Tanner 9: Julia Ann Shepherd Tanner

9: Julia Ann Shepherd Tanner
b. 24 March 1829 Chagrin Township, Cuyahoga, Ohio
m. 1 December 1846 Winter Quarters (Florence), Douglas, Nebraska
d. 10 May 1899 Beaver, Beaver, Utah
Husband: Sidney Tanner
Father: Samuel Shepherd; Mother: Roxalana Ray

Julia Ann's parents were from Vermont.

Her father Samuel was a veteran of the War of 1812. He was a prisoner of war in Quebec. After the war he received a land grant in the Western Reserve as payout for his service, which he took in Chagrin Township, Cuyahoga (now Willoughby, Lake), Ohio (near Kirtland and Cleveland by Lake Erie).

Julia's mother was Roxalana Ray. Roxalana's name is a nod to classical history (the original Roxolana was the wife of the Sultan Suleiman the Lawgiver). Roxalana married Samuel in 1820 and they moved to Ohio in 1823. Samuel and Roxalana had eight children.

Living near Kirtland, they soon heard of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They joined it and started for Missouri. Roxalana and her infant son William Ray died of cholera while traveling on the Mississippi River.

When Samuel married widow Charity Bates Swarthout the next year he brought six children into the marriage: ages 13 (Sarah), 12 (Lucelia), 11 (Marcus), 8 (Fanny Jane), 6 (Julia Ann), and 5 (Rollins). Charity had seven children, aged 17 (Lucinda), 15 (George), 12 (Nathan), 9 (Truman), 7 (Hamilton), and 4 (twins Charles and Harley).

The Shepherd family followed the movements of the Mormons from Missouri to Illinois to Iowa.

At Winter Quarters in 1846, Julia Ann began helping in the Sidney Tanner family. Within the past year Sidney had lost his young son James in March, his wife Louisa to the "fever" on September 29, and his five-month-old son Mason on November 29. On December 1, Julia Ann and Sidney were married in "an extremely out in the country wedding, it having taken place at the Rushes above Florence, Nebraska," according to her son Henry. Henry also noted that, "though being newly wed and very young her wants were looked after by her husband who was a good provider."

Julia immediately had six step-children, Allen, who was two years younger than her, Lydia (14), Emma (11), Mary (9), Elsie (6), and Sidney C. (4). What an interesting family structure.

Julia's first child, Julia, was born in June 1848, shortly before they left for Utah. While crossing the plains, on July 26, 1848, her step-son Sidney C. fell out of the wagon and was crushed. The wagon train paused long enough to bury him and nail a marker to a tree before heading west again.

Julia and Sidney had eight children. The second was born in Little Cottonwood, Salt Lake, Utah. Their third child, our ancestor Henry Martin, was born in 1852 in San Bernardino. When the Saints were called from San Bernardino back to Utah, Julia once again made a pioneer journey trip with a tiny infant in her arms. She had her last child, Walter Waite, in 1863, at the age of 34.

Sidney and Julia were sealed in the Endowment House on 27 February 1851 before leaving for San Bernardino.

When they returned from San Bernardino to Utah, Julia's father Samuel and step-mother Charity, also returned but then quickly went back to California where they spent the rest of their lives. Other family members, Tanners and Shepherds, also remained in California, but other members of her family lived in Beaver, including her brother Marcus Lafayette Shepherd, who was mayor and stake president in Beaver.

Not much is known of Julia's life separate from that of Sidney. Her husband was married polygamously in 1859, ten days before the birth of their sixth child. Sidney was a very hard worker and was a freighter by profession, so he would have been gone frequently. Julia Ann would have spent many years keeping her own company (and that of all those children, of course). Julia and Sidney were married for 49 years. He died in 1895 and she died four years later in 1899.

The picture of the Kirtland Temple is from wikipedia and is in the public domain.

Sidney Tanner Biography

b. 1 April 1809 Greenwich, Washington, New York
m. 1 December 1846 near Florence, Nebraska
d. 5 December 1895 Beaver, Beaver, Utah
Wives: (1) Louisa Conlee, (2) Julia Ann Shepherd, (3) Rachel Neyman, (4) Mary Nickerson
Father: John Tanner; Mother: Lydia Stewart

The material this week is excerpted from Elizabeth DeBrouwer and George S. Tanner's book Sidney Tanner: His Ancestors and Descendants. I also found a good long history of the Tanner family online (click on the link).

A nice portrait of Sidney painted from his photo by Elizabeth DeBrouwer and available in the collections of the San Bernardino Public Library. There is also another picture there which may or may not be Sidney. I've looked at it carefully and can't decide any more than they can.

Little has come down to us of the early years of Sidney Tanner. He was born in Greenwich, New York, a village approximately forty miles southeast of Bolton Landing, the well-known home of the Tanners. His birth date is April 1, 1809 and his parents were John and Lydia Stewart Tanner. When the Tanner family moved to Lake George in 1818, Sidney was a boy of nine.

[Sidney had a half brother who was eight years older as well as two older brother and an older sister. His mother would eventually have eight more children.]

When John moved his large and growing family to the Lake George region, they settled in a wooded area north of Northwest Bay. Whether John acquired all his land at one time is not known, but eventually he owned 2,200 acres of timberland and two large farms.

To speak of John Tanner as a farmer needs some explanation, as the modest fortune he accumulated in a short while came mostly from the forest. We have no detailed information of his lumber operations, but we do know it was quite extensive and that he prospered from it.

...[T]he Tanner family would have been nearly independent for its food and clothing. This combination of a cash income from the sale of lumber products coupled with their own farm products which supplied the needs of the family soon raised them to a position of comparative wealth.

The improved financial condition of the family led to the desire for a larger and better home, and in 1823 John purchased or built the lovely home which is pictured in most publications about the Tanner family.

Sidney, who was nine years of age when the family moved to Northwest Bay in 1818, was fourteen when the home in Bolton Landing was acquired in 1823. In 1830, he would marry a girl from Greenwich which indicated that they were keeping up a correspondence with the home folks in Greenwich. Even after marriage, Sidney as well as other Tanner men would remain a member of the close-knit John Tanner family. A little glimpse into that family is given us by Nathan, a younger brother, in a speech he gave at a Tanner reunion in Payson in 1884.

"We were a hardy family and used to hardships. Our father commenced poor, after settling the affairs of a widowed family. He commenced poor and by hard work and economy accumulated around him the comforts of life. "He had a delightful home on the west side of Lake George. Here he carried on farming extensively; stockraising and dairying on different farms; lumbering in all its branches, as he owned sawmills and planing mills and owned some 2,200 acres of land with homes and barns to accomodate a number of families. He also kept a hotel of some considerable note. "In those days, women turned the wheel by hand or foot that spun our yarn and made our cloth. In this, we were not behind. We were a hardworking and hard-handed family. None of our means was willed to us but earned by hard work and economy."

Sidney chose for his wife Louisa Conlee, daughter of James and Elsie or Alcy (Cole) Conlee. We know very little about Louisa Conlee except a few statistics. She was born 5 February 1811, making her two years younger than Sidney. [They had eight children, the] three youngest of which died in the migration to the West, and she herself lost her life at the Missouri River.

When the Mormon elders, Simeon and Jared Carter, brought the gospel to the Tanner family in the fall of 1832 Sidney and Louisa joined the church along with other Tanner members. This was against the wishes of Louisa’s family in Greenwich, as we learned in a letter written to them by Sidney at the time of Louisa’s death. Louisa and Sidney seem to have been happy members of the large John Tanner family. They joined them in the movement of the family from Lake George to Kirtland, Ohio at Christmastime in 1834. The money John Tanner gave to the distressed church in Kirtland and loaned to the prophet and the building committee was money earned by the hardy Tanner family at Lake George. Sidney, John Joshua and Nathan have never been given credit for any of it, but they and the women who ran the spinning wheels and the looms were part owners of the gifts made by the generous John Tanner.

Sidney was present during the building of the Kirtland Temple and was one of those who “partook of the pentecostal outpourings” at the temple. He left with his family for Missouri earlier than John and his younger family in order to assist in building up Far West. Sidney and Nathan were in the Battle of Crooked River with David W. Patten, and he went through the persecutions of Missouri and was driven from that state into Illinois and spent a year at New Liberty. When the Tanners moved to the Nauvoo area, he joined with his father and his brother John Joshua in acquiring a large tract of land near Montrose, Iowa and began raising crops to assist the impoverished saints and to recoup their fortunes. In the six years they were there, they prospered and became “well fixed” again.

Sidney may have performed his greatest service to the church during the trouble in Missouri, the sojourn in Montrose and the trip to Utah. He has been described by one writer as a man “of marvelous constitutional powers.” He needed it during these trying years. He was thirty-one years of age when he came to Montrose and thirty-seven when they left for the West. These were times which tried men’s souls, and the Tanner men were brought up for just such times. They knew horses, mules and oxen and they knew how to keep a wagon and harness in repair. The six-year period of peace at Montrose permitted the whole family—John, Sidney, John Joshua and Nathan—to recover from the severe losses they had sustained in Ohio in rescuing the church from its involvement with the temple and the Kirtland bank. Consequently, when the church members began crossing the Mississippi River in early 1846 to the Iowa side, they found the Tanner larders filled and their hands extended....[Many details given.]

The Tanners were among the last to leave the Mississippi River, as so many needed help and they had so much to give. When they did leave, they had the best teams and the best “outfits.” Sidney is mentioned repeatedly as not being with his outfit, as he is out rescuing someone who is stuck in the mud or who has lost an ox or mule or who is without food.

Because of the compassionate service of John Tanner, Sidney Tanner and John Joshua Tanner, they were designated “bishops” by Brigham Young who had said that, if a man is willing that his property should be disposed of in any way the Lord directed, the Lord was willing he should be a bishop.

The pioneers arrived on the Missouri River too late to plant crops in 1846. But they remained there all of 1847. This was an immensely busy year and good crops of corn and garden truck were produced. When the main body of Saints left Winter Quarters in the spring of 1848 for the Salt Lake Valley, they were better equipped, provisioned and disciplined than they had been two years earlier; and the trip across the plains was less uneventful than the shorter trip across Iowa had been.

The loss of human life from the Mississippi to the Missouri was sobering and even on the plains this was to continue. To add to Sidney’s grief of the loss of two infants in Iowa, he mourned the death of his wife Louisa at Winter Quarters on the Missouri and later of his son Sidney C. in 1848 on the trip to Utah....

Sidney’s name appears more often in the journals and records during the two-year stay at Winter Quarters. “John Tanner, though still not old by present-day standards, is growing weary with he burdens of the outdoor life and is not well.” Sidney, the oldest son, moved in to fill the gap. Sidney is listed as the head of this or that group and in particular he managed the cattle of the camps.

Sidney’s second marriage took place near Florence (Winter Quarters), Nebraska. On December 1, 1846, he married Julia Ann Shepherd, daughter of Samuel and Roxey L. Shepherd. She was born March 24, 1829 and was twenty years younger than Sidney—moreover she had not yet reached her seventeenth birthday. The marriage turned out well in spite of the difference in their ages and the youthfulness of the bride. Sidney and Julia Ann became the parents of eight children, seven of whom grew to adulthood.

Most of the Tanner family reached the Salt Lake Valley in the autumn of 1848, including Sidney and his family. At the time of their arrival, besides Sidney, who was thirty-nine, and Julia Ann, who was nineteen, there were six children: Allen Benedict, aged seventeen; Lydia, sixteen; Emma, fourteen; Mary Louise, eleven; Elsie Elizabeth, eight; and Julia Ann, one.

Amasa Lyman and his party were assigned a square mile of land between the Cottonwood Creeks, which in present numbering is about [600 South and 1300 East], extending out toward the mountain to the east. It was rocky and sterile and hardly suitable for farming.

After two years in this location, permission came to Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich to lead a colony to a suitable location in California. Three of John’s sons, Albert, Myron and Seth, were already in California; and Sidney with his large family gladly joined the Lyman family and moved to California. By this date, 1851, Sidney’s oldest children were grown; Allen Benedict was twenty and Lydia was married. Sidney’s family was growing up.

Sidney was in the San Bernardino settlement between six and seven years. It was a busy time; because of Indian uneasiness, it was decided to build a fort. Sidney, against his own inclination, left his home and farm, which was some miles away, and united with the Saints in building the fort. When the uneasiness died down, he moved back to his large farm. Like his father before him, he liked lots of elbow room. But, since Sidney Tanner spent most of his time freighting, it would be interesting to know how he managed to run a farm. His son Allen Benedict was the only boy in the family old enough to have done farming, and he married the year they moved to San Bernardino.

Most of the stories about Sidney have to do with his freighting. He, with William Mathews, was on a freighting trip near the Mountain Meadows when the very regrettable massacre took place. Participants in the massacre halted their freight wagons, and they were not permitted to pass the scene in the daylight but were routed away from the scene by night. They carried the frightful news to San Bernardino.

Sidney seems to have been in charge of the large party which moved Apostles Lyman and Rich back to Utah at the time of their recall by Brigham Young. And it was Sidney Tanner who freighted the first pipe organ to Utah which had been donated to the Saints by the church members in Australia.

Sidney was one of the prominent men in the San Bernardino mission and he was usually a member of the County Commissioners and Stake High Council where he lived. But the freighting kept him away from home so much, he would hardly have been an ideal choice for a bishop or stake president.

When the call came from church leaders to vacate San Bernardino, Sidney Tanner dutifully gave up his holdings and returned to Utah, settling in Beaver. No doubt he, along with most of the settlers, did so reluctantly. ...

Beaver was a newly formed community, suitable for grazing, with timber potential. Sidney acquired a considerable acreage ... But his heart was in freighting and his lifestyle seems not to have changed much. His growing boys would have plenty of room for a variety of experiences on the farm, such as milking and caring for dairy cows, growing alfalfa and grain, as well as garden truck, and caring for sheep and hogs.

...Henry M. Tanner, the author’s father, seems never to have commented about his life on the Beaver farm, probably because he was never asked. We wait until those who have the information have passed on and then wish we had inquired more about them. My father did mention a trip he took with his father to California. The thing which impressed him most was a new way of starting a fire. One of the freighters took out his jackknife and shaved some kindling from a dry piece of wood he was carrying for the purpose, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a little box and drew out a match. This was the first match he had ever seen. The Tanners were using the flint and steel with the tinderbox to start their fires. This would have been sometime in the early or middle sixties.

Sidney took a third wife in Beaver in 1859. Her name was Rachel Neyman, daughter of William and Jane Neyman; Sidney was fifty and Rachel twenty-six. Rachel had been married previously. There were six children born to Sidney and Rachel, only two of whom grew to maturity and married.…

Sidney Tanner lived out the rest of his life in Beaver. He was a substantial citizen with financial holdings above average. He had interests in woolen mills, sawmills and cattle herds in addition to his farms. He was a counselor in the Ward Bishopric and later a member of the Stake High Council. In 1884, at a Tanner family gathering in Payson, he was called to be a patriarch to the Tanner family and the people of the Beaver area. He was seventy-five at the time and the apostle promised him he would have an additional ten years of life. He died in 1895 at the age of eighty-six and is buried in Beaver.

Sidney was the father of twenty-two, fourteen sons and eight daughters. Fourteen grew to maturity and married.…their descendants [were] estimated at about five thousand [in 1982].

Elizabeth DeBrouwer with George S. Tanner. Sidney Tanner: His Ancestors and Descendants. Salt Lake City, Utah: The Sidney Tanner Family Organization, 1982.
The photos are of Lake George, a wagon, San Bernardino in 1852, and the Beaver Courthouse. They were found on wikipedia and are all available for public use.

Tanner 7: Margaret Godfrey Jarvis Overson

7 MARGARET GODFREY JARVIS OVERSON
b. 22 November 1878 St. George, Washington, Utah
m. 8 October 1896 Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah
d. 8 December 1968 Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona
b. 11 December 1968 St. Johns, Apache, Arizona
Husband: Henry Christian Overson
Father: Charles Godfrey (DeFriez) Jarvis; Mother: Margaret Jarvis

Margaret Godfrey Jarvis, eldest child of Charles Godfrey DeFriez Jarvis and Margaret Jarvis, was born 22nd of November, 1878, at St. George, Washington Co., Utah, in the home of my grandparents, George and Ann Prior Jarvis. At age one year, my parents were in Snowflake, Arizona, in answer to a call by President Brigham Young, to help in colonizing Northern Arizona. Our home there was a one-room hewn log house with shakes roof. Most of the settlers had similar places.

My grandparents came from St. George to visit us in 1882, and while there Grandpa took us to Holbrook to see the first train that crossed the continent on the Atlantic-Pacific tracks. Father was there working for the Company.

We moved to Nutrioso in February 1883, where father, uncles Sam and Heber engaged in farming, stock raising, and also started a small store. Here our first home was in the old fort, a one-room log, with dirt floor and roof, one small pane of glass set in the logs for light, and a corner fireplace for cooking and warmth. Later father built a larger log room on a lot to ourselves, with a lumber floor and dirt roof, and some grain bins in one end.

We next moved to Woodruff, where father had work in the store. Our first brother was born there in May 1885. When he was two weeks old, father, Annie and the baby all took typhoid fever. It was months before they were all well, and when father was able, he worked a few months to settle his accounts, then went back to Nutrioso. Here an epidemic of scarlet fever was raging. It seemed to be all over the valley, in serious form, and many of the young children died. We all had bad cases except the baby, and it was summer before we were all well again. Thirteen young children died in that small town that winter and spring.

Here I hunted cows in the hills, gleaned wheat in the field, helped mother in the house, sewed quilt blocks and carpet rags, and when school opened, walked three miles each way, morning and night, to school, often in the snow and bitter cold. Here father baptized me in the river near our home, on the 6th day of April, 1887, under the direction of our bishop.

Our next move was to St. Johns, Arizona, where our home was for the next sixty years. I attended district school two winters, then the St. Johns Stake Academy was opened, and I attended part of three seasons, when father took me as his assistant in the Court House, where he was County Recorder. I was taught to record the different documents that came into the office in the proper books, was taught filing, record keeping, accounting, letter writing, etc. Thus ended my school days, and association with schoolmates.

Next father bought a photo outfit and set up a studio, and I was taught photography. This work was pleasing and agreeable, and I took to it with all my heart and energy. I have made it a pleasant and profitable lifelong business and hobby.

When in my teens, mother hired a dressmaker to come to our home two or three weeks each spring and fall to make our clothes for the season. I was always allowed to stay home from the office and help do the sewing, thereby getting a fairly good insight into general sewing and dressmaking. This has been a useful thing in raising my family, and helping in the community. After our marriage I always did all our sewing, and often earned a little by helping others with theirs.

My love and understanding of the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by the Latter Day Saints first came when I attended our Academy, and I have worked in the Sunday School, Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association, Relief Society, and the Genealogical Society, and studied our Doctrines all through the years, and have always had joy in performing my duties wherever called to labor. Have become acquainted with many of our Church leaders, and know them to be sincere and God-fearing men and women. I love this Church, and know that is the only true Church on the earth, and that the Priesthood of God is directing it. That Jesus Christ visited the Prophet Joseph Smith and instructed him, and that this Church was organized according to those instructions, and the pattern He gave.

Since all my family are on their own, and my husband was called home, I have moved here to Mesa, and my sons have built me a home on the lot Henry got for me twenty-two years ago. I am thankful for my children and my home, and am hoping to finish this book [George Jarvis and Joseph George DeFriez Genealogy], and if it may be a small benefit to any of my kindred, the purpose of the work will be fully realized.

Margaret Jarvis Overson. George Jarvis and Joseph George DeFriez Genealogy. Mesa, Arizona: Privately printed, 1957.

Sometime when you're in St. Johns take a visit to the little museum there. Many of the photographs were taken by Margaret Jarvis and her father Charles.

Mormon Trees

Here are a few lines of Wallace Stegner's essay "Mormon Trees" from his book Mormon Country (1942).

These are the "Mormon Trees," Lombardy poplars. Wherever they went the Mormons planted them. They grew boldly and fast, without much tending, and they make the landscape of the long valleys of the Mormon Country something special and distinctive....They give a quality to the land so definite that it is almost possible to mark the limits of the Mormon Country by the trees....There are not as many Mormon trees as there used to be...their age and possible heart-rot made them a hazard.

Perhaps it is fanciful to judge a people by its trees....Probably it is pure nonsense to see a reflection of Mormon group life in the fact that the poplars were practically never planted singly, but always in groups...Perhaps it is even more nonsensical to speculate that the straight, tall verticality of the Mormon trees appealed [to the] sense of order of the settlers, and that a marching row of plumed poplars was symbolic, somehow, of the planter's walking with God and his solidarity with his neighbors....

Nonsensical or not, it is not an unpleasant thought. Institutions must have their art forms, their symbolic representations, and if the Heavenward aspirations of medieval Christianity found their expression in cathedrals and spires, the more mundane aspirations of the Latter-day Saints may just as readily be discovered in the widespread plantings of Mormon trees. They look heavenward but their roots are in the earth.

The picture is from St. Johns, Arizona, in 1994.

Tanner 6: Henry Christian Overson

6 HENRY CHRISTIAN OVERSON
b. 9 July 1868 Ephraim, Sanpete, Utah
m. 8 October 1896 Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah
d. 8 March 1947 St. Johns, Apache, Arizona
b. 9 March 1947 St. Johns, Apache, Arizona
Wife: Margaret Godfrey Jarvis
Father: Ove Christian Oveson
Mother: Mary Kjerstine Christensen

Henry Christian Overson, first child of Ove Christian and Mary K. Christensen Overson, was born July 9th, 1868, in Ephraim, Sanpete County, Utah. The family was called by President Brigham Young to Arizona, to assist in making settlements on the Little Colorado River.

They went first to Brigham City, now Winslow, then on to St. Johns, where Henry helped put shingles on the first house shingled in St. Johns. Ploughing, planting, irrigating, freighting, riding the range and building, all had to be done, and Henry was ever ready to help at anything necessary.

He took up a farm, and planted alfalfa, and did well financially, by having a feed stable for travelers, so that from 1903 to 1905 he was able to go on to a Mission to England, and pay his own expenses. This was the period of his whole life that gave him the most joy and satisfaction, and he never tired of telling his children incidents of that happy time. He later sent three of his sons on Missions and was happy to do so, and gladly paid their expenses, that they might have a similar blessed experience.

During his married life he was a steady and hard worker, preferring to stay where he could be with his family at night, but doing anything he could get to do for a livelihood, or help his neighbors. He was alternately President, Secretary, Water Overseer, and Member of the Board of Directors of the St. Johns Irrigation Company, for more than thirty years, and it was largely due to his foresight and careful planning that all of the permanent improvements in the Company’s system were installed. These included cement dams in the river, blasting in rock to make part of ditches to avoid washing out in flood times, using culvert pipes with built up piers for the old wooden flumes, changing the location of ditches to avoid the run-off of summer rains, installing steel headgates for all main ditches, etc. All this was a blessing to the residents, who most all depended for much of their living on the products of farm, garden and orchard.

Another important thing was piping the water of the McIntosh spring into town, and distributing it to individual homes. Henry Overson had entire charge of installing the pipes from the spring to town, and to each home, and also the upkeep and extension work for several years. W.W. Berry did a great part of the teamwork, digging and covering of trenches, etc.

Henry was a good carpenter and builder, and was overseer of many of the substantial homes, public buildings, business houses, and the Church, Academy Building, etc. all of which were noted for solid construction. He served as secretary of the 104th Quorum of Seventy for many years, and was Counselor in the Bishopric of the Ward for about seven years. He was a kind and indulgent father, a good neighbor and friend, and a loving husband.

Overson, Margaret Jarvis. George Jarvis and Joseph George DeFriez Genealogy. Mesa, Arizona: 1957, ii:107–08. The pictures of Henry are from his wife's book. The other pictures are the Overson house in St. Johns in 1994. I just love his woodwork and I would love to have a front door like that! Henry's father was a Danish woodworker and also did beautiful work. Wallace Tanner was born upstairs in the Overson house.

Henry Tanner and the Hashknife Gang

Henry Tanner did not care for farming but he enjoyed working with cattle. In 1880 Henry became superintendent of the stock herd for the United Order in St. Joseph (Joseph City). Under his care the herd increased and was the only profitable business in the St. Joseph United Order.

When the United Order was "reconfigured," the herd was left intact under the direction of Henry Tanner. He received a share of the cattle in return for his work. This went on profitably until the Aztec Land and Cattle Company came to the Little Colorado Region in the mid 1880s. You can read elsewhere about the Aztec Land and Cattle Company, also known as the Hashknife Gang, but in short, it almost killed the settlements along the Little Colorado. Besides the impact on the grazing land, the off-duty cowboys were known to prey upon the horses and cattle of the settlers.

Eliza Ellen Parkinson Tanner

b. 8 September 1857 San Bernardino, San Bernardino, California

m. 25 January 1877 St. George, Washington, Utah
d. 17 August 1930 Joseph City, Navajo, Arizona
b. 18 August 1930 Joseph City, Navajo, Arizona
Husband: Henry Martin Tanner
Father: Thomas Parkinson; Mother: Mary Ann Bryant

Mrs. Mary Ann Bryant Parkinson, wife of Thomas Parkinson of Beaver City, passed over the dark river after a lingering illness on Wednesday, September 6, 1905. Sister Parkinson was born in 1826 in Kent, England. Went to Australia in 1838 where she received the gospel. In 1853 emigrated to America and was married the same year in San Bernardino, California. She and her husband remained in San Bernardino until 1857 when they moved to Beaver where they resided until 1890 when they moved to Toquerville on account of their health, coming back some time ago. Deceased is the mother of eleven children, seven boys and four girls, sixty-two grandchildren and forty-nine great-grandchildren.

Eliza Ellen Parkinson Tanner born September 8, 1857, San Bernardino, California, daughter of Thomas and Mary Ann Bryant Parkinson. My parents were English, went from England to Australia in 1838, emigrated to America 1853 and married the same year in Beaver City, Utah.

My early childhood days were spent in attending school and helping my parents to make a livelihood. We were very poor thus the necessity of all giving a helping hand.

In the year 1877, 25th January was married to Henry Martin Tanner in the St. George Temple. We made Beaver our home until the 21st February, 1877, we left for Arizona in company with John Hunt and family. We went a new route and encountered many hardships on the way such as being short of water and feed and lost several animals during the journey of eleven weeks arriving at Allen Camp (now St. Joseph) 2nd day of May 1877 and decided to make St. Joseph our home.

We have had a great deal of experience since we came here and have had many trials and hardships such as building dams and seeing floods wash them away only to have to build them again but at last succeeded in building a high dry dam which has stood the test since 1893, since which time things have gone along better and all have been more satisfied with their lot and began to prosper in the land. I am a mother of eleven children, seven boys and four girls, forty-three grandchildren.

Two of my sons Arthur and Roy were on the Mexican borders 1916. And also two Roy and George in the world war. One went to France, Roy, and was called to go to the front the night the Armistice was signed 11 November.

September 7, 1877 the St. Joseph Relief Society was organized and I was sustained secretary. (Released Dec. 3, 1885) December 3, 1885, was sustained as counselor in Relief Society to Sister Lois Bushman, released March 2, 1902. Sustained first counselor to Nina M. Porter in Relief Society January 7, 1909, released May 20, 1919.


Eliza Ellen Parkinson Tanner. Genealogical Record Sheet.

The picture of Eliza and Henry with Martin, Thomas, and Julia is from 1883 and was found in Diane and John Parkinson. James Parkinson of Ramsey: His Roots and His Branches, England—Australia—America. Austin, Texas: The James Parkinson Family Association, 1987.

Some of The Wit and Humor of Henry M. Tanner and Stories We Heard Around The Tanner Homes

My Top Twenty from “Some of The Wit and Humor of Henry M. Tanner and Stories We Heard Around The Tanner Homes”

Speaking of a rather egotistical young man, Henry said he would like to buy him for what he was worth and sell him for what he thought he was worth.

Of a child who takes more food on his plate than he will eat, “His eyes are bigger than his stomach.”

Two horsemen were riding their horses in thick brush and trees. The lead man caught hold of a limb of a tree and held on to it as long as he could, then let go. It knocked the other fellow off his horse and also wounded his pride. When he complained, the first man said, “Imagine what it would have done to you if I had not held on as long as I did.”

When one of the neighbors complimented his friend about how fat his horses were, the friend replied, “Yes, they sure are, and I can’t understand it. All I ever feed them is straw and that ain’t half threshed.”

There was a farmer who declared that a cedar post would last 100 years in the ground. Said his father had tried it many a time.

And there was the woman who said she had some stockings which had lasted her twenty years. Every other year she put new feet in them and the opposite years new legs.

One boy is a boy; two boys are half a boy; and three boys are no boy at all.

Henry Martin Tanner

b. 11 June 1852 San Bernardino, San Bernardino, California
m. 25 January 1877 St. George, Washington, Utah
d. 21 March 1935 Gilbert, Maricopa, Arizona
b. 24 March 1935 Joseph City, Navajo, Arizona
Wives: (1) Eliza Ellen Parkinson, (2) Emma Stapley
Father: Sydney Tanner; Mother: Julia Ann Shepherd

Since Henry Tanner took the opportunity to write his own life story, I'll include it in its entirety. He notes that his hearing is poor; how many of us inherited that gene? After this post, I will do a few posts on Henry and Eliza Tanner.


So here is Henry Tanner in his own words...

My grandfather, John Tanner, was born August 15, 1778, Hopkinton, Rhode Island. Was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Previous to his baptism into the Church he was a cripple and at the time of his baptism he was healed by the power of the Lord. He was very well fixed financially and during the early days of the Church he donated freely to the Church.

Tanner 3: Eva Margaret Overson Tanner

3 EVA MARGARET OVERSON TANNER

b. 14 August 1897 St. Johns, Apache, Arizona
m. 26 August 1923 St. Johns, Apache, Arizona
d. 30 December 1932 St. Johns, Apache, Arizona
b. 1 January 1933 St. Johns, Apache, Arizona
Husband: LeRoy Parkinson Tanner
Father: Henry Christian Overson; Mother: Margaret Godfrey Jarvis

Eva Margaret Overson, first child of Henry Christian and Margaret Godfrey Jarvis Overson, was born August 14th, 1897, at St. Johns, Apache County, Arizona. She was married to LeRoy Parkinson Tanner, son of Henry Martin Tanner and Eliza Ellen Parkinson Tanner, August 26th, 1923, at St. Johns, Apache County, Arizona, and left the next day by automobile to go to Salt Lake City, Utah, to have their marriage solemnized in the Temple. President of the St. Johns Stake, President Levi S. Udall, performed the ceremony at the Henry C. Overson Home, in the presence of a large number of relatives and friends of both families, and with the good wishes of all.

LeRoy P. Tanner was the ninth child of his parents, and was born at Joseph City, Navajo County, Arizona, January 12th, 1895.

Eva was the only daughter in a family of nine children. As a child she attended the public schools until graduated, then the St. Johns Stake Academy, from which she graduated at the age of sixteen years, the youngest of the class.

She spent one summer at the Flagstaff College, and then entered into the business world.

She was assistant Postmaster to her Grandfather Charles Jarvis, assistant in the Recorders Office, and then began Clerking in the Cash Store, where she soon was given the Bookkeeping, and much of the ordering and general business to attend to.

After her marriage, and because her husband’s work took him away from home a great deal of the time, she continued to work in the store part time for several years. Her insight into the business and her splendid memory of each detail and each personal account, made her place hard to fill.

During all her life up until the time of her death, she had been active in all Church work. Commencing with the Primary and Sunday School, she was a dependable Secretary and teacher. In the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association she was Secretary in the Ward for seven years, and only missed one meeting, and then was out of town. Was also Stake Secretary of Y.L.M.I.A. and later Relief Society Secretary for a number of years. Was a member of the Old Folks Committee. A leader in Bee Hive work, and also was in charge of the Flower Club of the University of Arizona Extension work. One summer while directing the Club she had a flower garden of her own raising, numbering seventy different kinds of flowering plants. She would go out in her garden and pick armfuls of flowers and put them in her car and drive around taking a bouquet to the old, the sick, or shutins, and her many friends, and thus spread beauty and happiness to many. There were also flowers of her bringing at church on Sundays, at weddings, at funerals, or on any special occasion. She dearly loved people, and was happiest when doing a good turn.

She did beautiful sewing, embroidering, crochet work, tatting, beading work, etc., as well as being a good cook and housekeeper. A dutiful and loving daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend and neighbor—one wonders how a life so short, only thirty-five years, could accomplish so much of good. Her many activities gave her such a large circle of acquaintances, business, social, family, Church—but the saying was certainly true in her case, “None knew her, but to love her, or named her, but to praise.”

She had suffered from diabetes for about seven years, but never gave up if it was possible for her to be up. When she was not able to do anything else, she would do her beautiful fancy work.

She passed away suddenly, after two day’s serious illness, the evening of Friday, December 30th, 1932, and was laid to rest on New Year’s Day, 1933, in the Westside Cemetery, St. Johns, Arizona.

Margaret Jarvis Overson. George Jarvis and Joseph George DeFriez Genealogy. Mesa, Arizona: Privately printed, 1957. Tatting image from Project Gutenberg, copyright expired from Beeton's Book of Needlework. My picture of roses at St. Johns, 1994.