Here's a biography I just wrote for Sidney Tanner's FamilySearch Family Tree entries (LZXK-Y57) and (KWJ6-DZX). I'll include the story about his "little white cur dog" tomorrow.
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| Sidney Tanner, Family Tree, courtesy of Janice Salazar. |
Sidney Tanner was born on April 1, 1809, in Greenwich,
Washington County, New York. His mother, Lydia Stewart Tanner, seems to have
been a native New Yorker; his father John Tanner was originally from Washington
County, Rhode Island.
Sidney spent his young years in the busy Tanner household.
He had an older half-brother, Elisha, who spent part of his time with his
Bently relatives, an older brother William, a sister Mathilda, and a deceased
brother, Willard.
Sidney saw five younger siblings born and three of them
buried, before the Tanner family moved from Washington County to Warren County,
on the other side of Lake George. There the family invested in timber land, farmed,
owned stock and dairy herds, ran a hotel for occasional travelers, and provided
for many of their needs, before Sidney’s mother Lydia died in 1825 after the
birth of her son Albert.
Sidney was 16 years old when his father remarried young
Elizabeth Beswick. She stepped into care for the large families and take over
the many household and economic duties of a woman in rural 1820s America.
Five years later Sidney married Louisa Conlee. They had a
young family with just two children when the missionaries of The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints visited the community. Church records note
that Sidney and Louisa were baptized January 3, 1833. Even in a mild winter,
that would have been a cold event.
The family began to gather with the Church. Sidney’s
brothers John Joshua and Nathan joined Zion’s Camp. The rest of the Tanners
went to Kirtland where Sidney and Louisa helped finance the building of the
Kirtland Temple. The Kirtland High Council Minutes tell that “a Meeting of the
Church of Latter Day Saints was called in this place, for the purpose of
blessing in the name of the Lord, those
who have heretofore assisted in
building, by their labor & other means, the house of the Lord.” Included in the company were John
Tanner and Sidney Tanner. The leaders of the Church gave each man present an
individual blessing.
When Sidney and Louisa moved to Missouri, they found rich
farmland and timberland and began building up their resources again. They were
joined not long afterwards by the other Tanner families. Sidney and his father
and brother and brother-in-law Amasa Lyman left their wives and younger children
and went to work at Fort Leavenworth for 2-1/2 months to earn money, since cash
was in short supply on the frontier.
It was not long before mobs drove the families off their new
land. The Tanners fought the mobs as they could—Sidney was said to have fought
at the Battle of Crooked River, in which case there’s a chance he may have been
one of the fabled “Danites”—but the family was driven north, eventually to
Montrose County, Iowa, across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo, Illinois. (Sidney
also owned land in Nauvoo.)
By this time Sidney and Louisa had five children. They had
two children born in Montrose County before they were again driven from their
home, but before they left, they participated in the temple ordinances in the
new Nauvoo Temple. Just a few days outside Nauvoo at the temporary settlement
of Richardson’s Point, their twenty-month-old son James Monroe Tanner died.
Louisa gave birth to a son, Mason Lyman Tanner, while they were
living in the Indian lands. She survived the childbirth but came down with what
was probably scarlet fever and malaria and died at Winter Quarters, followed
not long afterward by her infant son.
Sidney Tanner had to send the sad news to his in-laws, James
and Elsie Cole Conley in New York. He told them that she “requested me to write
to you and tell you that she died in the full triumph of the faith of Jesus
Christ and her most desire for living was for the benefit of her family and
friends…that they might arrive to a glorious salvation in the kingdom of God
where she expects to meet them and enjoy their society.”
In those busy days with much work to do, Sidney needed
someone to care for his children, so two months after Louisa’s death, the
grieving widower married young Julia Ann Shepherd. She had been born in Ohio to
Vermont natives Samuel and Roxalana Ray Shepherd.
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| Julia Ann Shepherd Tanner, Family Tree, courtesy of LarkinDixonFerrin1. |
In 1848 the Tanner and Shepherd families headed west with
all their provisions and animals including Sidney’s “little white cur dog” that
saved Homer Duncan’s life. (See Duncan’s account in the Mormon Overland Travel
database.)
Caroline Barnes Crosby noted on July 27, 1848, “Yesterday a
very sad accident occured in the camp[.] one of Sidney Tanners little boys
[Sidney Tanner, Jr.] was killed almost instantly by a wagon wheel running over
him, he appeared like a very forward smart child for one of his age, was
between 6 and 7 was driving team sitting on the tongue and fell backward.”
The Tanners reached the Salt Lake Valley in mid-October 1848,
Julia carrying her infant daughter in her arms. They joined their extended
family in South Cottonwood, but only lived there a few months after John
Tanner’s death before heading to California with the San Bernardino Settlement.
The Tanners lived in San Bernardino until 1857, when Brigham
Young called the settlers back to Utah Territory at the time Johnston’s Army
was threatening the Saints. Sidney and his family eventually settled in the beautiful
valley of Beaver, Utah, after Sidney helped deliver the new Australian pipe organ to the old adobe Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.
Sidney worked as a freighter, taking goods back and forth
between the settlements, and was headed down to San Bernardino in September
1857 when he came upon the scene of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The
participants stopped all passers-by including Sidney and his travel companion, William
Mathews, and took them past the site of the massacre in the dark of night.
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| Rachel Neyman Fullmer Tanner, Family Tree, courtesy of Francis Gill. |
Except for his brother Nathan, none of the Tanners had cared
to participate in plural marriage, but after a few years of life in
Reformation-Era Utah, and despite Julia’s opposition to the practice, Sidney
took a plural wife, the sturdy widow Rachel Neyman Fullmer, a member of a
family deeply involved in plural marriage since the earliest days in Nauvoo.
Sidney and Rachel had six children in addition to her three with Almon Fullmer,
but only three of their children lived past early childhood, and their son
Howard Harper Tanner was killed in a range dispute in 1891.
Sidney also married another widow, Mary Ann Neyman Nickerson
Tanner, after she sued his brother John Joshua for divorce. Both marriages were
an example of the common use of plural marriage as a social safety network in
those days when women had few options outside marriage, and probably only Julia
Ann and Rachel would have been considered his actual wives in pioneer-era
Beaver.
Sidney was a strong man, a hard worker, a practical person,
and dedicated to the gospel. He was, as they used to say, a pillar of his
community. He served on the Beaver City Council, as a member of the bishopric
of the Beaver First Ward with Bishop Marcus L. Shepherd, Julia’s brother, and
as a stake high councilor.
When Sidney died on December 5, 1895, his obituary said:
Elder Tanner was born on the shores of Lake George, in the
state of New York…He was a man of marvelous constitutional powers, and endured
the hardships common to the early settlement of this Territory as well as that
of southern California. He was one of the earliest settlers of Beaver and has
done much to build up that place; and he now leaves behind him a large family
of his own, as well as a host of kindred…The helpless condition of Elder Sidney
Tanner during the last few years of his life was such as to make his departure
not wholly unexpected to his family and relatives…the funeral services…will
take place next Sunday in Beaver.
He was known as a man of remarkable industry, temperate
habits, generous disposition, and unswerving integrity. (Deseret Evening News,
“Sidney Tanner Dead,” December 6, 1895.)
Sources: Sidney Tanner, His Ancestors and Descendants
(DeBrouwer, 1982); John Tanner and His Family (Tanner, 1974); FamilySearch
Family Tree; 1830-1880 US Census; 1852 California State Census; Joseph Smith
Papers Project; Mormon Overland Travel; Diary of Caroline Barnes Crosby; Homer
Duncan Autobiographical Sketch; Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah (Esshom,
1913); More Wives Than One (Daynes, 2008); Deseret News;
TheAncestorFiles.blogspot.com; history.lds.org; Nauvoo Land and Records.
