John Tanner's Family Bible

Ron Tanner somehow found and added pictures of John Tanner's family Bible to FamilySearch Family Tree. Since I work with nineteenth century documents almost daily, I can attest that this is an original record, and made by someone with intimate knowledge of the Tanner family. (Either that or it was made by someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Tanner family and nineteenth-century spelling variations, and the counterfeiting skills of Mark Hoffman, and such a dark horse should undoubtedly be counterfeiting something of higher value than this, museum piece as it is.)

There are about half a dozen different handwritings in this record, but most of the first inscriptions are the same handwriting, probably John Tanner's.

[678]

FAMILY RECORD.

BIRTHS.

John Tanner was born August 15th 1778

Taberthy Bently was born August the 23 1780

Lydia Stewart was born November th 18 1783

Elisha Bently Tanner was born March th 23 1801

William Stewart Tanner was born October the 27 1802

Mathilda Tanner was born September the 14 1804

Willard Tanner was born October the 29 1806

Sidney Tanner was born April the 1 1809

John Joshua Tanner was born December the 19 1811

Romela Tanner was born April the 1 1814

BIRTHS.

Nathan Tanner was borne May the 14 1815

Edward and Edwin Tanner was born October th 3 1817

Mariah Loisa Tanner was born November th 28 1818

Martin Henery Tanner was born March the 21 1822

Albert M. Tanner was born April the 4 1825

[Elizabeth's children carried over from the other page]

Sarah Tanner was Born July the 19 — 1840

Francis Tanner was born mach the 10 — 1843

[the last looks like the same hand as the Sidney Tanner letter from San Bernardino]

[679]

FAMILY RECORD.

BIRTHS.

Elise Beswick was born November 28 — 1803

Myron Tanner was Born June th 4 in the year of our Lord 1826

Seth Benjamin Tanner was born March th 6 — 1828

Fremon Everton Tanner was born Jen [January] th 3 1830

Joseph Tanner was born June th 11 — 1833

Philomely Tanner was Born March th 10 1835

David Dan Tanner was born feb th 8 1838

DEATHS.

Taberthy Tanner died Aprial the 9 1801


Willard Tanner died August the 12 1807


Romela Tanner died April the 16 1814

Edwin Tanner died October the 8 1817

Edward Tanner died October the 21 1817



Philomely Tanner Died May th 28 1838.

[680]

FAMILY RECORD.

DEATHS.

Lydia Tanner died may the 31 1825

Francis Tanner died June the 5th 1844

John Tanner died april the 13th 1850

Sariah Tanner Died March the 12 1853

Elisha Bently Tanner Died March 11. 1858.

William Stewart Tanner Died [1875]

DEATHS.

Matilda Tanner Randall died April 17. 1888. in Kirtland Ohio.

Albert Miles Tanner Died. [1879]

Crossing the Plains, 1848

Yesterday I was thinking about John Tanner's sources on FamilySearch and realized no one had added original pioneer overland travel documents, so I pulled up the Church History Library Catalog and pulled up the Camp of Israel Schedules and Reports and pulled up Willard Richard's 1848 emigration division.

The only revelation given to Brigham Young which is included in our scriptural canon is Doctrine and Covenants 136. He was told:

 2 Let all the people of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and those who journey with them, be organized into companies, with a covenant and promise to keep all the commandments and statutes of the Lord our God. 

 3 Let the companies be organized with captains of hundreds, captains of fifties, and captains of tens, with a president and his two counselors at their head, under the direction of the Twelve Apostles. 

 4 And this shall be our covenant—that we will walk in all the ordinances of the Lord. 

 5 Let each company provide themselves with all the teams, wagons, provisions, clothing, and other necessaries for the journey, that they can....

 7 Let each company, with their captains and presidents, decide how many can go next spring; then choose out a sufficient number of able-bodied and expert men, to take teams, seeds, and farming utensils, to go as pioneers to prepare for putting in spring crops. 

 8 Let each company bear an equal proportion, according to the dividend of their property, in taking the poor, the widows, the fatherless, and the families of those who have gone into the army, that the cries of the widow and the fatherless come not up into the ears of the Lord against this people....

As you look at the records of the first pioneer companies, you can see how the pioneers put revelation into practice. Here is the record of the Amasa Lyman group in the Willard Richards company.

On the first page note Amasa Lyman and his first wife Louisa Maria Tanner and her children along with his plural wives and a few other family members. On the second page note the Duncan, Clark, Hakes, Tanner, and Adams families. My youngest was fascinated to see the children listed with their ages, and was sad to learn that 6-year-old Sidney Tanner did not survive the journey. 

Myron Tanner Visits New York

This is an 1891 New York newspaper article about one of John Tanner's sons, Myron Tanner, the oldest son of his third wife, Elizabeth Beswick Tanner.

* * *

A Mormon Bishop at His Birthplace.

John Tanner of Warrensburgh [why Warrensburg and not Bolton Landing?] about sixty years ago embraced the Mormon faith and with his family went to Kirtland, Ohio, thence to Nauvoo, Ill, and with the Mormon exodus to Salt Lake. His son, Myron Tanner, aged about sixty years, has just returned to his native heath for the first time in fifty-seven years. His home address is Provo, Utah, where he is a high dignitary — bishop — in the Mormon church. He speaks laudatory of the future prospects of the territory, believing that when the mineral deposits and agricultural possibilities are fully developed and the territory admitted as a state it will have the greatest value of any state in the Union.

Daily Times (Troy, New York), "A Mormon Bishop at His Birthplace,"
May 7, 1891. From fultonhistory.com.

Notable Relatives: General Authorities and General Officers of the Church [updated]

Since General Conference is coming up, here's a list of the general authorities and officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are descended from the ancestors featured on this blog. If you know of others, please leave a note in the comments so I can add them to the list.

The first nine mentioned are relatives of Wallace Tanner (Francis Marion Lyman through Delbert Stapley). The next three are relatives of Maxine Morgan Tanner (her grandfather John Morgan, as well as Frank Gibbons and Timothy Dyches). The last four are relatives of Beverly Glade Wessman (Marion G. Romney, Royden G. Derrick, LeGrand Curtis Jr., and May Green Hinckley).

John Tanner's Book of Mormon

I've been having a conversation with a John Tanner descendant, a distant cousin, on Facebook, and while conversing I started to wonder something about the film about John Tanner, so I went to Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story to find an answer and in the process, watched a "behind the scenes" feature that's included on the DVD. The feature notes that John Tanner's first edition Book of Mormon has been donated to the University of Utah Marriott Library. I can't find it in the catalog, but it probably wouldn't be listed there anyway. The computer wouldn't let me get a screen shot of the film, but here's a picture of the screen. (Yes, you can see my ironing board reflected in the first picture!)

Here's the picture of the Book of Mormon from John Tanner and His Family. At the time John Tanner and His Family was written this Book of Mormon was in the possession of Patience Thatcher of Logan, Utah. This picture shows the slightly burnt edges from the fire in Winter Quarters.

From John Tanner and His Family (George Tanner, 1974), 44.

The film also mentions that John Tanner's original home is still standing in Cottonwood, and shows pictures. The exterior of the structure doesn't look original; the chimney and siding and construction materials definitely don't date to 1848, but the underlying structure could certainly have dated to that time. Unfortunately no address is given.

The film feature also notes that Tanner Lane (1810 East) in South Cottonwood (now Murray) is named after John Tanner. Karen Bray Keeley links the name of the road to Clarence Laverne Tanner, a son of John Joshua Tanner and grandson of John Tanner, who owned a farm in the area.

View Larger Map

All in all, although a few details can be quibbled over, Treasure in Heaven is surprisingly accurate for historical fiction, and I do appreciate the note about the Book of Mormon.

The Tanner Family Daguerreotype: Conclusion

Like I said in March 2012, since there was no identifying information included with this daguerreotype, we will probably never be 100 percent sure of the identifications. It has been accepted by many descendants as a picture of John Tanner, and I respect the effort that went into that conclusion, but as much as we would all like this to be a picture of John Tanner, it isn't.

The picture was kept in the Myron Tanner family because he is the man at the left. This picture would have been taken after Myron arrived in San Bernardino in the fall of 1852 following his successful California gold mining adventures.[1] He would have had cash in hand to pay for the fairly expensive picture and case.

Myron is Elizabeth Beswick Tanner's oldest son and is sitting at the right hand of his widowed mother who, like her step-daughter Louisa Maria Tanner Lyman, seems to be wearing mourning, either to mark the death of her husband John Tanner in 1850 or the death of her daughter Sariah Tanner in March 1853. Myron would have been 26 or 27 at the time this picture was taken.

The boy standing behind Elizabeth is her son Joseph Tanner, 19 or 20 at the time. [See comment below; Linda Davis made a compelling argument on FamilySearch in 2019 that the boy in the back is David Dan Tanner rather than Joseph.] Both Myron and Joseph [and David Dan] have distinctive Beswick features, most notably the mouth, but also an easily recognizable spacing of their facial features, and both men hold their heads at a particular angle in the pictures.

My final identification of the subjects of the daguerreotype:

Sitting, left to right: Myron Tanner, Elizabeth Beswick Tanner, Louisa Maria Tanner Lyman. Standing: Joseph Tanner [David Dan Tanner].

I would be happy to hear reactions to this series. Do leave a comment. If you disagree with the identification, please read through all the posts and let me know what part of the data you interpret differently and why. If you have questions about my sources, just ask, and I'd be happy to provide further citations.[2]

Analyzing this daguerreotype has been a great adventure. The existence of the picture, kindly provided to the Tanner family by way of the Church History Library by Myron Tanner descendant Claudia Rayl, together with the recent movie Treasure in Heaven, has led to a resurgence of interest in the Tanner family history. What a wonderful time for the John Tanner family.[3]

Notes

[1] Myron's biography states that he left Utah Territory for California in the spring of 1850, several months before any daguerreotypist was known to have been operating in Salt Lake City, so 1852 is the first date a daguerreotype could have been taken, and the family was in California at the time.

[2] Although I sometimes link to articles in Wikipedia, that is because the links tend to be stable and quickly explain the subject. I have a degree in history and specialize in community and family history, and I have been trained by excellent historians, so the information contained in these posts is from a large variety of vital and census records, primary and secondary sources, and one well-written, well-sourced Wikipedia article on hand-colored photography. My bibliography for this project is currently seven pages long, and it would be overkill to post it here, but as said, I would be happy to answer questions about sources and citations.

[3] To anyone who is reading this far down the page, I would suggest that any efforts to gather and write more of the history of the family should include the stories of the women, since the family history efforts up until now have almost exclusively focused on the Tanner men.

[May 29, 2014. A claim was made elsewhere that the subjects in this daguerreotype had to sit still for twenty minutes for the exposure. I'm not sure where that information came from. The following creditable source notes that by 1842, exposure time was down to as little as ten seconds. (The Daguerreotype Process.)]

Links to Posts in the Tanner Family Daguerreotype Series

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: We Meet the Tanners
Part 3: What is a Daguerreotype?
Part 4: Technology Meets the Tanners
Part 5: Woman at Right
Part 6: Woman in Center
Part 7: Boy in Back — First Possibility
Part 7: Boy in Back — Additional Possibilities
Part 8: Man at Left — John Tanner?
Part 8: Man at Left — Options
Part 8: Response from CHL about Fire Damage
Part 9: Conclusion
One Final Thought on Daguerreotypes

Tanner Family Daguerreotype: Response from CHL

The other day I noted that I would post the response from the Church History Library in Salt Lake City about the daguerreotype case. Here is the entire response, with two pictures sent by the reference librarian.

Our response is: After examination by our archive administration we conclude that there is no evidence of fire damage (see attachment). Best wishes with your project. Number of documents attached to this message:2 Attached documents may be listed at the beginning or end of this email Sincerely, [...] Reference Librarian Church History Library

The status of your question is now closed.

The Tanner Family Daguerreotype: Man at Left — Options

The Man in the Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype was either taken in 1844 in Nauvoo, 1850-51 in Utah Territory, or after 1852 in California. To give a pretty wide range, he seems to be over 20 and under 60, so he would have been born between 1784 and 1832. These are the men in the Tanner family who may fit the bill.

John Tanner (1778-1850)

There is no known picture to compare.

Elisha Bently Tanner (1801-1858)

Son of John and Tabitha Bently Tanner. There is no known picture to compare. There is no indication in the family history that he ever visited the West.

William Stewart Tanner (1902-1875)

Son of John and Lydia Stewart Tanner. Note that the picture says "Stuart." That's a late-nineteenth century affectation by the Tanner family in the west. The correct spelling is Stewart, as used by his mother's family and in his 1875 Massachusetts probate.

Sidney Tanner (1809-1895)

Son of John and Lydia Stewart Tanner. Accompanied the family to the Nauvoo area, Utah Territory, and California.

John Joshua Tanner (1811-1896)

Son of John and Lydia Stewart Tanner. Accompanied the family to the Nauvoo area and Utah Territory. Did not go to California.

Nathan Tanner (1815-1896)

Son of John and Lydia Stewart Tanner. Accompanied the family to the Nauvoo area and Utah Territory. Did not go to California.

Martin Henry Tanner (1822-1907)

Son of John and Lydia Stewart Tanner. There is no known picture to compare.

Albert Miles Tanner (1825-1879)

Son of John and Lydia Stewart Tanner. Accompanied the family to the Nauvoo area, met them in Utah Territory after serving in the Mormon Battalion, and went with them to California.

Myron Tanner (1826-1903)

Son of John and Elizabeth Beswick Tanner. Accompanied the family to the Nauvoo area, met them in Utah Territory after serving in the Mormon Battalion, and met them in California after joining the Gold Rush.

Seth Benjamin Tanner (1828-1918)

Son of John and Elizabeth Beswick Tanner. Accompanied the family to the Nauvoo area and Utah Territory, and met them in California after joining the Gold Rush.

Freeman Everton Tanner (1830-1918)

Son of John and Elizabeth Beswick Tanner. Accompanied the family to the Nauvoo area, Utah Territory, and California.

Joseph Smith Tanner (1833-1910)

Son of John and Elizabeth Beswick Tanner. Accompanied the family to the Nauvoo area, Utah Territory, and California.

David Dan Tanner (1838-1918)

Son of John and Elizabeth Beswick Tanner. Accompanied the family to the Nauvoo area, Utah Territory, and California.

The Boy in the Daguerreotype

Just for the sake of comparison, here is the boy in the back. 

* * *

And now I have given everyone all the information necessary to identify the people in the picture. Anyone want to make a guess before I reveal my final identification tomorrow? No credit for the identity of either of the women — we already know who they are — but the first people to match my conclusions on the identity of either the man or the boy will receive a certificate for meritorious genealogical efforts. The first person to come up with both of them will receive a certificate for meritorious genealogical efforts and bragging rights. :)

Here are links to all the posts if you want to check any of the clues or data.

Links to Posts in the Tanner Family Daguerreotype Series

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: We Meet the Tanners
Part 3: What is a Daguerreotype?
Part 4: Technology Meets the Tanners
Part 5: Woman at Right
Part 6: Woman in Center
Part 7: Boy in Back — First Possibility
Part 7: Boy in Back — Additional Possibilities
Part 8: Man at Left — John Tanner?
Part 8: Man at Left — Options
Part 9: Conclusion

The Tanner Family Daguerreotype: Man at Left — John Tanner?

Now, to the fun part of this series: the man at the left. Is he or is he not John Tanner?

Since the identities of both of the women in the daguerreotype are known, and their approximate movements are known, we know that the daguerreotype could have been taken in Illinois, in Utah, or in California. If it was taken by Lucien Foster in Nauvoo, Illinois, John Tanner could have been in the picture, and he would have been 66 years old.

The man in the picture does not look 66 years old. He does not look like he has suffered a very serious head injury at the hands of the mob in Missouri, as is recorded in the history of the Church, and had suffered through other serious health problems.

As the experts at the Church History Library noted, the man in the picture may be in his 30s or 40s.

Also, if the daguerreotype was taken in Nauvoo, the case should show fire damage. (See notes about the fire in a previous post.) I have sent a note to the Church History Library asking if there is fire damage, and was hoping to hear back by now. I will include the response when it arrives.

If the picture was taken in Salt Lake City or San Bernardino, John Tanner cannot have been in the picture. By the time any daguerreotypist is known to have been in Salt Lake City (Robert Campbell or J. Wesley Jones in the summer of 1850 or Marsena Cannon in October of the same year), John Tanner had died.

Marsena Cannon's advertisement for daguerreotypes. Deseret News, December 14, 1850, 6.

* * *

The other day I had a curious experience. I sat down in the foyer at church and a few minutes later a man sat down opposite me to feed his newborn baby a bottle. I said something polite about the baby and went back to reviewing this daguerreotype series on a handheld device.

A few minutes later, I thought that I should show him the daguerreotype. As we discussed it, he asked if the picture was from a matriarchal society. I said that it wasn't. He explained that in the culture where he'd been raised, the only time you would see a woman seated in the center of a picture would be if she was the grandmother. This woman doesn't look old enough to be a grandmother.

The more he thought about it, the stranger he found the family grouping. His final conclusion was that the woman in the middle of the picture was the mother and that her position in the center indicated that the father was not in the picture. (He said "The father is not in the picture" at least three times.) He said that the man to her right would be her oldest son or a brother-in-law.

That conversation reinforced my opinion that the man to the left is not John Tanner, but puzzled me since her oldest son was standing behind her, and I didn't know of any brothers-in-law who could have been in the picture. I thought perhaps the man could be Sidney Tanner, her oldest step-son not living in the Northeast, and resolved to compare the picture again with the one known photo of Sidney Tanner.

Tomorrow we will review pictures of the men in the Tanner family.

Links to Posts in the Tanner Family Daguerreotype Series

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: We Meet the Tanners
Part 3: What is a Daguerreotype?
Part 4: Technology Meets the Tanners
Part 5: Woman at Right
Part 6: Woman in Center
Part 7: Boy in Back: First Possibility
Part 7: Boy in Back: Additional Possibilities
Part 8: Man at Left — John Tanner?
Part 8: Man at Left — Options
Part 8: Response from CHL about Fire Damage
Part 9: Conclusion

The Tanner Family Daguerreotype: Boy in Back — Additional Possibilities

In this continuation of a long-running series about a daguerreotype now in the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, I continue to look at the identity of the boy standing in the back of the picture. For previous installments of the series, see the links at the bottom of this post.

When I resumed the series this week, I assumed that the boy in the back was correctly identified as Myron Tanner. However, the more I looked into the history of the daguerreotype, the more I realized there were other options.

Before reviewing Elizabeth's other sons, I will review the history of another John Tanner son, who was similar in age to Myron Tanner. He's not in the picture, but it is worth mentioning that he was considered.

Possibility 2: Albert Miles Tanner (1825-1879)

John Tanner's second wife, Lydia Stewart Tanner, died in New York in 1825 after the birth of her twelfth child, Albert Miles Tanner. Several months later, John Tanner married Elizabeth Beswick. She helped take care of his six minor children, and not long afterwards, she gave birth to a son, Myron.

Myron and his slightly older half-brother, Albert Miles, were close in age, and the family history suggests that the two of them did not get along and that the conflicts led to some long-standing family difficulties.

Albert accompanied the family to Kirtland, Missouri, and Iowa. Like Myron, Albert served in the Mormon Battalion (Company E), but unlike Myron, he made it to California. He rejoined the family in Utah and then went with them to California where he helped build the San Bernardino settlement and served as constable for the community.

Albert married Lovina Bickmore. The two had nine children as they moved up and down the Pacific Coast. Albert was said to have served as the first sheriff of Sacramento, California. Albert died in 1879:

... of blood poisoning in his leg after it was amputated... The cause was a stagecoach accident. According to the newspaper account, he had been racing against the postal driver's stagecoach when his coach overturned, pinning his leg underneath. Albert ran the Tanner Express line in Santa Paula, CA at the time. [Source.]

At least one of Albert's children followed the profession so common in the Tanner family: his oldest son was a lawyer in early Southern California.

There is only one known picture of Albert Miles Tanner.

Albert Miles Tanner. From John Tanner and His Family, 283. 

If the picture was taken in 1844, Albert was about the right age to be the boy in the picture, but he does not look like the boy in the picture. The boy in the picture bears a strong resemblance to Elizabeth Beswick Tanner, and since Albert was not Elizabeth's son, we can eliminate him as a real possibility.

Possibility 3: Elizabeth Beswick Tanner's Other Sons

The daguerreotype could have been taken in Great Salt Lake City or San Bernardino. This allows the possibility that one of Elizabeth Beswick Tanner's younger sons is the boy in the picture. The options are:

• Seth Benjamin Tanner (1828-1918)
• Freeman Everton Tanner (1830-1918)
• Joseph Smith Tanner (1833-1910)
• David Dan Tanner (1838-1918)

The options narrow down very quickly when you look at pictures of the four sons. Two of them had the narrower Tanner face, rather than the more heavy-set Beswick face and distinctive Beswick mouth.

First, here is Seth Tanner. He has the narrower Tanner face. He would have been 16 years old at the first possible date for the daguerreotype.

Next is Freeman Tanner. He also has the narrower Tanner face, and from having looked at many pictures of the Tanner family, I think this is what John Tanner must have looked like. Freeman would have been 14 years old at the first possible daguerreotype date.

The third option is Joseph Smith Tanner. He is the first one of the four to have that distinctive Beswick face that shows up on the boy standing in the back of the daguerreotype. If you are familiar with the T.C. Christensen film about the Tanner family, Treasure in Heaven, Joseph Smith is the only child mentioned by name in the production. Joseph would have been 11 years old at the earliest date for the daguerreotype.

And last is David Dan Tanner. Unfortunately, I cannot find a picture of Dan without a full beard, but in any case he probably would have been too young to be the boy in the daguerreotype, since he would have been six years old at the first possible date, and just twelve at the next possible date. If the daguerreotype was much later than 1853, he would have been a possibility.

To keep the post fairly brief, I will not review any of their biographies, although I may come back and add them later, but logistically they could all have been in any of the right locations for the daguerreotype. After they all arrived in Utah Territory, they seemed to remain more or less in the same area until Myron and Seth left for the gold fields in California sometime after John Tanner died. Myron and Seth didn't seem to spend long at the mines and by 1852 or 1853, most of the family was together in the San Bernardino settlement.

Links to Posts in the Tanner Family Daguerreotype Series

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: We Meet the Tanners
Part 3: What is a Daguerreotype?
Part 4: Technology Meets the Tanners
Part 5: Woman at Right
Part 6: Woman in Center
Part 7: Boy in Back: First Possibility
Part 7: Boy in Back: Additional Possibilities
Part 8: Man at Left — John Tanner?
Part 8: Man at Left — Options
Part 9: Summary

The Tanner Family Daguerreotype: Boy in Back — First Possibility

In this continuation of a long-running series about a daguerreotype now in the Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, we look at the identity of the boy standing in the back of the picture. For previous installments of the series, see the links at the bottom of this post.

This picture was handed down through the Myron Tanner family, so the most obvious identity for the boy standing in the back would be Myron Tanner himself.

If the picture was taken in 1844, Myron would have been 18, which looks plausible. If it was taken around 1850-1851, he would have been too old to be the boy in the picture.

Close-up of the boy standing in the back.

Myron's presence would tend to date the daguerreotype more than any other person in it. Here is a brief biography, emphasizing the movements that place him at the correct locations to have been in this picture.

Myron Tanner was born in New York in 1826. He accompanied his parents, John and Elizabeth Beswick Tanner, to Kirtland, Missouri, and Iowa, where they lived across the river from Nauvoo, Illinois.

Myron Tanner, freighter, sometime before his marriage in 1856.

Myron enlisted in the Mormon Battalion (Company D) in 1846. He was taken ill and left the Battalion, overwintering in Pueblo, Colorado, and was with the group that entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 29, 1847, five days after Brigham Young arrived.

Myron immediately turned around and traveled to Winter Quarters, now North Omaha, Nebraska, where many of the Saints were living in makeshift homes. He spent a year working for George A. Smith, and then headed west in 1849 with the George A. Smith/Dan Jones Company. The company arrived in Salt Lake in October 1849 and Myron continued to work for George A. Smith. Before long, he found out that his father was very ill in South Cottonwood, so he went to help with his father's care in the final days before he died on April 13, 1850.

Myron Tanner, wedding photo, 1856.

Myron spent several years in California working in the gold fields with his brother Seth Tanner and then joined the family in San Bernardino in the fall of 1852.

Myron traveled several times between California and Utah Territory and finally returned to Utah  in 1856 and married Mary Jane Mount, a minor figure in the literary history of the state of Utah. He spent most of the rest of his life living in Payson and Provo, serving as a bishop in Provo for many years, and also marrying Englishwoman Ann Crosby.

Myron Tanner.

As previously mentioned, this daguerreotype remained in the Myron Tanner family, which would suggest that he is one of the subjects of the picture, but the fact of possession alone is not enough to make the identification, so we will continue to explore other possibilities in subsequent posts.

Links to Posts in the Tanner Family Daguerreotype Series

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: We Meet the Tanners
Part 3: What is a Daguerreotype?
Part 4: Technology Meets the Tanners
Part 5: Woman at Right
Part 6: Woman in Center
Part 7: Boy in Back: First Possibility
Part 7: Boy in Back — Additional Possibilities
Part 8: Man at Left — John Tanner?
Part 8: Man at Left — Options
Part 9: Summary

Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story [Updated]

This was originally posted on November 13, 2009. Since I have made significant revisions I am reposting it. Please note a 2014 summary of the state of the genealogical research in the family: (William Tanner Lives Again.)

Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story is a short film from director T.C. Christensen. It tells the story of John Tanner, a Mormon pioneer who gave his fortune to help establish The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its early days. It is a visually beautiful, emotional production, is fairly accurate to family accounts, and is easy to watch at about 20 minutes long.

Additional Media Resources

Here's a story about the movie from KSL [Utah filmmaker creates movie about his ancestor].

Here's a Deseret News story about the producer, T.C. Christensen [T.C. Christensen: the man, the movies and stories that matter.]

From time to time the film is shown on BYU-TV.

The film is available on a collection about the history of the Church [Doctrine and Covenants Visual Resource DVDs, item 08042000] and through Deseret Book and other retailers.

Short Biography of John Tanner

John Tanner was born in Rhode Island on August 15, 1778. When he was a child, his family joined many relatives on a great migration from Washington County, Rhode Island, to Washington County, New York.

The Lake George, New York, area in 1796.
Washington County is to the east of Lake George; Warren County is to the west.

Around 1800 he married Tabitha Bently. She died in 1801 after giving birth to their son, Elisha Bently Tanner.

John Tanner married, second, Lydia Stewart, and they had twelve children. Around 1818 the family moved to Bolton, Warren County, on the other side of Lake George. There Lydia died and John Tanner married Elizabeth Beswick. John and Elizabeth had eight children, making a total of 21 children in the Tanner family, fourteen of them living to adulthood.

John Tanner and his family were strong Baptists, but in 1832 he and many members of his family joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They sold their homes and land in New York and moved to Kirtland, where they helped with the building of the Kirtland Temple, then to Missouri, then to Iowa (across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo), and from there to Utah Territory, where John Tanner died in South Cottonwood, Utah Territory, on April 13, 1850.

The Salt Lake Valley in 1852.

Additional Genealogical Resources

My father and I are continuing to add accurate genealogical and historical information to this blog about the Tanner family and other related families. (Some of the information I posted about the family in 2007 and 2008 may be based on questionable secondary sources and needs to be edited and updated.)

Here is John Tanner's biography from Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah with notes about what is correct and incorrect in the biography.

Here is a photograph of John Tanner's original hand-written birth record from Hopkinton, Rhode Island.

Here is information about the Tanner family in colonial times and going back to England: The Colonial Heritage of the John Tanner Family

The John Tanner Family Association

As discussed in the comments, there was previously a John Tanner Family Association. It appears to be no longer operational. It would be great if a group of descendants would start a John Tanner Family Association. It's a large and influential although very widespread family, and there should be enough initiative and resources to start such an organization to collect family information and finance genealogical and historical research since so much of the widely available genealogy and history is unfortunately inaccurate.

The Tanner Family Daguerreotype

There are no known photographs of John Tanner.

Don't miss my series about the Tanner Family Daguerreotype. (For an explanation, see here and here.)

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: We Meet the Tanners
Part 3: What is a Daguerreotype?
Part 4: Technology Meets the Tanners
Part 5: Woman at Right
Part 6: Woman in Center
Part 7: Boy in Back — First Possibility
Part 7: Boy in Back — Additional Possibilities
Part 8: Man at Left — John Tanner?
Part 8: Man at Left — Options
Part 8: Response from CHL about Fire Damage
Part 9: Conclusion

Please read the posts and comments to the final posts for details about the identification. As noted there, the most likely identification for the people in the following picture is:

Sitting, left to right: Myron Tanner, Elizabeth Beswick Tanner, Louisa Maria Tanner Lyman. Standing: Joseph Smith Tanner.

Complete List of John Tanner's Wives and Children

I've been doing some work on John Tanner and his family. I thought it would be a simple task to put his census records into a blog post, but it has been a complex project and is still under way. 

For the time being, here is a list of the Tanner family that I put on Family Tree the other day. Two of John Tanner's wives and six of his children predeceased him. Reminder: John Tanner had a very large family but he was not married polygamously. Some of his sons were, and the Tanners tended to have large families in any case, so he has an extensive descendancy.

I have already seen that some of the information from the book used as the source for this family list is not entirely accurate. Eventually, I will put up information about all aspects of the Tanner family history.

* * *

John Tanner (1778-1850) married (1) Tabitha Bently (1780-1801). Their child:

(1-1) Elisha Bently Tanner (1801-1858)

John Tanner (1778-1850) married (2) Lydia Stewart (1773-1825). Their children:

(2-1) William Stewart Tanner (1802-1875)

(2-2) Matilda Tanner (Randall) (1804-1888)

(2-3) Willard Tanner (1806-1807)

(2-4) Sidney Tanner (1809-1895)

(2-5) John Joshua Tanner (1811-1896)

(2-6) Romelia Tanner (1814-1814)

(2-7) Nathan Tanner (1815-1910)

(2-8) Edward Tanner, twin (1817-1817)

(2-9) Edwin Tanner, twin (1817-1817)

(2-10) Louisa Maria Tanner (Lyman) (1818-1906)*

(2-11) Martin Henry Tanner (1822-1907)

(2-12) Albert Miles Tanner (1825-1879)

John Tanner (1778-1850) married (3) Elizabeth Beswick (1803-1890). Their children:

(3-1) Myron Tanner (1826-1903)

(3-2) Seth Benjamin Tanner (1828-1918)

(3-3) Freeman Everton Tanner (1830-1918)

(3-4) Joseph Smith Tanner (1833-1910)

(3-5) Philomelia Tanner (1835-1838)

(3-6) David Dan Tanner (1838-1918)

(3-7) Sariah Tanner (1840-1853)

(3-8) Francis Tanner (1843-1844)

*Louisa Maria Tanner Lyman went by the name "Maria" so she often shows up in family records as "Maria Louisa," but correspondence, census, death records, and the book John Tanner and His Family show her correct name as "Louisa Maria."

Source:

Tanner, George S. John Tanner and His Family: A History-Biography of John Tanner of Lake George, New York, Born August 15, 1778, Hopkinton, Rhode Island, Died April 13, 1850, at South Cottonwood, Utah. Salt Lake City: John Tanner Family, 1974.

The Tanner Family Daguerreotype: Woman in Center

And now, after a long break, we're back to the mystery of the Tanner Family Daguerreotype.

If you haven't read the previous chapters, links are at the bottom of this post.

The woman in the middle with the purple shawl (the picture was tinted by hand) is generally thought to be Elizabeth Beswick Tanner.

John Tanner was twice widowed when he asked for Elizabeth Beswick's hand in marriage in 1825. Elizabeth was 21 when she married 47-year-old John. It must have been difficult for her to adjust to life in the Tanner family: John had two sons older than Elizabeth, and one daughter slightly younger, but with the youngest just an infant and five other children in-between, the family needed a mother, and Elizabeth stepped right in to do the job.

Here is the picture from the daguerreotype:

Here is a picture from Elizabeth's later years. The identification looks correct.

Elizabeth's children were born in 1826 (Myron), 1828 (Seth), 1830 (Freeman), 1833 (Joseph), 1835 (Philomelia), 1838 (David Dan), 1840 (Sariah), and 1843 (Francis).

If this picture was taken in 1844, was she in mourning for Francis who died in June of that year? Is she wearing a mourning bonnet? (See links for pictures of 1840s mourning bonnets: here and here.) It looks like she's wearing a black mourning bonnet.

The only people she would wear mourning for were close family members. Since this picture seems to have been taken in the mid-1840s through the early 1850s, she could have worn mourning for the following deaths:

• Child Francis Tanner, died June 1844 in Iowa.
• Husband John Tanner, died April 1850 in Utah.
• Mother Anna Lamb Beswick, died September 1852 in New York. (It probably took Elizabeth a while to hear about her mother's death.)
• Child Sariah Tanner, died March 1853 in California.

That would place this picture within a year following one of those deaths. Was it taken in Nauvoo by Lucian Foster after Francis died? In Utah by Marsena Cannon, Sr., after John Tanner died? Or in California after Anna Beswick or Sariah Tanner died?

[Note, May 2012: Maria Tanner Lyman is also wearing a bonnet of a similar style but with a ruffle that has been hand-colored purple. She lost a daughter in 1848, her father in 1850, and a member of her husband's family in 1846. Oh! Is it possible that they were wearing mourning for Joseph and Hyrum Smith? The two of them died on June 27, 1844. The fact that the two of them are wearing mourning is inconclusive.]

San Bernardino

In 1851, the Tanners left for San Bernardino, California. They were there until late 1857. A handful of daguerreotypists operated in the area during the existence of the Mormon settlement, including:

• Carvalho (Solomon) — in Los Angeles for a month (August-September 1854) operating in partnership with A. M. Johnson
• Da Lee (Amon Gilbert) — rented Hallman's daguerreotype studio in Los Angeles in 1856.
• Hallman (A.) — had a portrait gallery in Los Angeles from about 1856-1857. He may have remained in the general area, since he was in San Diego in 1858.
• Hereford (T. S.) — in Los Angeles around 1853.
• Johnson (A. M.) — operated a daguerreotype gallery in Los Angeles.
• Lewis (J.) — operated a daguerreotype studio in Los Angeles around 1853.
• Osburn (William B.) and Searles (Moses) —  had a daguerreotype gallery in Los Angeles in 1851.
• Penelon (Henri C.) and Davoust (Adrien L.) — operated a photography studio in Los Angeles as early as 1853.
• Smith (William, later known as Amor De Cosmos) — a partner of Marsena Cannon in Salt Lake before he left for California where he was an itinerant daguerreotypist until he moved to Canada in 1857.

Reading through the possible daguerreotypists, and looking at Myron Tanner's age, it seems most likely that the daguerreotype was taken before the San Bernardino period, but there were a number of daguerreotypists who could have visited San Bernardino and taken a picture, or the Tanners could have traveled to Los Angeles and had their picture taken there.

To be continued...

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: We Meet the Tanners
Part 3: What is a Daguerreotype?
Part 4: Technology Meets the Tanners
Part 5: Woman at Right
Part 6: Woman in Center
Part 7: Boy in Back — First Possibility
Part 7: Boy in Back — Additional Possibilities
Part 8: Man at Left — John Tanner?
Part 8: Man at Left — Options
Part 9: Summary

The picture of the daguerreotype is, as always, from Ancestry.com, courtesy of Claudia Rayl. The picture of Elizabeth Beswick Tanner is from John Tanner and His Family (George Tanner, 1974, 374). The information on the photographers is from the amazing book Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865 (Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn, 2000).