell kiss prior to
dropping her outside
for safety, regardless of what might happen to herself, when the animals
were suddenly
stopped in their mad career by some unseen power, and the impending
calamity was thus
averted.
From Sugar Creek, on the 3rd of July, Elder Richards started on a mission
to England, leaving his family to continue their journey towards the Missouri
River. Twenty
days after his departure, his wife Jane gave birth to a son, her second
child, but the
babe had barely opened its eyes when it was summoned back to the spirit
world. The
picture of this homeless pilgrim mother, lying helpless in her wagon on
the broad and
lonely prairie, her dead babe upon her breast and her husband a thousand
miles away,
is pitiful enough to melt a heart of stone. But alas! some hearts seem
harder than stone. A midwife had been summoned from a house five miles
back to wait upon, the sick woman. "Are you prepared to pay me?" was her brusque inquiry, after briefly
performing
the functions of her office. "If it were to save my life.'' answered the
sufferer faintly,
"I could not give you any money, for I have none; but if you see anything
you want, take it." Whereupon the woman seized a beautiful woolen
bed-spread, worth fifteen dollars. "I may as well take it, for you'll never live to need it," was her
heartless remark
as she disappeared, leaving the sick mother and dead child to their fate.
The corpse of
the little one was buried at Mt. Pisgah.
At this very time, Mrs. Richards' only remaining child, little Wealthy,
not yet three
years old, was lying sick, having been stricken with disease just after
her father departed
for England. As they approached the Missouri River she gradually grew
weaker and
weaker. She had scarcely eaten anything for a month or more. She was very
fond of
potatoes, and one day, while passing a farm-house in the midst of a fine
field of these vegetables, hearing them mentioned, she asked for one. Her
grand-mother, Mrs. Snyder, proceeded to the house, and from a woman standing in the doorway
sought to buy a
potato for the sick child. "I wouldn't sell or give one of you Mormons a
potato to save your
lives," was the woman's brutal reply. She had even set her dog upon Mrs.
Snyder when
she first saw her approaching. When Wealthy was told of the incident she
said, '"Never
mind, mama, she's a wicked woman, isn't she? We wouldn't do that by her,
would we?"
The party reached the Missouri River about the first of September, and
were received and treated with great kindness by President Young, Dr. Richards
and the other
Church leaders. Wealthy died and was buried at Cutler's Park, a little
west of the river,
on the 14th of September. Those were heart-rending days for Jane Richards.
She was
now childless, and felt almost husbandless. In the midst of extreme
poverty, the state
of her health was such that during the eighteen months that she sojourned
at Winter
quarters her life trembled in the balance. A typical Mormon woman, her
experience was
that of many others during that painful period. "It shall yet be said of
you that you have
come up through much tribulation," was a remark made to her by Presidents
Young and
Kimball at the time.
Her husband, returning from England, rejoined her at Winter Quarters in
the spring of 1848, and in the summer and fall of that year they crossed
the plains to Salt Lake Valley, arriving here on the 19th of October. The journey from Winter
Quarters occupied
three and a half months, during two of which Mrs Richards was confined to
her bed by
sickness. While her husband was building a small adobe house on a lot that
had been
assigned to him, they lived in the covered wagon which had brought them
across the
plains.
Eight months later Mrs Richards gave birth to her third child, a son, who
was named
Franklin Snyder. The babe was but six days old when a heavy rain fell,
against which the root of rushes and earth covering their humble dwelling
afforded no adequate protection. The result was that the bed in which the sick woman and her
infant child lay
was drenched by the down-pour, and she was thrown into a raging fever and
brought
near to death's door. She was snatched back to life by the power of faith,
her husband
and Elder Daniel Spencer administering the healing ordinance in her
behalf. The babe
born amid these untoward circumstances and primitive surroundings, though
for a long
time delicate and fragile, grew and prospered, attaining to man's estate
and achieving
success and fame. He is known today as the Hon. Franklin S. Richards, of
Salt Lake
City.
In due time three other children came to bless her home and complete her
family
circle. (1) A daughter named Josephine, now Mrs. Joseph A. West, an
amiable and
estimable lady, born May 25, 1853; a diligent Sabbath School and Relief
Society worker
in her youth, afterwards one of the Presidency of the Y. L. M. I. A. of
Weber Stake,
and today one of the Presidency of the Primary Associations of the Church.
(2) A son,
Lorenzo Maeser, born July 5, 1857, a bright, promising boy, who grew to
manhood and
married, but died prematurely from the effects of an accident, December
21, 1883, after having distinguished himself as a shrewd, honorable and
successful merchant and business man. (3) A son named Charles Comstock,
who, like his brother Franklin, is prominent in the legal profession, and some years since was Secretary and
Acting Governor of
Utah Territory. The biographies of both are given in this volume.
The boy Franklin was not quite four months old when his father, who had
recently been made an Apostle, started on his second mission to England.
During his absence the mother supported herself and her children. Her husband was still
absent,
wheu, on March 20, 1856, her widowed mother, Lovisa Comstock Snyder, died.
Her
last words, addressed to her daughter Jane, as she embraced her and bade
her good-bye,
were: "You have never caused me any sorrow or trouble, but have been a
comfort to
me in every way, and I hope your children will be to you what you have
been to me."
When, at the request of President Young, her husband, in 1868, took up his
residence, in Ogden, Mrs. Richards began to play a more prominent part in
the women's organizations of the Church. This was by the advice of the president of those
organizations, Eliza R. Snow Smith, who predicted that she would have
better health if she would devote more time to the work of the Relief Society. Though dreading
publicity, she was willing: to do all in her power, and after recovering
from a long siege of sickness she began to make frequent visits among the branch societies in Weber Stake, in
company with
Sister Eliza. In August, 1872, she became president of the Relief Society
of Ogden, and
in July, 1877, was called by President Young to preside over all the
Relief Societies of
Weber Stake. This was the first stake organization of the kind perfected
in the Church.
Mrs. Richards' last interview with the President was in the following
August, when he
went north to organize the Box Elder Stake of Zion, ten days before his
death. She
was one of the President's party and during the journey to Brigham City
sat near him,
receiving: from the great leader much wise counsel to assist her in her
labors.
In the year 1880, she accompanied her husband on trips east and west.
During the former
they visited relatives and early Church scenes in the State of New York,
saw the sights of
the national capital, and identified on the Missouri River the spot where
their little daughter
Wealthy was buried, thirty-four years before. During the trip west they
called upon the
historian. Hubert Howe Bancroft, in San Francisco, and were received by
him with
great kindness and hospitality. In 1884 Mrs. Richards accompanied her son
Franklin on
an extended trip, spending a portion of the time in the City of
Washington, where she
made the acquaintance of Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, Miss Susan B. Anthony and
other
famous women, and through them exerted an influence favorable to Utah over
members
of Congress, which was then considering anti-Mormon legislation.
In October, 1888. Mrs. Richards became first counselor to Zina D. H.
Young, President of the National Relief Societies in the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints.
Early in 1891. accompanied by Mrs. Sarah M. Kimball, Mrs. E. B. Wells, and
other Utah
ladies, she attended the National Council of Women, in session at
Washington, D. C.,
and secured membership and representation for herself and associates in
that great organization. In 1892, she was appointed Vice-President of the
Utah Board of Lady Managers of the World's Fair, and early in 1893, having returned some months
from a family trip to Alaska, she spent several weeks at the great
Exposition, with her daughter Josephine. In 1895, she accompanied her husband and her son Franklin on another
visit to the
East.
Mrs. Richards has done work in all the Temples erected by the Saints since
the days
of Kirtland, and has attended the dedication of all excepting the Logan
Temple. Benevolent and charitable by nature, she has always been interested in the
salvation of the
weak and wayward. Independent and outspoken, she is still reverential and
respectful
to authority. She is not willing to be imposed upon, nor would she
knowingly impose
upon others. She has the reputation of a peace-maker among her associates,
she is a
natural and skillful nurse, and as a comforter of the sick and sorrowful,
unexcelled.
A severe blow to her was the death of her husband in December, 1899. Up to
that
time, though nearing the completion of her seventy-seventh year, she had
been active in
public and in private, moving about her home with much of her old-time
energy — for she
was always an excellent housewife — and attending the meetings of the
Relief Societies
and other gatheriugs. But after the departure of her companion, upon whose
love she
had leaned for nearly sixty years, she shunned publicity of every kind and
was rarely
seen beyond the precincts of her domestic circle. Later, however, her
spirits revived,
and she set about the performance of her public duties with renewed zeal
and activity.
A notable affair in which she figured prominently was the celebration by
the Weber Relief
Societies of the twenty-fifth anniversary of their Stake organization. The
celebration
took place at Ogden, July 19, 1902, iu the new Relief Society building,
then dedicated,
and was attended by many prominent people. Mrs. Richards presided over and
addressed
the meetings, which were unusually interesting.
580-584
JOHN SCOWCROFT. WITH the passing of John
Scowcroft, who died at his home in Ogden on the 7th of April, 1902,
there went into the great beyond the spirit of an upright man, one who had
made a success of life on earth, and who took with him, as a passport to
rest and a recommend for promotion in the world to come, the honorable and
consistent record made while here. He was one of Ogden's leading business
men, solid aud substantial, successful in all his undertakings. The
founder of a flourishing firm, he was also an investor and a director in
various important concerns, and a prominent promoter of education. He
served as a Sunday school superintendent for many years, and at the time
of his death held the office of Bishop's counselor.
He was a native of England, born at Tottington, in Lancashire, December 9,
1844, the son of James Scowcroft and his wife Hannah Fairbrother. His
parents were handloom weavers, in comfortable circumstances, and at the
age of eight years, having left school, John began working at the same
vocation, which he continued until he was fourteen. His boyhood and early
manhood were spent in his native village, near the city of Manchester, and
he there learned the business of confectioner. Always religious, he took a
keen interest in church work, and from the time of his conversion to
Mormonism in 1861, was a devout and zealous laborer in the ministry. He
presided over the Tottington branch of the Church, and was the
superintendent of its Sunday school. At Haslingden, also in Lancashire, he
engaged in the wholesale and retail confectionery business, in which he
was very successful.
He sailed from Liverpool, on the steamship "Wisconsin," of the Guion Line,
June 5, 1880. bringing with him his wife, Mary Fletcher Scowcroft; his
four sons, Joseph, Willard, Heber and Albert; and his daughter, Sara A.,
now Mrs. George W. McCune. These, with one other daughter, Florence H.,
born since their arrival in Utah, make up the sum total of the children of
this worthy pair. The date of arrival here was the 23rd of June, two weeks
and four days after their departure from Europe. The same year they
settled in Ogden, where Mr. Scowcroft entered the employ of R. P. Harris,
for whom he worked several months.
In 1881 he started in business for himself, establishing a confectionery
and bakery, and gradually working into general merchandise. Eventually he
branched out into the
wholesale trade, founding the splendid institution that now bears his
name. In 1885 he
took in as partner his son Joseph, under the firm name of John Scowcroft &
Son. Two
years later his son Willard also became a partner, and the firm name
underwent another
appropriate change. Heber and Albert were admitted, respectively, in 1889
and 1891.
The growth of the business was phenomenal, and the house of Scowcroft &
Sons became
known, and is still recognized, as one of the largest wholesale houses of
the West. In
1893 the John Scowcroft & Sons Company was incorporated, and by that title
it goes at
the present time. It is exclusively a wholesale institution.
The head of the firm was president, director and manager of the business
up to the year 1900, when, on account of failing health, he resigned as
manager, and was succeeded by his son Joseph in that capacity. He remained
president and director, however, as long as he lived. He was loved by his
employes, and highly esteemed among business associates and the public
generally. He was one of the organizers, and the first president of the
Weber Club, the business men's association of Ogden, and on his retirement
from business the club conferred upon him the unique distinction of
honorary membership, no other member having been so favored. He was a
director of the Ogden Sugar Company, and of the Ogden State Bank, and
served two terms as a member of the City Board of Education.
For a number of years John Scowcroft was one of the presidency of the
seventy-sixth quorum of Seventy, and was also superintendent of the Second
Ward Sunday School, the ward in which he lived. Eventually he was ordained
a High Priest, and set apart as counselor to Bishop Robert McQuarrie, in
the same ward; a position held by him to the end of his days. In
1890, and again in 1901, he visited his native England, and it was while
at his former home in Haslingden, on the 10th of October, in the latter
year, that he was stricken with the ailment — paralysis — that finally
proved fatal. He recovered sufficiently to return to Utah, but gradually
declined until death released him. In his beautiful dwelling, "Lancaster"
— so named in honor of his old English home — he passed peacefully away in
the presence of his family.
The domestic life of this good and gracious man was as happy as his
business career was prosperous. He charmed everyone he met by his cheerful
and amiable courtesy, and will long be remembered for his genuine goodness
of heart. He was a free and generous giver to charity, and a willing and
ready promoter of every worthy cause. His funeral, on the 13th of April,
1902, was one of the largest gatherings ever seen in Ogden. It was
attended by representative men of all classes, and Mormons and Gentiles
united in testifying to the worth and integrity of the departed. His
widow, his four sons and his two daughters, all survive.
639-640
LEWIS WARREN SHURTLIFF. JUDGE SHURTLIFF— for
that is his reminiscent title, dating from the time when he presided over
the Probate Court of Weber County — is a native of the State of Ohio, born
at Sullivan, Lorain County, July 24, 1835. His forefathers were of the old
Puritan stock, the first of the name in America being William Shurtliff,
an Englishman, who came to Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, in the year
1634. Some later branches migrated in 1811 to the Western Reserve, in
Ohio, which was then an almost uninhabited wilderness. The parents of our
subject were Luman Andrus Shurtliff and his wife Eunice B. Gaylord.
Soon after their son's birth they became members of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, and in 1838 they took Lewis with them on a
visit to Kirtland, its head quarters. Among his earliest recollections is
that of being shown, with his parents, through the Kirtland Temple. The
same year the family went to Far West, Missouri, where they remained until
driven out by the mob. After the expulsion from that State they settled
upon the site of Nauvoo, Illinois, and remained there until 1840, when
they proceeded in the general exodus to Council Bluffs.
It was not until the spring of 1851 that the family began their journey to
the Rocky Mountains. After such hardships as few can imagine and none
realize unless similarly
situated, they arrived at Salt Lake City on the 23rd of September, the
same year. After
a short sojourn in this place, they continued northward to Weber County,
where they
settled. They at once began to build log cabins, lay out farms, construct
irrigation ditches, make roads and in various other ways improve the land
upon which their homes were located.
In the fall of 1855 Lewis W. Shurtliff was called upon a mission to Salmon
River, at that time in eastern Oregon, but now in Idaho. A small company
had been sent out in the spring, and he went early in August. The object
of the expedition was to colonize and found a mission among the Indians in
that region. These colonists were the first white men to plow a furrow in
what is now the State of Idaho. They remained there until, in a severe
encounter with the Indians, two of the company were killed and five
wounded. The savages stole and drove away all the cattle and horses,
surrounded the fort, and kept the colonists in a state of siege for thirty
days, at the end of which time a company of two huudred men arrived from
Utah to assist the much enduring missionaries back to their homes.
They returned just after "the move," in 1858, and on arriving at Salt Lake
City found the place deserted, the inhabitants having gone south, leaving
their property ready for the flames. The returning colonists followed the
route taken by the fleeing inhabitants, and at Provo overtook President
Brigham Young and many other leading men of the Church. Mr. Shurtliff was
present when the peace commissioners came to treat with the Mormon
leaders, and after peace was delared he returned to his home in Weber
County. In 1863, he made a trip to the Missouri River and back, bringing
immigrants to Utah. The company with which he was connected had fifty
wagons drawn by ox teams.
In 1867 he again crossed the plains, this time with mule teams and on his
way to Great Britain as a missionary. The company of which he was a member
met the Union Pacific Railroad at Julesburg, Nebraska. It was then rapidly
pushing its way westward. While in Europe, where he remained until 1S70,
he traveled extensively in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and
presided over the Nottingham and London conferences. Crossing over to the
continent, he visited France, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Denmark,
Sweden and Norway.
Immediately upon his return to Utah he was appointed to preside over the
Plain City Ward, which became under his presidency one of the leading
Wards of Weber Stake. In 1883 he became President of that Stake, and took
up his residence in Ogden.
During the same year he was appointed County Commissioner, and remained in
that office until 1886, when he was elected Probate Judge. That year he
was chosen a member of the Constitutional Convention, and also elected to
the Council of the Legislature. In 1888 he was returned to the Council. He
remained Probate Judge until 1889, when he was again chosen County
Commissioner, serving in that office until the close of 1894. During the
period of his incumbency he had charge of roads, bridges, etc., in which
many improvements were made. New roads, boulevards and public buildings
were also constructed.
Mr. Shurtliff was a delegate to the first two National Irrigation
Congresses, and at the
third, held in Denver in 1894. he was appointed chairman of the Utah
Irrigation Commission. He was a delegate to the first National
Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress, held at Ogden in 1893. and at San
Francisco in 1894 was made a member of the National Committee. In 1896 he
was appointed Vice President of the Utah division of the Trans-Mississippi
and International Exposition, and was confirmed by the Board of Directors
at Omaha, on the 7th of August, the same year.
Judge Shurtliff was a member of the Senate of the State Legislature both
in 1897 and 1899. In the latter session he played a prominent part as
chairman of a special committee appointed to investigate charges of
bribery made against senatorial candidates. During this session he was a
Fusionist-Democrat. He has since joined the Republican party. In a
business way he has been equally prominent. He was president of the first
street railway company in Ogden, vice-president of the Utah Loan and Trust
Company, and assistant general manager of the Pioneer Electric Power
Company.
President Shurtliff has been a married man since January 4, 1858, when he
wedded Louisa C. Smith at Salmon River, while fulfilling his mission as a
colonizer in that part. His wife died in the autumn of 1866, about six
months before he started upon his mission to Europe. Several years later,
on April 10, 1872, he married Emily M. Wainwright, his present wife.
The family reside in a handsome home in the heart of the city of Ogden. A
public-spirited citizen, President Shurtliff contributes liberally to
every worthy cause, and never tires of pointing out to visitors the good
work done by the pioneers and colonizers of Weber County. After a half
century of labor, of manifold struggles, privations and successes in the
building up of Utah, he finds his greatest source of satisfaction in
seeing the land upon which he entered when it was a wilderness and a
political dependency, now a flourishing domain, wearing the glory of
Statehood, and filled with the happy homes of a thriving and contented
people.
550-552
JOHN AND MARY SPIERS. T'HIS worthy couple
were among the founders of Plain City. Both are of English birth, and
settlers of Utah in the early fifties. John Spiers, second son of Samuel
and Elizabeth Spiers, was born at Redmarley, in Worcestershire, February
19, 1822. His boyhood was passed in his native village. His father, who
was a sawyer, died when John was five years old. leaving the support of
three children upon the mother, who was a seamstress. With her earnings
she gave them what education she could, comprising reading, writing and an
imperfect knowledge of arithmetic. At ten John went to work for a builder,
and acquired some skill at bricklaying. His parents belonged to the Church
of England, but at an early age he became dissatisfied with that church,
and joined the "United Brethren." He was one of those converted to
Mormonism by Wilford Woodruff, in March, 1840, being baptized by the
Apostle on the 6th of April.
Having been ordained a Priest, he forthwith began to preach the Gospel. In
November, 1840, he helped Elder Henry Glover establish a branch of the
Church in Cheltenham, and in the following February labored with Elder
Samuel Warren in the northern part of Herefordshire. He was made an Elder
in March, 1841, and continued in the ministry for two years, laboring in
England and Wales. With the assistance of others lie built up six
branches.
March 8, 1843, was the date of his sailing for America. He reached Nauvoo
on the 31st of May. On the 4th of July he married Mary Marlow Wright, a
widow, who died September 12, 1845. He was enrolled in the first company
of Saints that left Nauvoo in 1S40, but by request tarried a season, and
was there when the city was besieged and the remnant driven out. The
following winter he spent in Iowa, and the spring of 1847 found him at
Council Bluffs. In 1848 he accompanied Orson Pratt on a mission to
England. While on this mission he met and married Mary Ann Winfield, the
joint subject of this sketch, who came with him to America. Arriving at
the frontier, and procuring a wagon, an ox-team and two cows, the family —
father, mother and one child — started for Utah, passing the Missouri
river on the 10th of June. Their company comprised fifty families,
traveling under Captain William Lang. Elder Spiers officiated as chaplain.
Two stampedes occured, but little damage resulted. They reached Salt Lake
City on the 6th of September.
Soon after his arrival here, Mr. Spiers moved to Lehi. He there taught the
district school, purchased materials and built a home, took up land and
planted crops. All looked promising; but in the fall of 1S53 the Walker
Indian war broke out, and in obedience to the military authorities, the
people tore down their houses and transformed them into fortifications.
While in the midst of this work Mr. Spiers was called to help protect the
settlers of Iron County. He assisted in building the walls of a fort, but
unable to stand the cold, as he was a sufferer from asthma, he returned in
the spring of 1854 to Lehi. The crops of 1855 suffered from grasshoppers,
but Mr. Spiers saved a little wheat, the flour from which sold at the rate
of sixteen pounds for a dollar. Provisions were scarce, but hard labor at
farming and building were productive of a livelihood. Early in 1858 there
was another Indian uprising, and Mr. Spiers, as a captain of militia,
again did service against the redskins.
In March, 1S59, he went with others to Weber County and helped to settle
Plain City, which became his permanent home. There he farmed and gardened
and was as ever an industrious and studious man. At Lehi he had been the
first city recorder, also a member of the city council. At Plain City he
became secretary of the Church Association, and later secretary of an
irrigation company. The latter position he filled for thirty years. He was
also justice of the peace, county selectman, school trustee, and the
holder of several minor offices. In 1877, for acting as justice under an
appointment from the county court, to fill an unexpired term, he was
indicted by the grand jury and tried before Associate Justice Emerson.
That magistrate had the case dismissed, on the ground that while the
appointment was illegal, the defendant had acted in good faith, believing
it legal. He was afterwards elected for several terms to the same office.
His ecclesiastical labors include twelve years of service as
superintendent of the Plain City Sunday schools. He was first counselor to
Bishop L. W. Shurtliff, and continued as such to Bishop G. W. Bramwell.
His wife, Mary Anne Addison Winfield, was born at Foulden, Norfolk,
England, April 20, 1822. She was the daughter of Edward and Elizabeth
Addison, but when she was a babe her father died, and upon her mother's
second marriage she was adopted by her grandfather, James Winfield, who
raised her as his own. He was a man of wealth and position, and gave the
girl a good education. She grew a loving companion to her grandsire, and
in his latter days was his housekeeper. She was for some time a Sunday
school teacher in the Methodist church, but in the spring of 1847, while
living near Norwich, she became acquainted with Mormonism. She was very
sick at the time. Elder Thomas Smith explained to her the principles of
the Gospel, and promised that if she would believe and be baptized she
should be healed. She had not been able to walk for weeks, but inspired by
this promise she went in a carriage to the river in Norwich and was
baptized by Elder John Harris. The river banks and boats were crowded with
specators, including many of her Sunday school associates, eager to behold
the baptism. She was duly immersed and walked out of the water well. Mr.
Winfield himself joined the Church, and built the Saints a chapel. He died
shortly afterwards.
Miss Winfield, now a zealous Latter-day Saint, married on November 13,
1849, Elder John Spiers, who had been sent to labor in Norwich. She
greatly assisted him in his work. They resided at Bedford for years, and
in January, 1852, crossed the ocean, landing at New
Orleans, and proceeding by way of St. Louis and St. Joseph to Council
Bluffs, where they began the journey of the plains. The general
course of the good lady's life in Utah may be gleaned from the account
given of her husband's experience. She was his faithful companion in all
the toils aud trials of early times. She is the mother of six children,
the youngest of whom was accidentally drowned when two years old, in an
irrigation canal. For many years Mrs. Spiers was secretary of the Plain
City Relief Society, and for aught known at this writing is still acting
in that capacity.
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