Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 61, Number 1, 1993

UTAHHISTORICAL QUARTERLY

(ISSN 0042-143X)

EDITORIALSTAFF

MAX J EVANS, Editor

STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor

MIRIAM B MURPHY, Associate Editor

ADVISORYBOARDOF EDITORS

KENNETH L. CANNON II, Salt Lake City, 1995

ARLENE H EAKLE, Woods Cross, 1993

AUDREY M GODFREY, Logan, 1994

JOEL C JANETSKI, Provo, 1994

ROBERT S MCPHERSON, Blanding, 1995

RICHARD W SADLER, Ogden, 1994

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1993

GENE A SESSIONS, Ogden, 1995

GREGORY C. THOMPSON, Salt Lake City, 1993

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah's history The Quarterly is published four times a year by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 Phone (801) 533-6024 for membership and publications information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Beehive History, and the bimonthly Newsletter upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $20.00; institution, $20.00; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or over), $15.00; contributing, $25.00; sustaining, $35.00; patron, $50.00; business, $100.00

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate accompanied by return postage and should be typed double-space, with footnotes at the end Authors are encouraged to submit material in a computer-readable form, on 5 1/4 inch MS-DOS or PCDOS diskettes, standard ASCII text file Additional information on requirements is available from the managing editor Articles represent the views of the author and are not necessarily those of the Utah State Historical Society

Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah

Postmaster: Send form 3579 (change of address) to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101.

THE COVER This Federal Works Agency photograph of the Pioneer Nursery School in Ogden was captioned: "Healthful outdoor play makes healthy appetites. A total of 50 children are caredfor in the two nurseries run by the Ogden City School Board under Lanham Act financing. Planned expansion of the program will take care of 225 preschool children and 400 school-age children. "

© Copyright 1993 Utah State Historical Society

BRIGHAM D. MADSEN. GloryHunter:

BARBARA CLOUD TheBusinessof Newspapersonthe Western

JONI LOUISE KINSEY. ThomasMoran andthe SurveyingoftheAmerican

SHAWN LAY, ED. TheInvisible EmpireintheWest: Toward

SUSAN HENDRICKS SWETNAM Livesof the

GEORGE D SMITH FaithfulHistory:

ERICH ROBERT PAUL. Science, Religion,andMormon

WILBUR S. SHEPPERSON. Mirage-Land:

In this issue

Sixty-five years ago volume 1, number 1, of Utah Historical Quarterly appeared under the editorship of J. Cecil Alter. It was a risky venture, but Alter and his associate editors (the entire Historical Society Board of Trustees) had committed themselves, despite meager funds, to publishing Utah's history. Their vision endured, and the magazine they began with such high hopes in 1928 now circulates throughout the United States and in many foreign lands.

History reminds us, however, that ambitious plans sometimes fail. Witness the first and last articles in this issue which relate the fascinating stories of two ideas that briefly flamed and then died: the Salt Lake Seagulls professional football team and the People's Progressive Telephone Company As each story unfolds we see a cast of extraordinary characters battle difficult odds

The three remaining articles also engage the reader with unique individuals and unusual circumstances. First there is the cautionary tale of Abner Blackburn's reminiscenses and "the original flimflam man" responsible for their loss to the historical record. Next, the career of Melba Judge Lehner reveals the profound effect the best efforts of a dedicated professional had upon child care in the WPA and Lanham nursery schools. Finally, the case study of the Stephen Hales family of Bountiful illustrates that, like institutions and businesses, the struggle of families to survive economically often depends on high hopes and risky ventures

Sa/£L«&g Seagulls in action against an unidentified team.

The Salt Lake Seagulls Professional Football Team

BY MELVIN L. BASHORE

The Salt Lake Seagulls5

O N A WINDY SEPTEMBER SUNDAY IN 1946over 6,000 curious spectators in the grandstands and bleachers at the Utah State Fairgrounds awaited the kickoff of a startling new sports development in Utah Throughout 1946 the sports pages of Salt Lake City's three major newspapers reported the formative efforts of agroup of local businessmen to field a professional football team in Salt Lake City.Initially, the dusty, windwhipped field conditions failed to restrain the anticipation of the eager fans. Messages of welcome and wishes for success were expressed by Gov. Herbert B. Maw, league president J. Rufus Klawans, and team president Frank L. Christensen. Christensen, a bonafide University of Utah All-American and backfield star with the Detroit Lions from 1934 to 1937, booted an oversize mock football to officially launch the Salt Lake Seagulls football team The ball split open to release a flock of live seagulls. Seagull quarterback Dee Chipman wryly observed that the dazed birds "neglected to fly," a "desultory reaction [that] may have been aportent of the future."1

The story of Utah's onlyventure into professional football began with a meeting of fifteen businessmen in the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce Building on December 3, 1945 Newsreports and memories of the early organizers are vague, but the participants set in motion at this early date the process of securing afranchise in the Pacific Coast Football League (PCFL). The PCFLwasestablished in 1940 asa West Coast counterpart to the National Football League in the East. Other minor league and professional leagues existed, but during the war years the PCFL was recognizably the second-best football league in the country.2

Sports-minded businessmen subscribed to purchase shares of stock in the venture and a trio of delegates went to the PCFL meetings in San Francisco in February 1946 to try to convince league moguls that Utah "had something to offer them." The Salt Lake delegates succeeded in securing franchise rights in the nine-team league.3 The league determined that rosters would be limited to twenty-five players and that allgameswould be played on Sunday. Upon the dele-

1 Dee Chipman, "The Salt Lake Seagulls," Deseret News, Magazine Section,July 15, 1984, pp 4-6

2 Salt Lake Tribune, December 4, 1945; Bob Gill, Best in the West: The Rise and Fall of the Pacific Coast Football League, 1940-48 (Huntington, W. V.: Professional Football Research Association, 1988), p. 289.

3 Roland Sleater, appointed a director of the Seagulls, recalled attending the PCFL meeting in San Francisco The Salt Lake delegates had to overcome strong opposition from the Hawaiian Warriors team, which was concerned about the extra travel distance Roland Sleater to author, September 7, 1990 All private letters, interview audiotapes/transcriptions, notes of conversations, and other documents not cited as being in a private or institutional collection are in the possession of the author

gates' return to Utah, the organizers began to put together a pro football team. They elected officers and filed incorporation papers for the Salt Lake City Football Corporation.4 Fred Tedesco, city parks commissioner and former college football star, accepted the offer to act as coach and general manager of the team.5

The corporation secured the stadium at the Utah State Fairgrounds as a playing field for games When Klawans, the PCFL president, visited Salt Lake City to confer with club officials and make inspections in early April, he granted final approval to the franchise, commenting that the "setup" in Salt Lake was "as good as any in the league,"6 though he did make some recommendations for improving the stadium facilities The fairgrounds stadium had been used primarilyasa rodeo arena. Klawans discussed plans for sodding the field, improving the loudspeaker system, installing a modern scoreboard, and providing press and radio facilities Team officials told him that they expected to be able to seat 15,000 spectators with the addition of temporary bleachers they intended to build.

After Klawans's visit, Tedesco hired Lou Nestman, a utility man with the City Parks Department, to put in the grass, add a sprinkling system, and maintain the field. Nestman worked evenings at the stadium preparing the playing field.7 Officials of the Days of '47 Rodeo approached the football team about the possibility of constructing the bleachers in advance of the football season. The team was under no obligation to build the bleachers until fall, but they agreed to push the work ahead so that the rodeo could benefit from the additional seating capacity.

In the latter part of May the work of building these bleachers for the north, east, and west sides of the playing field began. Tedesco used City Parks Department employees and city-purchased lumber to

4 Articles of Incorporation, No 14586, Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City Christensen was very busy with his business (manufacturing industrial diamonds) and reluctantly accepted the position of president only after they convinced him that he "might be a help to the community." Interview with Frank L Christensen, August 11, 1990

5 Tedesco was elected city commissioner for Salt Lake City in November 1941 and put in charge of the parks department Prior to that he was a physical education teacher at Bryant Junior High School and a supervisor of Rotary and YMCA boys' clubs. A 1933 graduate of the University of Utah, majoring in physical education, he was twice an all-conference quarterback at Utah and received AllAmerican mention from the New York Sun in 1932 A very popular commissioner, he was reelected in 1945 by one of the largest majorities ever received for that office In 1949 he resigned as commissioner to accept a position as general manager of a soft drink bottling company Biographical information obtained from newspaper clippings in Fred Tedesco scrapbooks in possession of Fred Tedesco, Jr

6 Deseret News, April 1, 1946

7 Conversation with Lou Nestman, August 3, 1990.

The Salt Lake Seagulls

construct these bleachers In mid-July one employee refused to continue working on the bleacher project because "he sensed the wrongfulness of such employment."8 Others also felt uncomfortable about their work, and several employees went to David O. McKay, then second counselor in the FirstPresidency of the Mormon church and an influential community leader, to voice their feelings. Upon hearing these allegations, he requested a meeting with city officials to bring this matter to their attention. OnJuly 30, 1946,the commissioners, mayor, and city attorney met in McKay's office to hear the charges against Tedesco, detailed in a five-page report. After presenting these allegations, McKay withdrew from his office, leaving the others to continue in an executive session.They determined that Tedescowould issue hisown statement and that the city would "explore" the charges.9 With this turn of events, news about Salt Lake's professional football team began appearing on the front page of the newspaper in addition to the sports page. In a press conference the next day Tedesco admitted using city employees, materials, and equipment to build the bleachers He contended, however, that neither he nor the football corporation actedwith anythought of "cheating" Salt Lake City He testified that he had discussed the matter of the football corporation repaying the city with streets commissionerJohn B. Matheson and city auditor Louis E. Holley at least ten days to two weeks before the "bleacher incident" became a public issue. On August 1Tedesco filed a detailed report, giving an accounting of the bleacher project, and he presented a check to the city for

i \«»v\ to AIK-IHI nil t!»«• "s«'jia«ill'."" Home Unn HEAD COACH

$885.81 to cover the cost of 935 man-hours of labor, materials, and equipment.10

This payment and explanation failed to appease the critics or to clear Tedesco's name from the taint of wrong-doing. Questions of malfeasance in office were studied bythe cityattorney, and newspaper editorials called for a complete and impartial investigation. Tedesco made aplea to the commissioners to determine whether he had done anything wrong and whether his report was accurate He was upset that the City Commission had asked the city attorney's office for an opinion on the procedure to remove a commissioner before determining that there was cause to remove him. Tedesco asserted that it had long been common practice for city employees, materials, and equipment to be used to assist church, civic, and fraternal enterprises and activities.Just a month before the public outcry about the "football bleachers," the Parks Department had transported and erected bleachers and benches at Saltair for a Mormon church youth dance festival Newspaper editorials began calling for the establishment of a clear-cut policy in the use of cityemployees and materials

Frank Christensen defended Tedesco's actions in constructing the bleachers, insisting that the football corporation did not stand to profit financially from the rush construction job. Following several days of investigation, the City Commission concluded that Tedesco acted with "poorjudgment" but declined to take any disciplinary action.11 David O. McKay, flabbergasted at the commissioners' report, immediately issued a public statement taking them to task for their failure to assume responsibility in the bleacher affair.12 A Deseret News editorial blasted the commissioners for their "inane" report, labeling it one of the most "wishy-washy, spineless stands"ever taken bythe city commissioners They asserted that the commission deliberately avoided any consideration of criminal intent, made no recommendations, and took no action. The report attempted to please everybody and offend no one. 13 In the minds of many Tedesco's name was not cleared and the ethics of cityofficials remained suspect.

10

11 Salt Lake Tribune, August 6, 1946

12 Ibid., August 7, 1946

13 Deseret Evening News, August 6, 1946

Salt Lake City, City Council Minutes (1945-47), p 507, Utah State Archives The August 1, 1946, entry indicated that the detailed report would be filed. A file labeled Special Report No. 138 was located by the City Recorder's Office, Salt Lake City It contained a cover letter signed by Fred Tedesco in which he stated that the bleacher construction project was engaged in "with every thought of honesty and sincerity Everything was done out in the open." The letter also stated that the report would be attached; however, no report was in the file or attached to the letter.

Tedesco's eldest child recalled that during the investigation and the public furor that followed the issuance of the report, her father seemed to withdraw from fighting the charges against him. On the other hand, hiswife Klea,politically active and "afeistywoman," recognized that David O. McKaywas at the stormfront of all the adverse attention being directed toward her husband. She made an appointment to meet with McKay,withwhom shewasacquainted through her political associations.14 After his meeting with Klea Tedesco, McKay asked her to return to his office with Fred to hear his side of the story. The meeting was lengthy and, according to Charlene Tedesco Hunter, McKay believed Tedesco's story and changed his view of the bleacher affair According to her recollection, McKay decided that he had been "misled by others" and offered her father an apology.15 Lou Nestman, the City Parks Department employee most intimately connected with the Seagulls, remembered a conversation he had with Klea while she waswaitingfor Fred in the maintenance shedsone afternoon in Liberty Park. Both Nestman and his brother, a city employee who had worked on the bleachers, had been questioned during the investigation. Nestman, who believed that they had Tedesco "nailed to the cross," told Klea that afternoon, "Itlooksbad for Fred."Kleareplied, "Itdoes,but I think David'sgoing to help us."Nestman thought that the investigation had amassed enough evidence to send Tedesco to the penitentiary "until KleaTedescowent toDavid O.McKay."16 Thereafter, public interest was deflected from Tedesco and the bleacher affair to a broader spectrum of moral and ethical issues in the cityand state, and the football corporation could set about fielding a team, albeit with a minor blemish on itsrecord before the first game had even been played.17

14 Emily Klea Bullock Tedesco (1911-63) was president of the ladies auxiliary of the Utah Municipal League during 1944-45, national committeewoman of the Young Republicans of Utah during 1944-48, and a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1956 She was raised in a Mormon family and married Fred Tedesco, a son of immigrant Italian Catholics, in 1936.

15 Telephone conversation with Charlene Tedesco Hunter, April 4, 1991

16 According to Nestman's recollections, his brother had been questioned by a grand jury Retired Salt Lake Tribune sports editorJohn Mooney also seemed to remember that a grandjury had been convened, concurring with Nestman that "they damn near went tojail." Telephone conversation with John Mooney, August 23, 1990. However, there is no mention in the newspapers of a grand jury being convened until October 1946 A Deseret News editorial asked "Do We Need to Call a Grand Jury?" but concluded—not yet. Deseret News, August 16, 1946. No records of a grand jury prior to October were found in a search of records at the Third District Court and Utah State Archives Wesley F Emery, a citizen who served on the federal grandjury convened in October 1946, vowed that the bleacher incident was not the subject of inquiry Telephone conversation with Wesley F Emery, August 29, 1990

17 Salt Lake Tribune, August 7-9, 1946 McKay called the bleacher affair "a minor incident in the greater undertaking to have a moral cleanup" of the city in preparation for the centennial celebration in 1947 In response to McKay's criticism, Mayor Glade and Police Chief L C Crowther, with the support of the City Commission, announced a drive against vice and gambling that included removing marble games and card tables from local taverns

To spark community interest and identification with the yet unnamed team, a public contest was held inJune to select a name. An overwhelming number of the submitted entries suggested that the team be called the SaltLake Seagulls,which was accepted.18

Despite the abundance of available, talented football players after the end of the war, the creation of the AllAmerica Football Conference in 1946with West Coast teams in LosAngeles (Dons) and San Francisco (49ers) made it difficult to obtain high-caliber players in the PCFL The competition for players with the NFL and AAFC relegated the PCFL to a clearly minor-league status for the first time since the league's inception in 1940 Itwasreallynot an opportune time for Salt Lake to try to field a pro football team. Nevertheless, while many existing PCFL teams lost star players to the NFL and AAFC, Salt Lake wasable to attract anumber of local playerswith NFL experience who desired to return to livein Utah.

The Seagulls acquired players to fill the roster in various ways.

Seagulls team photograph. Original in possession ofO'Dean Hess.

The Salt Lake Seagulls11

Most of the players on the 1946 team received invitations to try out or were signed outright to contracts. A lot of uninvited, walk-on players who tried out for the team did not make the roster cut because they were not in condition to play the 60 minutes of offense and defense that the pro game exacted Tedesco contacted Aldo Richins, a former teammate at the University of Utah in the early 1930s, and asked him to play Richins, at age thirty-six, felt that he was too old to play Tedesco wanted him to serve as a player/coach, but Richins was too busyrunning afrozen foods plant in Ogden to take that dual role. He told Tedesco that if they would put another old Ute teammate, Sid Kramer, on the playing roster he would giveita try asaplayer. Richins signed a contract to receive $125 a game, $25 per game less than he had received with the Detroit Lions a decade earlier.

Richins and Kramer reported late to the mid-August training camp on the baseball field at White Park directly south of the State Fairgrounds Kramer, unaware of Richins's advance playing terms, thought he wasjust tagging along to get in a workout. Despite being much older than the other players in the camp and getting alate start in training, Richins beat all the other players in arace. He had kept in condition byplaying baseball and basketball in the industrial leagues. Kramer left the workout surprised at being offered a contract.19

The team did not pay the players for training camp or practices. They had to be on the roster and suitup for ascheduled game in order to receive their contracted salary.20 Sixteen players who were interviewed received salaries ranging from $60 to $250 per game It ispossible that some salaries of those with prior NFL experience may have been even higher. Management told the players not to divulge their salaries to each other. The reason for this became evident in 1947, during the team's second season.Asquarterback Huck Adelt recalled:

Tedesco told me that no one was being paid more than I, and he told each player the same thing This caused a lot of problems when the truth came out Not that it mattered so much about the money, but Tedesco had not been honest with us. 21

19 Interview with Aldo Richins, August 4, 1990; and telephone conversation with Sid Kramer, July 31, 1990

20 George "Pudge" Leatham, a 190-pound end on the Seagulls in 1947, said that he was told by the coaches not to disclose his pay He also had a clause written into his contract stating that he would get workmen's compensation if he was injured The contract also stipulated that if an injury kept him from working at his daytime job he would turn over any insurance money to the football team Telephone conversation with George Leatham, July 21, 1990 When guard Kent White was injured, he received workmen's compensation Telephone conversation with Kent White,July 19, 1990

21 Horst I. "Huck" Adelt to author, August 28, 1990.

During the first season the players' feelings about Tedesco were divided. Most players liked him as a person, but they generally questioned his ability to coach. Laurie Mauss, a center on the 1946 team, remembered "Feets" Tedesco as "a very likeable guy," but halfback Cliff Hoopiiaina succinctly stated that Tedesco "didn't know from nothin'! [He] didn't know about coachin' pro." Kent White agreed, remarking that Tedesco "didn't really have the capabilities as a pro coach He wasn't that skilled 'Feets' didn't have the charisma to mold a team."22 Although afew of the playersregarded Tedesco asa competent coach, the consensus was that, despite being a great guy personally, "'Feets' was not ready for pro coaching."23 Bythe end of the second season, which was fraught with serious financial difficulties, even Tedesco's general popularity among the players took a steep nosedive.AsHuckAdelt noted in regard to the payissue, even his integrity wascalled into question at that point.

The training camp and practices were held in the evening because most of the players had full-time jobs during the day During the first year of the team, training camp and practices were generally held on the outfield at White Park. Gordon Lee, a tall end out of Brigham Young University, remembered it as being more like "an alfalfa field." Tackle O'Dean Hess called the dressing rooms at the White Park "kind of pathetic." It was nothing more than a shed in which the players could change clothes, and there were no showers. It reminded Jack Littlefair of a converted "cow barn."24 During the second season the team practiced at several locations, including Fairmont Park, Derks Field, and a park afew blocks south of Derks Field

The two-week preseason training camp was designed to get the players in condition During the 1946 camp Clark Romney, a tackle, lost 25 pounds and Andy Katsanevas, an end, pared down from 240 pounds to 195 pounds.25 After this conditioning period the players began contact scrimmaging and outlining plays. Paul McDonough,

22 Telephone conversations with Laurie Mauss,July 16, 1990; Cliff Hoopiiaina, July 26, 1990; and Kent White Tedesco received the nickname "Feets"when he was a student at West High School in Salt Lake City According to family lore, Fred had to wear his older brother's shoes to school because his mother had taken his school shoes to be repaired His older brother's shoes were so large that it "took two steps in the big shoes to get them to move one step." Conversation with Fred Tedesco,Jr., August 1990

23 Richins interview

24 Telephone conversations with Gordon Lee, August 3, 1990; O'Dean Hess, August 16, 1990; andJack Littlefair, August 1, 1990

25 Telephone conversations with Clark Romney, August 7, 1990, and Andy Katsanevas, August 1, 1990

The Salt Lake Seagulls13

the big twenty-nine-year-old end with the most NFL experience, was named assistant coach. In effect, and in the estimation of most of the players, he became the real coach. For those playerswithout pro experience, the lack of discipline in practices came as a shock. Katsanevas remembered that the younger guys "wouldwork their butts off," while the old proswould liearound. Hess,aco-captain of the old Fort Douglas MP's service team, was accustomed to discipline. He felt that the Seagulls team "wasn't under anybody's authority. It was not a disciplined situation."26 Such were the reactions of those unused to the pro football ambiance

Television broadcaster and former pro kicker Pat Summerall provided a graphic description of the lax atmosphere he encountered when he wentfrom college into the pros:

It was Monday, the team's day off, and I walked into the locker room There sat Plato Andros in the whirlpool He had been an Ail-American guard at Oklahoma and was a very thick heavy-chested guy Plato filled up the entire whirlpool and had a cigar in his mouth, was reading the daily racing form, and sitting on the edge of the whirlpool was a pint of whiskey.27

Often the younger players,with all their enthusiasm, naivete, and unbridled desire to impress, had to be tutored in the pro wayof playing football When linesman RaySilcox, aGranite High School graduate, tackled too enthusiastically in practice, tackle George Worthen recollected that they called a "hit" on him and everybody piled on him when he came through the line.28

Although newspapers reported that Tedesco was installing a "deceptive and revolutionary" system, such ballyhoo must have been written to confuse the opposition or to bring curious fans through the turnstiles.29 In truth, the team was only running the outdated single wing, albeitwith a minuscule wrinkle here and there. Huck Adelt, the first T-formation quarterback at Utah in 1941 and a backup to Frank Albert on the powerful 1942 St Mary's Pre-flight Air Devils, was surprised when hejoined the Seagulls and "saw their unimaginative offense." He explained:

26 Katsanevas and Hess conversations.

27 Stuart Leuthner, Iron Men: Bucko, Crazylegs, and the Boys Recall the Golden Days ofProfessionalFootball (New York: Doubleday, 1988), p 160

28 Telephone conversation with George Worthen,July 15, 1990

29 Deseret News, September 5, 1946.

Tedesco and Paul McDonough had been out of football for over 10 years when they were asked to coach the team. They were running the old single wing. .. . I tried to change the formation so that it was more 'explosive,' quick hitting and more passing. The coaches finally let me get behind the center at times as in the 'T,' but we still had an unbalanced line with the wing back in motion. Believe me, we were the only team in the country with such a set-up.30

John Mooneyrecalled diatdieSeagulls only had plays that went to the right sidelines in the single wing formation; they had no plays that went to the left Gordon Lee simply described the Seagull offense as running "a single wing attack with T-formation people." As he explained it, a team needs powerful backs to run the single wing. The Seagulls "had a [powerful] line to run the single wing,but not the backs."31 Almost all of the former pro players were on the line, but the Seagulls' backs were small and lightweight.

The record of their inaugural season confirmed the weakness of the Seagulls' offense. They achieved a mediocre two wins, five losses, and a tie On amore hopeful note, both winscame in games played at home, and in most of the games that they lost theywere competitive The Seagulls finished the season tied for third in their division.Afew players made the All-League Team and some were accorded honorable mention.

Despite the anemic record the players had fun, and those few fans who attended the games and followed the team in the sports pages enjoyed an experience new to Salt Lake.Asmany fledgling pro

HfSWW. <M*T I ;t SALT LAKE vs OAKLAND

Floyd "Alice" Spendlove wasfeatured on this program cover.

The Salt Lake Seagulls15

sports franchises were wont to do, the Seagulls management inflated attendance figures for the press. Before the season got underway JerryJones, wealthy owner of the Rainbow Rendezvous dance establishment, had offered to buythe team. The stockholders turned down his offer, believing that they would be able to field a successful and profitable team. Roland Sleater believes that turning down Jones's offer was one of their biggest mistakes. He remains convinced "that for anyfranchise to work it must have a principle [sic] owner and not just a lot of equal shareholders."32 Tee Branca, a golf pro and team stockholder, recalled that he voted against acceptingJones's offer because he thought that the franchise was going to be a big moneymaker. Theywere "all going to become rich with it." On the contrary, he spent every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday prior to a home game trying to peddle tickets around town.33 It was discouraging trying to sell tickets for a sporting event in a citywhere almost everyone spent their Sundays going to church.

Although the grandstand and bleachers at the Fairgrounds were never filled to capacity, the facilities had been adequately prepared. The turf, although patchy and hard to make a quick turn on, was deemed by some players to be as good as that found in other PCFL stadiums.34 However, the grassed stadium infield retained its manure stench, a legacy of years of service as a rodeo arena John Mooney recalled that facilities for the press and the statisticians were poorly located. He worked as a statistician for the first game, but he could not really see what was happening because he was situated at ground level.35 Apparently, it was also somewhat difficult for the coaches on the sidelines to seewhatwashappening. Huck Adelt said,

I made up plays in the huddle, especially pass patterns for the man in motion and the ends. I do not think the coaches knew what was going on half the time. At least the players were having fun.36

Kent White noted that Tedesco did not encourage the kind of play that would interest the fans. He referred to such action as biting an opponent's leg, although he did mention that Stan Plichta, a second

32 Sleater, letter, September 7, 1990

33 Telephone conversation with Tee Branca, August 23, 1990

34 Such an assertion

35 Mooney conversation

36 Adelt letter, August 28, 1990

must be viewed in the context that Hughes Stadium, the home field of the Sacramento Nuggets, was used as a stock car racing oval a day before the game with the Seagulls, leaving the turf laden with dust on a blisteringly hot day.

team All-League selection at guard, had used the cast on his arm "like a club."37 Even if there was not much in the way of dirty play, the action was rough enough to put players out of commission. Anthony J. "Hawk" Falkenstein, a guard on the Oakland Giants, recalled that during hisvisitto SaltLake to playthe Seagulls he had his "nose caved in" and had to have it repaired later on. 38 After three broken noses doctors told quarterback Roy Evans that he should not play again. He sat out for a while, but when "Gallopin"' GayAdelt was knocked out of a game Evans borrowed Garth Chamberlain's helmet and entered the fray.39 Chamberlain's helmet sported aface guard, something that only afew centers and tackles had Most players of that era disdained the use of a face guard, considering it a sign of weakness to wear one. 40

In 1946 the team flew to its games in Sacramento, Hollywood,

37 White conversation

38 AnthonyJ Falkenstein to author, October 3, 1990

39 Telephone conversation with Roy Evans, August 8, 1990.

40 Nicholas Skorich, a guard for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1946 to 1948, said, "We thought that it was sissy to wear a face mask." Leuthner, Iron Men, p 59

Hollywood Bears and Salt Lake Seagulls in action on October 20, 1946.

The Salt Lake Seagulls17

Tacoma, and San Diego. They chartered DC-3 army transports and National Guard planes.These airplanes did not have seats so the players sat on packed parachutes Aldo Richins opined that the team "didn't have enough money to do it right."41 On their first trip away a big crowd of fans came out to the airport and hundreds of seagulls were released to send the team off to play the Sacramento Nuggets in gala style.On awaygames the coaches tried to keep a tight rein on the players by scheduling light workouts and instituting 11 o'clock curfews. The older players summarily ignored the curfews and visited the bars and night spots.Partying and socializingwere not limited to away games or the fraternity of players.Aldo Richins's wife, Helen, recalled that a lot of the players and their wives would drive out to the Coon Chicken Inn restaurant on Highland Drive after a game whether the team had won or lost Although they lived in Ogden, the Richins couple used to gather with other football players and their wives in Paul McDonough's downtown apartment for small parties.42 For a time the team wasregularly invited for steak and eggs breakfasts and to preview game and practice films before home games at the Ambassador Athletic Club of which Frank Christensen was president. That welcome inexplicably wore out after awhile The Embassy Club in the Newhouse Hotel wasalso aregular after-practice and postgame hangout for single players and the old pros, some of whom were heavy drinkers. O'Dean Hess, an elementary schoolteacher, remarked that the Seagull players were an "unusual group to bring together, [but they] made a pretty good team." The pro football lifestyle was exciting, fun, and "everybodywanted to be there."43

THK -PRKXY

Frank Christensen.

The three games scheduled after the San Diego game were all canceled. One interesting cancellation wasthe home game scheduled against the San Francisco Clippers the week following the San Diego game. The Clippers notified the Seagull management that they were unable to fly out of San Francisco to make the game in Salt Lake because the fogwas so bad. WhenJohn Mooney,who happened to be in San Francisco to report on another sporting event, called the Tribune office and learned of the "fog-bound" cancellation, he asked, "What fog?" He could see all the way across the bay to Berkeley; it was clear asabell.The Clippers had simply declined to make the trip to Utah.44

In 1947 the PCFL was able to muster only five teams: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hawaii, Sacramento, and Salt Lake Competition with the NFL and AAFC for good players and fan interest exacted a heavy toll, and the PCFLwould fold after the 1948season. But during 1947 the Seagulls presented a second and final season of entertaining football excitement for SaltLake fans.

In the early summer the Seagulls management made arrangements to play home games at Derks Field. The grandstand seats at the Fairgrounds were really too far away from the playing field for the fans to get a good view of the action. There was optimism that a new location closer to town might boost attendance.

Many players on the 1946 Seagull roster returned to playin 1947, including almost all of the starters The addition of some new players, including Huck Adelt, may have even strengthened the squad somewhat. A slate of four home and four road games was scheduled, including back-to-back games late in the season with the Hawaiian Warriors. Honolulu fielded a strong team and drew large crowds to its games. As a result, it was so financially attractive for teams to play them in Honolulu that the Warriors did not playanygames away from home. The scheduled two-week trip to Hawaii also proved to be an incentive for re-signing Seagull playersfor the 1947 season.

The Seagulls entered the 1947season with afair measure of optimism that they would be more competitive. The owners hoped that a more competitive team playing in the new Derks Field setting would bring in more fans at the gate Nevertheless, attendance at the first few games at Derks Field probably totaled even less than the average at the Fairgrounds the previous year. The financial situation became so dismal that Tedesco tore up his contract and coached without pay.

The Salt Lake Seagulls19

After the season home opener a Deseret News editorial called it a mistake for the Seagulls to be playing Sunday games. 45 Their record after three games was two losses and a tie. Although one of the losses, at the hands of the Los Angeles Bulldogs, was only by three points, a newspaper article two days after that game frankly labeled the Seagulls a "hapless" team.46

During a break in the schedule the players were informed that the team wasinsolvent. In dejection the officers and directors disassociated themselves from any further involvement, leaving Tedesco to handle it all by himself. He told the players that he could not pay them for the game scheduled to be played in Salt Lake against the Bulldogs on October 26.47 He said that if they would forego getting paid for the game against the Bulldogs, he would pay them for playing that game from the income derived from playing the twogames in Hawaii.With few other options and almost assured that theywould recoup their financial losses after the games in the islands, the players agreed to the arrangement. Practices—held only every other day at this point—were finally discontinued altogether. The players only showed up to play on game day.Amazingly, they beat the Bulldogs by a score of 7 to 6 in the game where their pay was being deferred.48 A few days later a decision was made to cancel the remaining home game

The stockholders raised some money to help pay for the players' transportation to San Francisco. They traveled by car, pooling money for gas, and a few of the players were accompanied by their wives. Once the team arrived in San Francisco, the Warriors would assume all expenses, including board and room and airplane tickets on aDC4 to Hawaii and back On the long flight, some Hawaiian businessmen returning to the islands made friends with the players and wined and dined them all during their stay. TheJunior Chamber of Commerce took them sightseeing and hosted them at a sumptuous luau at the governor's house.They held practices every day,but George Worthen remarked that for the most part they "practiced drinking beer."49

45 Deseret News, October 8, 1947

46 Ibid., October 14, 1947

47 Telephone conversation with Dee Chipman, September 20, 1990

48 Cliff Hoopiiaina asserted that the linesmen were paid for the Bulldog game, but the backs were not When I recounted Hoopiiaina's version of the Bulldog pay arrangement to end Gordon Lee, he said that "it was pretty close." It was understandably difficult to get a consensus on the Bulldog pay situation because of Tedesco's policy of players not divulging pay information to each other

49 Worthen conversation

Hawaii won both football games against the Seagulls, the second by a lopsided score of 52-0. Some team members believed that the partying and drinking may have played a big part in the losses, particularly in the second game An alternative explanation lies in some of the league findings made public at the conclusion of the season. Four of the Warrior players were banned from playing in the PCFL for life and eleven others were suspended indefinitely for gambling in their final season game against the LosAngeles Bulldogs. Hawaii was a very strong team and had a farm club arrangement with the Los Angeles Rams Although there was no mention that the banned players had gambled in any other games, upon later reflection Seagulls players found some incidents in their games with Hawaii puzzling. Several players had noticed wide-open betting going on in the stands. Huck Adelt reflected:

A player that I knew while playing at St. Mary's met with the Seagulls [in a] team meeting and gave us some of the Warrior's plays. ... I couldn't understand his actions; of course, later it became obvious—gambling.50

At this late date and without additional evidence, an explanation for the large point spread in the second Seagull-Warrior game can only be conjectured At the conclusion of the game, the Seagull players just wanted to forget the sorry debacle and pick up their pay envelopes—including the money owed them for the earlier gratis Bulldog game.

After cleaning out their stadium lockers, the players lined up at the pay door to get their money from Tedesco. Gay Adelt was first in line. Not only had it been a rough game for him, but it came on the heels of a long night of drinking He missed the curfew on the night before the game and did not get back to his bed in the Plantation Hotel until 4 a.m. the morning of the game. 51 When Adelt sawthat his pay envelope did not include the promised back pay, he asked, "What about paying us for the Bulldog game?" Tedesco replied, "I'll have to look at it." Adelt started "cussing him up and down." Tedesco took a swing atAdelt and then Gaybroke the half-door down and pummeled "Feets" to the locker room floor Gay thumped Tedesco's head up and down on the concrete before the playersjumped in and pulled him off. It was a brief fight, but Tedesco was a bloody mess. The players

50 Adelt letter, August 28, 1990

51 Chipman and Nestman conversations

The Salt Lake Seagulls21

picked up their pay envelopes for the Hawaii game and flew back home Cliff Hoopiiaina commented that it was "a good thing we had our return tickets already paid for."52 Tedesco must have given the back paybusiness a closer look because he paid the players afew days after returning home. Everybodygot their payin the end, but some of the players learned later that Tedesco did not have to share any profits from the Hawaii games with the stockholders. They had told Tedesco that he could take all the risk and any of the rewards of the Hawaii contests. Some thirty to forty thousand fans attended the Hawaii games, and Tedesco received aguaranteed amount plus a percentage of the gate Gordon Lee said that "theywould have asked for more to play in Hawaii than their contracts stated" if the players had known about the stockholders' arrangement with their coach.53

Although the season and history of Utah's only professional football team ended on an acrimonious note, over four decades later the players recalled those years with wistful fondness. Except for the few still-living players, Utahns' memory of the Seagulls has mostly faded. Nonetheless, the Seagulls deserve to be remembered as filling a unique niche in Utah sports history—even if theywere more colorful off the field than on it

52 The account of the fight is an amalgamation of recountings in conversations with Dee Chipman and Cliff Hoopiiaina; telephone conversation with Elmer Leake, July 26, 1990; and Adelt letter, August 28, 1990.

53 Lee conversation

Searching for Abner Blackburn

BY WILL BAGLEY

SOMETIME IN HIS EARLY SIXTIES aging pioneer Abner Levi Blackburn (1827-1904) began to write an account of his youthful wanderings across the American West Deaf, in failing health, and plagued by poverty, Blackburn determined to abandon the hard work that had

Mr Bagley lives in Salt Lake City He edited Frontiersman: Abner Blackburn's Narrative, published by the University of Utah Press in 1992

Abner and Lucinda Blackburn. Courtesy Arda Haenszel.

been his lot for fifty years and in 1889 set about creating a unique record of the American West. As Blackburn wrote from San Bernardino in 1894:

I am not an acomplished scholar but have abandoned hard work and ocupy myself in other ways more beneficial to old age I have been writting a byography of my Adventures in an early day containing an acount of transacions in the Mormon church from 1836 to 1851 also an acount of the mexican war which i was in and indian wars of whitch i have had a sad experience in—with seven trips across the plains through hostile indian bands and in the mines of California in her palmiest days have travled the Pacific Ocean from [the] Bering Straits to Valporazo the South Sea islands and sowed my wild oats [and] have settled down in this semi tropic clime to lay my bones to rest and have ben wrighting up an acount of my past missdeeds containing about thirty thousand words.1

The narrative defies a simple summary: it described the last days of the fur trade, steamboating on the upper Missouri and Mississippi rivers, the early daysof Mormonism in Missouri and Illinois, the bitter evacuation of Nauvoo in 1846, teamstering for Brigham Young across Iowa, the march of the Mormon Battalion, the first days of the Mormon immigration into the Salt Lake Valley, five keyyears of the western immigration, the gold rush, the first discovery of precious metals in Gold Canyon (site of the Comstock), and the establishment of the firstwhite settlement in Nevada

In 1951 historian Dale L Morgan wrote that the Blackburn narrative "is positively my favorite among all the journals I have, and nothing too good can be said about it,whether for itsvalue as source material or for its readability."2

The fate of the narrative is almost as intriguing as the story of Blackburn's life. It involved some of the leading western historians of the 1930s and 1940s—Charles Camp, Carl Wheat, Herbert Bolton, Irene Paden, Charles Kelly, and Dale Morgan. Paden, Kelly, and Morgan all expressed a desire to edit the memoir at one time or another. The reasons the narrative wassuppressed for so long and the ultimate loss of the manuscript are a sad cautionary tale for anyone who manages historical resources or simply loves history. The story involved so many twists and turns that Dale Morgan, who was seldom stumped,

1 Elias Hicks Blackburn Papers, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City

2 Morgan to Kelly, February 22, 1951, Charles Kelly Collection, Utah State Historical Society, cited as CKC

wrote, "I am damned if I know all the ins and outs of that manuscript."3

After his death, Blackburn's manuscript "byography of my Adventures" took on a life of its own His widow, Lucinda, objected "strenuously to it ever being published, and ...instilled in her daughter, Nettie, a feeling that it must be guarded, more than read."4 After Lucinda Blackburn's death the narrative and a trunk full offamily papers, photographs, and heirlooms came into the possession of her daughter Arnetta Matilda Blackburn West—Aunt Nettie to the rest of the family. The trunk was stored in 1942 in San Bernardino. At some point, Aunt Nettie let her niece Blanche Blackburn Corby make a typescript of the manuscript.

In 1943 Charles L. Camp, a paleontologist and western historian at the University of California, Berkeley, gave this account of the discovery of the narrative:

Carl Wheat told me about this manuscript years ago and I tried unsuccessfully many times to see it The people who owned it were Mormons and they had some curious idea that it was scurrilous so they would not let anyone read it All we could do was to sit in the living room and listen to some tantalizing extracts Finally I sicked Herbert Hamlin, Editor of the Pony Express Courier on this and he spent some six months tracking down the original He isvery anxious to work on it and use it as a thesis.5

Herbert Hamlin gave asomewhat different account in 1941:

In 1933, Dr Charles Camp, of the University of California, first ran into this diary, or obtained knowledge of its existence Mrs Corby's Aunt Nettie, who then resided at Fresno, was on a visit to Palo Alto She was present at the time Dr. Camp called on Mrs. Corby. She objected seriously to Dr. Camp reading the manuscript. She did, however, consent to Mrs. Corby reading excerpts of it to Dr. Camp who sat across the room. Dr. Camp told Carl Wheat of the California Historical Society of the existence of this important document. Mr. Wheat went to Palo Alto and also listened to parts of it which were read to him. Both of these men consider Abner Blackburn's memoirs of great historical value.6

3 Morgan to Kelly, January 19, 1951, CKC Information about the discovery of the Blackburn narrative in the 1940s is taken from correspondence between Morgan and Charles Camp, Mary Ream and Robert A Allen in the Dale L Morgan Collection at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (cited as DLMC), letters from Morgan and Irene Paden in the CKC, and letters and documents in the Robert A Allen collection at the Nevada Historical Society, Reno (cited as NHS)

4 The Pony Express, July 1948, p 5

5 Camp to Morgan, August 31, 1943, DLMC Due to the efforts of historians Harold Schindler and Greg Thompson, this collection has been catalogued and made available on microfilm in Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah

6 Blanche Blackburn Corby Interview, Abner Blackburn File, NHS

Abner Blackburn25

Herbert Hamblin, left, with journalist Sandy Gilmore, May 1977, at Sam Welter Books, Salt Lake City. Courtesy of Sam Weller.

Herbert Samuel Hamlin wasborn October 29, 1888,on the Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota.7 After the murder of Sitting Bull in 1890 fear of an Indian uprising caused his family to move to Salt Lake City where his father became a contractor and state legislator. Hamlin was, by his own 1942 account, "raised in Salt Lake City amongst the Mormons Since Icarried Buffalo Bill'sbags at theAlbany Hotel in Denver, the early part of this century, nearly 40 years ago, I have alwaysbeen interested in the Wild West."8 Hamlin worked for U.S.Sen. George Sutherland of Utah while attending Georgetown University9 and waslater employed by the U.S.Geological Survey and mining companies in Montana. During the depression Hamlin sold coal and ice boxes in Hanford, California.10 He moved to Berkeley and found himself at loose ends after separating from his wife Lily

8

9

10

15, 1991

' Hamlin later adopted Skyhawk as his middle name, claiming it was derived from an Indian princess in his mother's family, the Van Scoyaks.

Hamlin to Morgan, August 22, 1942, NHS

Hamlin, while a member of the university track team, raced against Olympian Jim Thorpe In old age Hamlin took an active part in the movement to restore Thorpe's Olympic medals

Hamlin's nephewJack Walker stated, "Herb could sell an icebox to an Eskimo." Interview with author, March

Lee in the late 1930s. While planning to write a biography of Sam Brannan, a kindred spirit, Hamlin had visited a number of Mormon historical sites;but despite this research and being raised in Utah, he had only adim understanding of Mormon history.

The Pony ExpressCourier magazine, founded by Herbert Brame in 1935, was published in Placerville, California. Hamlin was hired in early 1939 as its advertising manager and byJuly had purchased the magazine. He changed the name in 1944 to ThePony Express. The magazine wasthe official organ of EClampusVitus,agroup of history aficionados who had revived agold rush fraternal organization.

Hamlin had a hard time making ends meet as an editor and in 1941 went to work for the Nevada State Highway Department "During 1941-42," he later wrote, "the writer worked for the State of Nevada, rooting into its early history ...the workwasdone under the supervision of [state highway engineer] Robert A. Allen, one of the state[']s colorful historians. The considerate Allen, and Governor Carville, who was also interested, gave the writer free rein."11 An avid amateur historian, Allen also employed Mary Ream, a former schoolteacher, asaclerk to gather historical information on old trails.

In an undated note Hamlin told Allen about the Blackburn "diary" described to him by Charles Camp in 1939: "I have a line on this diary. The grand daughter has an 8 years start on me, and has married since. She now lives near Redding, California. Or, did 3years ago If I get this diary Iwant you to make me head rodman on a road survey."12 While on a collecting trip to northern California in the fall of 1941 Hamlin peppered Allen with breathless letters and telegrams describing his progress.AtRed Bluff, after "some 'Pinkerton work' locating her," he stumbled on to Blanche Blackburn Corby and her copy of the narrative. On December 2 he met and interviewed Mrs. Corby.13 He sent Allen a scrawled postcard promising, "you get what I got.""

Hamlin talked Mrs Corby out of the typescript she had made of Blackburn's memoirs. He now had the truly important part of his quest in hand—the text of the narrative—but he wasobsessed with artifacts, and he began tracking down the holographic manuscript. Five

11 The PonyExpress, November 1957, p 2

12 Hamlin to Allen, NHS

13 Hamlin took five pages of 'testimony' from Blanche Corby The interview is full of tales about Blackburn, but it is laced with misinformation

14 Hamlin to Allen, December 2, 1941,NHS

days after the interview, theJapanese bombed Pearl Harbor, diverting Hamlin's attention and restricting his ability to travel. On December 29Hamlin wrote Robert Allen:

Herewith, is the manuscript of Abner Blackburn which was copied several years ago from the original manuscript by his granddaughter, Blanche Blackburn Corby, and turned over to me on December 2, 1941 at Anderson, California.

Mrs. Corby's aunt, Nettie Blackburn West, who lives in Los Angeles, has the original. Mrs. Corby told me that in due time we can expect to get it. We may have to wait until Mrs. West dies, but she doesn't think so. Next time she calls on her she is going to try to obtain it.

According to Dr Charles Camp of the University of California and Carl Wheat of the California Historical Library, this document contains information of no small value It is a contribution in itself to Western history, filling in many unknown gaps and the only reason why it has waited all these years, hidden from human eyes, is because "Aunt Nettie," his sixth child, objected seriously to its publication Mrs Corby, Abner's granddaughter, thinks it is rather silly to withhold the information any longer, regardless of the few or many derogatory remarks about the Mormons, which are mild in comparison to other things that have been written or said

I don't think I have ever enjoyed musing over any history more than I have this lengthy account of Abner's travels.15

Allen justly believed that he had some rights to the Blackburn manuscript, since he—or the state of Nevada—had paid Hamlin to find it. Even Allen wasconfused about the precise ownership: in 1942 hewrote Dale Morgan that "Ihave paid for the gathering of this information and the Abner Blackburn narrative isnow the property of the State Highway Department, or to be exact, yours truly."16

In April 1941 Morgan, who was at work on his first book, The Humboldt, wrote to Mary Ream on the recommendation of his friend, Utah historian Charles Kelly. Morgan later noted that Ream "displays an intelligent interest and a happy resourcefulness in questions about Nevada history."17 Morgan's book made him vitally interested in Nevada's past, and the two began a fascinating correspondence on

15 Hamlin to Allen, December 29, 1941,NHS

16 Allen to Morgan,July 15, 1942, DLMC Emulating Louis XIV, Allen believed 'The state, that's me" when it came to the Highway Department. The typescript and a photostat of the original manuscript wound up in Allen's papers, which eventually came into the possession of the Nevada Historical Society. Allen made an abridged edition of the Blackburn memoirs that was never published. See Abner Blackburn File, Utah State Historical Society

17 Morgan to Allen, April 12, 1943, DLMC

western trails history that onJanuary 19, 1942,turned toAbner Blackburn's reminiscences.18

Morgan wasjust beginning the work that would make him one of the most respected and prolific of allwestern historians.19 He had already authored most of the Work Projects Administration's Utah: A GuidetotheState and several historical monographs. Deafened by spinal meningitis at fourteen, Morgan was trained as a commercial artist before turning his talents to historical writing. As assistant state project director for the WPA, he gained an intimate knowledge of Mormon journals and memoirs Since his immediate task was a book on the Humboldt River for the Rivers of America Series, he was intrigued when Ream informed him, "Abner tells about thejourney to San Francisco with Captain Brown to get the payroll in 1847."20 Morgan immediately responded, "I'm interested in whatyou sayabout the Abner Blackburn Reminiscence. Can you tell me whether this is published or unpublished, and where Icould get acopy?"21

Ream replied that the only copy was in the possession of Robert Allen. She recommended that Morgan write directly to Allen and added, "I think you would enjoy reading it. Too bad Abner's wife insisted that he delete and tone down his original memoirs when he copied them. The wife seems to have been afraid of offending the Mormons."22

Morgan wrote Allen asking to see the memoirs:

It is my intention, presently, to write a history of the Mormons with some claims to definitiveness, and in pursuance of this intention, I have been gathering all the facts possible, from every source, well knowing that any historian is the sum—or the product—of his facts In the last four years I have amassed several million words about the Mormons, including about 650 life sketches, journals, and autobiographies, which range from a page to eight 600 page volumes, but I find the more I find out, the more I need to find out In view of these facts, you will understand my interest in Blackburn.23

Morgan provided Allen with a description of Blackburn's accidental

18 Ream to Morgan,January 19, 1942, DLMC

19 See Richard L. Saunders, Eloquencefrom a Silent World: A Descriptive Bibliography of the Published Writings of Dale L. Morgan (Salt Lake City: Caramon Press, 1990), for a complete description of Morgan's unequaled work

20 Ream to Morgan,January 19, 1942, DLMC

21 Morgan to Ream, February 22, 1942, DLMC.

22 Ream to Morgan, April 1, 1942, DLMC.

23 Morgan to Allen, April 12, 1942, DLMC

Abner Blackburn29

shooting in Iowa and asked to see and copy the reminiscences. Allen replied, "Since you have been so nice to our MissReam, wewill see to itthatyou get acopy of the Blackburn manuscript." He held out hope of "getting the uncensored original"and explained hisinvolvement in the project: "Myinterest in all this is personal. I love history, particularlyof this part of the country and naturally ... I am alwayswilling to let the other fellow enjoy some of the things we collect. You may be looking for your copy of this diary shortly."24

On May 6 Ream sent Morgan the 34-page copy she had made of the Blackburn-Corby typescript.25 She wrote, "It seems that Abner's wife prevented him from expressing himself too strenuously in regard to the Mormons when he waswriting up the narrative. Iwish she had encouraged him towrite more in detail."26

Responding the next day, Morgan wrote, "Ihavejust spent two of the enjoyable hours of my life, reading and re-reading Abner Blackburn's manuscript. This isaltogether one of the most delightful memoirs I have anywhere encountered." He promised to send some extended notes on the manuscript which I'm sure will interest him [Allen] and you also; I should like to say right now, however, that Abner's narrative is amazingly accurate for a reminiscent account, and it fills in certain gaps about Mormon history generally, and the movements of certain Mormon parties particularly, that have interested (and provoked) me for several years past Captain Brown's 1847 company is a particular example of this; very little has been known of this trip to California and return; I have been reduced to piecing the merest threads together under such circumstances, Abner Blackburn is a treasure indeed! I had no idea that his manuscript was one of such detail—and I never anticipated the altogether unexpected informal charm of his style.27

On May 12 Ream penned a note to Morgan while her typewriter underwent spring cleaning, warning, "Please keep the Blackburn narrative under your hat Publication rights are owned by Herbert Hamlin who is in the employ of the Highway Dep't. I am sure you will keep

24 Allen to Morgan, April 28, 1942, DLMC

25 Before his death Morgan gave part of his Mormon life history collection, including the Mary Ream typescript with pencilled-in notes, to Madeline McQuown It is now found in her papers in Special Collections at the Marriott Library.

26 Ream to Morgan, May 6, 1942, DLMC Ream added, "The story of [Lou] Devon and the Leaping Faun I did not copy It is quite long but if you are interested in it I'll make a copy for you Neither did I type the lengthy poem relating toJames D. Riley. There were about fifteen verses . . . and to me they didn't seem important." She also omitted the poem "Early Dayes in California."

27 Morgan to Ream, May 7, 1942, DLMC

the journal confidential." In response to Morgan's question—

"What happened to Abner finally, do you know? When did he die, and where? And whom did he marry?"— she answered: "Yes, I know the details concerning Abner's later life, marriage, death etc but can't give this inf out yet."28

O n Jun e 3, 1942, Morgan sent five tightly typed pages of annotations that reflect his wide-ranging knowledge of Mormo n history and his ability to analyze the material in depth. 2 9 H e said:

I have many Mormon narratives, but nothing at all resembling Abner's His merry heart, his love of wine, his shrewd eye and keen wit—these are attributes all too rarely come upon in narratives of this kind, and you may be sure that I appreciate such a person when I come across him. What I would give to have been able to talk with Abner, even for an hour or two! To me he perfectly typifies the spirit of Nevada, so different from the spirit of Utah (which while most admirable in its own way nonetheless sometimes grinds terribly on the nerves).

Morgan was completing his Humbold t book and planned to move to the East Coast "to finish in the great libraries there the research jo b which began for me so laboriously in the Mormon archives four years ago," but he promised to organize his Nevada Mormo n bibliography for Allen "to reciprocate your courtesy."30

Morgan also wrote to Ream that same evening, "I should very much like to incorporate a few paragraphs relative to the Humboldt River into the final draft of my book. If you and Mr. Allen do not mind, I shall write to Mr. Hamlin and request of him this privilege. . . .

I more especially would like to quote Abner on the Brannan-Brown

28 Ream to Morgan, May 12, 1942, DLMC

29 Morgan restricted his notes "more or less to [Blackburn's] involvement in Mormon history, and [I] do not venture to comment on the specifically California elements of the manuscript."

30 Morgan to Allen,June 3, 1942, DLMC

Dale L. Morgan. USHS collections.

Abner Blackburn31

troubles. . . . What would be Mr. Hamlin's reaction to [such] a request? ... It is about midnight, and myfamily is protesting about my typewriter, so this must be enough for now."31 On June 30 he sent Ream corrections to the annotations that reflect his concern with detail and precision and concluded by again asking if he should approach Hamlin directly.

In reply Ream suggested Morgan write to Hamlin in Placerville. "Ithink he ison the trail of some historical material in California," an understatement since Hamlin hadjust twoweeks before acquired the original Blackburn manuscript. "Youwould enjoy Mr. Hamlin—he is alwayson the trail of something big,"she noted.32

Hamlin had actuallygotten back on the trail of the manuscript in March, cabling Allen:

NELLY [sic] BLACKBURN WEST AGED DAUGHTER OF ABNER PROMISED DONATE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT TO MUSEUM IS IN STORAGE HER TRUNK SAN BERNARDINO ALSO EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS AND OTHER EFFECTS.33

Hamlin photographed Gen John Henry "Gatling Gun" Parker, a Spanish-American Warveteran, standing next to the impressive Blackburn gravestone, and, he later recalled, they "paid a call upon Mrs West. Itwasperhaps through the persuasion of the General (to whom she took a liking) as much as the writer's, that she agreed to let us have the journal for publication."34 Ream repeated Hamlin's claim that he had negotiated a deal for the literary rights to the manuscript.35

Hamlin returned to California in June to purchase the manuscript and interviewJesse O. Blackburn, Abner's only surviving son,who he thought had possession of the memoirs.According to the story he told in The Pony Express, Mrs.Westgave him anote instructing

31 Morgan to Ream,June 3, 1942, DLMC

32 Ream to Morgan,July 8, 1942, DLMC.

33 Hamlin to Allen, March 13, 1942, NHS

34 The Pony Express, July 1948, p 5

35 According to Hamlin, Therese Jose Hamlin purchased the Blackburn holograph Hamlin wrote that he "gave them the copy [at the Nevada State Highway Department], which I secured after many years search, and the original is owned by Mrs. Hamlin. In addition to this I have several testimonies from Blackburn's relatives pertaining to the memoirs." See The Pony Express, August 1947, p 12 Hamlin claimed that "on December 1st, 1941, a copy of the much sought after diary was located, and publication rights obtained from a worthy niece of the stalwart frontiersman." He later claimed that he had "exclusive publisher's rights" to the memoirs. See The Pony Express Courier, June 1942, p. 2, and September 1943, p 14 Hamlin's vanished papers make it impossible to determine the exact nature of this deal The claim probably had no legal foundation but forestalled publication of Blackburn's memoirs for decades

her brother to release thejournal for publication. Hamlin foundJesse "tobe areal chip off the old block. He waschuck full of the old Blackburn humor that burned so gloriously in his frontier and venerable sire. He could see no sense in hanging so tenaciously onto his fathers manuscript, and agreed with his aunt [sic] that it should be given to posterity."36

Hamlin was only telling part of the story. ByJune 23 he had discovered that Morgan had the Ream typescript. He cabled Allen about this further complication:

WIRE ME ROSSLYN HOTEL NAME OF PERSON IN SALT LAKE TO WHOM MARYREAM SENT INFORMATION AND COPYOF ABNERS

DIARY FAMILY GAVE SAME TO FREDERICK MORRISON THINKING IT WAS FOR ME FOR PUBLICATION HE LEFT NO ADDRESS

Hamlin, about to make the collecting coup of his acquisitive life, was blind-sided by the unknown Frederick Morrison and suspected Morgan. Hamlin panicked. Allen cabled Morgan's address bythe next day, and onJune 26Hamlin sentAllen apostcard from SanJacinto indicating he had visitedJess Blackburn and had a letter from him requesting the return of the memoirs Blackburn had mailed the manuscript to Morrison "thru error—and have only loaned [it]... How Morrison found out he had it isstill a mystery to me aswell as Blackburn."37 Hamlin tracked Morrison to LosAngeles. He later wrote:

The trail led to the fastness of the high SanJacinto Mountains, 50 miles South of Riverside, after it had disappeared from an old trunk in San Bernardino, and ended in Los Angeles, between the Southwest Museum and Huntington Library, at 10 o'clock Saturday morning June the 27th The latter institution is known to pay high tributes for such documents nothing in their confines equals in color, or value, the recently discovered records of Abner Blackburn

Hamlin gave Mrs.RichardJose and others "credit for finding this rare western gem."38

In 1942 Hamlin married Therese Shreve Jose, the widow of Broadway star Richard Jose, "the world's greatest ballad singer," who popularized "Silver Threads among the Gold." Therese was born in Carson City, Nevada, onJuly 10, 1868, and was raised byTherese and Tiburcio Parrott, her aunt and uncle. Therese inherited an estate in

36 The Pony Express, July 1948, p 5

37 Hamlin to Allen,June 26, 1942, NHS

38 The Pony Express, June 1942, p 2

San Mateo and considerable wealth from the Parrott and Shreve families. She marriedJose inJuly 1898 and managed forty-two transcontinental tours for the singer. She was also a "religious teacher" practicing a "cross between Christian Science and common sense" and had been a "homeopathic" Red Cross nurse during World War I.39 Jose recorded for the Victor Company and eventually became a California state real estate commissioner. Carlo DeFerrari, a friend of Hamlin, described Hamlin as "wrapped up"inJose; Hamlin and Therese wrote an unfinished series of articles on the singer.

Jose died in October 1941 Therese keptJose's name after marrying Hamlin and worked as associate editor of ThePony Express for twenty-seven years. She was in her mid-seventies in 1942 and cut a formidable figure that can only be described as matronly.

Meanwhile, Morgan wasfinishing his Humboldt book. He had alreadywritten Allen asking for permission to quote from the narrative, and he wrote to Hamlin on July 11with a similar request. No correspondence with Hamlin survived in Morgan's extensive papers, but Hamlin's reply to this "kind letter" indicated Morgan tried flattery to cajole him.40

OnJuly 15Robert Allen wrote Morgan that since he had paid to get the information, "I can see no reason whyyou cannot quote parts of the narrative, giving the acknowledgment to me as State Highway Engineer for the courtesy." He then let the cat out of Hamlin's bag: "It might be of interest to you to know that we will shortly have the original of the Blackburn narrative in our possession."

Morgan thanked both Mary Ream and Robert Allen. Then, in words thatwould ringwith irony, he wrote, "Iam glad to hear that the original Blackburn manuscript is to be acquired byyou, for I am sure it will be carefully preserved, and so as nearly insured for loss as any document well can be."41

39 For information on Richard and Therese Jose, see The Pony Express, November 1957, January 1958,July 1969, andJanuary-February 1978

40 Hamlin to Morgan, August 22, 1942, NHS.

41 Morgan to Ream and Allen,July 20, 1942, DLMC Morgan ended the letter by asking them to "tell me a little of the historical program of the State Department of Highways." Ream replied on August 12 that she "would be stepping out of bounds if I were to answer this request," but in a handwritten note at the top of the letter she wrote, "Off the record & for your private information, I devote my time to historical research, principally concerned with old trails." Morgan had clearly hit on a politically sensitive subject. Allen replied on the 28th about "who carried on historically in this State. The Department of Highways has investigated numerous historical leads, has amassed quite a bit of information on the history of die State of Nevada Of course, the prime interest of the Highway Department is to develop more travel over the roads of the State This can be done when people know of the historic things that are to be seen along the highways and on the by-ways of the State."

In August, Hamlin wordily denied Morgan's request to use material from the narrative: "The writer would, with pleasure, be willing to grant you this privilege were it not that others are interested in this manuscript besides myself. It was obtained through 9 years of struggle, and 6years of that endeavor were put in by two others. ... I only wish it were possible to give you the permission." Then he added, "The field of history is very long, and very wide, as you doubtless know, and aman's years are very short."42

In late September, Morgan had an unexpected visitor. "Hamlin wasin town and looked me up,"he wrote Robert Allen on October 5. Hamlin told a different story in The Pony ExpressCourier: "One of the members of our staff made a trip to Salt Lake City expressly to ask him not to use the Blackburn material which wasinadvertently sent to him by a Carson City clerk with whom it had been entrusted to read only One of the obtainers of the Abner Blackburn journal did not wish it to be passed out by 'piecemeal.'" Hamlin preceded thiswith a slam on Morgan's Humboldt book: "We have not seen it, but had heard it was pretty good. I don't think the author had done much travelling around, but he isreputed to be agood writer—much better than the average WPA writer." (This followed a letter to the editor from James Abel who said, "The historical side of [The Humboldt] seems fairly accurate; it has little literary merit. The interpretation is extremely poor.")43

Morgan told a different story about this "rather curious situation." He had already sent the manuscript to his publisher when he received Hamlin's August letter "I brought up the subject of the Blackburn manuscript," he wrote Allen. He tried to persuade Hamlin that since Hamlin was about to publish the memoirs and TheHumboldt would not be out until at least March, Hamlin should add his permission toAllen's.

Well, Hamlin is a very nice fellow, but he is an enthusiast, and his mind does not stick long to any one subject; his ideas bounce all over space and time, and although I brought the subject up a half a dozen times, he always got off on some tangent, and I swear that when we parted at 1:30 a.m., I was hardly wiser than ... in the beginning.44

Morgan placed the decision regarding his use of the Blackburn

42 Hamlin to Morgan, August 22, 1942, NHS

43 The PonyExpress Courier, September 1943, p 14

44 Morgan to Allen, October 5, 1942, DLMC

Abner Blackburn35

quotes in Allen's hands, offering to pull the Blackburn material from the galleys.Allen made no such request and replied, in the last letter in their correspondence related to Blackburn, "I was particularly interested in your remarks about an enthusiast who visited you and agree with you heartily that his ideas bounce all over space and time If he can be nailed down some time and kept on the subject, his work might be useful."45

In 1951 Charles Kellywrote to Morgan about his plan to publish Blackburn's 1847 Salt Desert account in the Utah HistoricalQuarterly. Morgan summarized his experience with the manuscript for Kelly:

Robert Allen stuck up the money to finance Hamlin's chasing around, and Hamlin finally ran the manuscript to earth in southern California What he got, to begin with, was a typewritten copy of the original made by Blackburn's granddaughter Either this or a copy of it was given to Allen, and Allen had a new copy made from this which he sent to me Later, so I understand from the P.E., Hamlin got the original of the manuscript.46

Morgan described Hamlin's response to his using the Blackburn narrative in The Humboldt to Kelly: "I've never heard directly what Hamlin's reaction was,but Rod [Korns] summed it up for me with a knifecutting-throat gesture."47

In August 1947 Allen "was displaced through a political move and is no longer on thejob."48 This led to a turn of events that Irene Paden explained to Charles Kelly:

Robert Allen, of Carson City, Nevada, paid Herbert Hamlin to collect certain documents, of which Blackburn's was one When the business deal came to an end Mr Hamlin reserved Blackburn's, which was the most exciting, and said that he had collected it on his own time This Mr Allen denied But Mr Allen was at that time State Highway Engineer and Mr Hamlin edited the Pony Express Courier A man in politics cannot afford to lock horns with the editor of a paper This affair was allowed to drop temporarily When Mr Allen went into business for himself he said "the heck with that" or words to that effect and told me to go ahead and use it I placed it in the Bancroft Library—that is, I placed a copy Mr Hamlin retained the ms I may have requested that the material be kept "sealed"—not for public use—until further notice."

I don't remember.49

45 Allen to Morgan, December 4, 1942, DLMC

46 Morgan to Kelly, February 22, 1951,CKC.

47 Morgan to Kelly,January 19, 1951,CKC.

48 The PonyExpress, August 1947, p 12

49 Paden to Kelly,January 13, 1951,CKC

Hamlin "fiddled around with the manuscript for years, and after much teasing of the customers began to serialize it in the Pony Express" inJuly 1948.50 He made a hash out of it, and abruptly stopped publication of the manuscript in September. Hamlin published several more Blackburn articles containing his own bizarre annotations, including one ridiculing Mormon temple ceremonies, and then abandoned the project entirely, without explanation, having published only about a seventh of the narrative The only clue as to why he stopped is in a letter from Ray Fisher, a disgruntled Mormon reader. "Blackburn was one of those early adherents of the Mormon faith who could not stand the sacrifice necessary in the early years of that now great institution which has amillion followers."

"Amillion members is not to be sneezed at," noted Hamlin, and it is likely that Fisher was not the only angry Mormon who wrote him in complaint.51

Despite Hamlin's intimate involvement with western lore he was not much of ahistorian. After visiting Israel Smith, leader of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Hamlin announced that polygamy was an invention of Brigham Young. He published an article stating that Sam Brannan formed the Mormon Battalion in Honolulu. His mistakes in summarizing the Blackburn material between 1942 and 1948 are, to paraphrase Dale Morgan, too numerous to note, and his botched attempt at editing the narrative probably did Blackburn's reputation more harm than good.52

Hamlin continued to edit The Pony Express into the late 1970s, but his strange career careened into disaster. A former Sublime Noble Grand Humbug of E Clampus Vitus and past president of the California Historical Society remembered that Hamlin and Therese "moved to Sonora, and had a great collection of Western material—mostly just piled around their large house—and basement."53

50 Morgan to Kelly, January 19, 1951, CKC Morgan commented that Hamlin published more notes by himself, "and rather sad notes," than Blackburn manuscript Hamlin may have delayed publicadon of the narrative until the death of Nettie West in 1947 or feared that Allen would ignore his fraudulent claim to the "literary rights" and publish on his own He credited the "help of Dr Charles L Camp of the University of California, and with typist help at Bancroft Library through the kindness of Dr George P Hammond, Director." See The PonyExpress, July 1948, p 3

51 The Pony Express, November 1948, p 9

52 Russell R Elliot expressed the frustration of many historians when he noted Hamlin's Pony Express articles on Blackburn: "These 'Reminiscences' are not very useful to the researcher since they are not published verbatim forcing the reader to rely almost entirely on the editor's evaluation." Elliot, "Nevada's First Trading Post," Nevada Historical Society Quarterly (Winter 1970): 9.

53 Albert Shumate to author, April 30, 1990

Therese Jose died February 14, 1969, at age 101.54 Much of her fortune had been lost to bad investments or spent on Hamlin's western collection. After his wife's death Hamlin came under the influence of "Christian Crusader" and right-wing evangelist Billy James Hargis He gave Hamlin room at his American Christian College to house Hamlin's collection asthe "PonyExpress Museum and Library" and let Hamlin lecture to students and spin tales. Hamlin gave the college the personal papers he had donated to and then reclaimed from the University of the Pacific, possibly including the Blackburn manuscript. In October 1974 a sex scandal involving Hargis came to light. He briefly retired to his Ozarks farm due to "ill health" after extorting the proceeds from a $72,000 life insurance policy and a $24,000 annual stipend from the college.55 He returned to Tulsa in February 1975 to continue to manage his far-flung religio-political snake oil operations, but the college collapsed in the wake of the scandal and BillyJames's reputation has not been the same since.56

Hamlin, broken by the scandal, returned to Utah and then California For a time he lived in a trailer house at Columbia, near Sonora, in the midst of the wreckage of hiscollections.57 Enamored of reactionary politics throughout his career as an editor, the destitute Hamlin finally became a ward of the state in the custody of Robert Louis, conservator of the Tuolumne County Public Guardian's office. Louis spent a week in Tulsa sorting through an enormous storage space Hamlin had rented. "Every box you opened up was a surprise package. It was like going through a museum."58 There were books, manuscripts, coins, bags, furniture, artifacts, and an antique saddle Louis made some attempt to recover the books and papers that went

54 The Pony Express, February 1969, p 10

55 According to college vice-president David Noebel, "Hargis had conducted a wedding . . ; on the honeymoon, the groom and his bride discovered that both of them had slept with Hargis." Hargis was also alleged to have seduced a teenage boy, blaming his conduct on "genes and chromosomes." See "The Sins of BillyJames," Time, February 16, 1976 See also Edward E Plowman, "The Rise and Fall of BillyJames," Christianity Today, February 27, 1976

56 Hamlin's family believes that he was swindled out of the fortune he inherited from Therese Jose by BillyJames Hargis and had to finance his old age by selling off his antique collection in San Francisco Interview with Margaret Walker Paetz, Margaret Hamlin Walker, and Jack Walker, March 24, 1991 Hamlin's nephew Stephen Walker said that Hamlin, lacking storage space, once left a fivefoot Ming vase on a friend's porch for five years Phone interview with author, March 23,1991

57 According to Hamlin's niece Margaret Walker Paetz, Hamlin purchased two trailers and planned to move his sister Margaret Hamlin Walker into one of them She declined, and Hamlin filled the two trailers with his collections When he was moved into a nursing home the trailer was repossessed and its contents discarded Interview with author, March 24, 1991

58 Phone interview with author, May 8, 1990

to the American Christian College but was unsuccessful.59 Public guardian Maureen Hamilton eventually placed Hamlin in a nursing home and threw awaythe debris that littered histrailer.60 Hamlin died in Sonora at age ninety-three in September 1982; according to hissister, he rode horseback the day before he died.61 His western collection vanished.62

Hamlin's friends, associates, and relativesuniversally state that he was "quite a character," likable but eccentric and always working an angle. His nephew, Jack Walker, remembered, "My Uncle Herb was the original flimflam man." Edith Walker reported that on meeting Herb she thought, "People like this are only in the movies."63

The fate of Hamlin's Blackburn notes, interviews, and manuscripts is a complete mystery. Blackburn's grand-nephew-in-law Paul Gallagher saw the manuscript in Sonora, in Hamlin's possession, about 1965; and Hamlin wrote in June 1966, "In The Pony Express Library and Museum reposes [Blackburn's] interesting narrative of the west."An immensely frustrating search for the manuscript has led to the reluctant conclusion that it was lost in the chaos of Hamlin's last days and probably came to rest in the Toulomne County dump.64

The possibility exists that Hamlin sold or gave the manuscript to a responsible collector; so some slight hope remains that itwill eventually reside in a creditable western history research institution.

Hamlin's claim to "exclusive literary rights"kept the narrative off

59 Carlo DeFerrari, Sonora historian and Toulomne Museum member, remembered that Hamlin's personal papers went to Oklahoma. Much of Hamlin's material disappeared, including his book collection, and the remainder was sold at auction DeFerrari said nothing much was left to auction but that at one time Hamlin "had it all." Phone interview with author, May 30, 1990.

60 Phone interview with author, May 8, 1990. Hamilton reported that by the time she worked with Hamlin "things were in sad shape." The materials the county acquired were not manuscript quality but a "cluttered personal mess." Much of the material was turned over to Hamlin's daughter Pat who died in 1990 Hamilton also stated that Hamlin engaged in "questionable" deals; following his wife's death he pawned herjewelry to finance one such deal.

61 Phone interview with Margaret Hamlin Walker, March 17, 1991.

62 Letters to every historical society and museum in Oklahoma have produced no information about the fate of the Pony Express Museum and Library Albert Shumate reported, "I believe his money and his collection was lost in the Tulsa misfortune my guess is die Tulsa college 'cleaned him out.'" Letter to author, April 30, 1990 David Noebel was told that Hamlin, after breaking with Hargis in about 1976, took his collection when he returned to Sonora and it was sold to pay his nursing home bill Noebel does not believe that either the college or Hargis retained any part of Hamlin's collection Interview with author, March 9, 1991

63 Interviews with author, March 13 and 15, 1991

64 After Hamlin was placed in a rest home, he failed to make payments on the two house trailers used to store his collection They were repossessed, and their contents were probably hauled to the dump Hamlin's family believed that Hargis may have acquired the collection, and Hamlin's heir noted that if Hargis got the Blackburn manuscript, "you may have an easier time finding the ten commandments." Lee Fairchild to author, March 31, 1991 Hargis, however, denies knowing what happened to the manuscript Hargis to author, April 17, 1991

Abner Blackburn39

limits to all but a select few research historians In 1990 there were only a handful of copies of Blackburn's narrative: photostats of the manuscript at the Nevada Historical Society and the Bancroft Library and typescript copies at BYU, the Utah State Historical Society, the LDS Church Archives, and the Marriott Library at the University of Utah. These copies carried restrictions that were in place so long that no one remembered why they were restricted. Still, Blackburn's storiesfound their wayinto numerous western histories.

Dale Morgan's The Humboldt: Highroad of the West was the first history to publish sections ofAbner Blackburn's narrative. It ispainful to speculate upon what Morgan could have done if he had been permitted to edit Blackburn's memoirs

After eighteen years of silence on the subject Herbert Hamlin published Blackburn's account of discovering Gold Canyon in the June 1966 issue of The Pony Express. The man whose self-aggrandizement and incompetence obstructed publication of the narrative for decades stated, without defining how it would come to pass, that "some day a copy of this manuscript will be published." In his last surviving letter Blackburn wrote: "I have [written the] biography of my adventures from 1843 to 1851 containing about thirty thousand words. I am awaiting to find some suitable schollar to assist me with the prepareing it in shape."65 Blackburn never found his suitable scholar, but his recently published memoirs will delight historians for generations to come.

65 Evelyn D. Gibson, Blackburn and Allied Descendants ofJohn Blackburn, Sr. (Lincoln, Neb., 1978), p 404

Melba Judge Lehner and Child Care in the State of Utah

BY LAVON B. CARROLL

CHILD CARE PROGRAMS IN THE PAST have never focused on the development and welfare of children as much as on solving the problems of adult society," MelbaJudge Lehner, professor emeritus of family life studies,Weber State College (University), said at the beginning of our interview concerning her lifelong work in child care and development. A small but active and alert woman in her eighties, she still

MelbaJudge Lehner. All photographs accompanying this article arefrom herfiles.

Dr Carroll is emeritus professor of English, Weber State University

MelbaJudge Lehner41

takes care of a large, beautiful garden at her home in Ogden in spite of failing eyesight and keeps abreast of developments in child care. She is deeply concerned about and committed to improving the welfare of children. A central figure in two crucial programs, the WPA nurseries in the 1930s and Lanham nurseries and extended day care programs during World War II in Utah and Idaho, she later established the child development program atWeber State College. In view of the current intensification of interest in child care outside the home, her experience is valuable in gaining perspective on a major problem of our time.1

Since the industrial revolution child care outside the home has been arecurrent social, economic, political, and even amoral issue. It isan ongoing concern, asanyone who reads newspapers,watches television, or listens to radio discussions is aware. For example, an editorial in the Salt LakeTribune asserted, "If children are truly a Utah priority, the state should be ensuring decent day-care services for the children who need it most Day-care conditions for low-income children are abysmal in this state. . . ."A few days later, Roger Wilkins, a professor at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, told a radio audience that "One dollar spent now on Head Start programs will save $4.75 down the road."2

Melba StuartJudge Lehner, a pioneer in establishing such programs in Utah, was born August 10, 1907, in Wellsville, Utah, where she lived until age nine when her parents moved to Idaho. Her mother died when shewastwelve,and she returned to livewith grandparents in Wellsville along with her brother and three cousins from Montana, all teenagers She now wonders how her grandparents could have put up with five lively adolescents but adds that they all shared chores Livingwith their grandparents enabled the children to continue their schooling in Logan.

Melba obtained a B.S degree in home economics from Utah State Agricultural College (USAC, now Utah State University) in Logan in 1929 and taught school for ayear in Green River, Utah, before going to Rochester, New York, where her brother was studying.

1 Much of the information on which this article is based derives from extensive interviews with Melba Judge Lehner as well as reports and other documents pertaining to Utah child care programs that she has donated to the Utah State Historical Society Library Items in this collection will be cited as Lehner Papers During her involvement with the WPA and Lanham nurseries Melba's last name was Judge, and that is the name used in the first part of the article Her later career at Weber State roughly coincided with her second marriage, and in the latter portion of the paper that name is used

2 Salt Lake Tribune, February 4, 1991;PBS radio broadcast, February 8, 1991

There she met and married ThomasJudge, an engineer for General Railway Signal They had a daughter, Janice, who was two years old when her father was transferred to Brazil. Mrs.Judge decided that she did not want to take her young child towhat might be a difficult situation and instead returned to Logan to renew her teaching certificate at USAC. The Great Depression of the 1930s was well underway and teaching positions, aswell asotherjob opportunities, were limited. While pursuing her studies Judge became interested in a program of child development that had been set up in 1932 by Elsa Ann Brown Bate, head of the department during 1931-41. It was the only one of its kind in the state at that time. Bate established a nursery school in conjunction with this program as a laboratory for the study of child development. MelbaJudge became involved in this new study and obtained a second B.S. degree in 1935. (She returned to Utah State University during the 1960s to earn her M.S. degree when the program had expanded to offer advanced degrees in family relations.) In 1935, however, she had little idea of what opportunities existed in this relatively new field but concedes that she "was in the right place at the right time"considering subsequent events

Alongwith the rest of the United States, Utah experienced severe economic problems during the depression that were somewhat alleviated by government programs initiated under various emergency relief acts. Understanding how child care in Utah evolved during this challenging era will help illuminate MelbaJudge's career. As one observer wrote, "Until the Depression, the United States was the only major industrial country that did not provide some type of federally funded child care program On October 23, 1933, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) authorized funds to provide wages for unemployed teachers and other workers on relief."3 Then, "in 1935 President Roosevelt and the Congress laid the foundation for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). . . . With almost $5 billion, or ten times the amount given to FERA, the WPA absorbed about half the government's total expenditures."4 It came to the attention of state agencies that a program of nursery schools or day care centers might be set up under the WPA. Judge emphasizes, asdo many sources on the subject, that the expanded child care project was initiated "not primarily to care for chil-

3 Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, Who's Minding the Children: The History and Politics of Day Care in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), p 37

4 Ibid., p 45

dren, but to supplyjobs for unemployed teachers, nurses, nutritionists, clerical workers, cooks, and janitors. By 1937, the programs had set up nineteen hundred nurseries caring for about forty thousand children."5 The remarkable factor in this development was that "for the first time public funds, both federal and state, became available for day care." The WPA nurseries, as they came to be called, were "identified as an educational service,"Judge said; and most of the nurseries were "located in school buildings," although there were some exceptions to that in Utah The funds for this enterprise were not, however, administered by the school districts or institutions but byfederal and state agencies

The first nursery school set up in Utah under this project waslocated at the University of Utah under the direction of Naomi Woolley in September 1935.Typical of such programs at that time, it had the

State supervisors of WPA nursery schools and adult education, front row, L-R: MelbaJudge, Naomi Woolley, Florence Child, Olive Cotter, Verna Carlisle, Marjorie Badger, and Elise Musser. Others identified byJudge in 1992 were Mack Nicholayson andJustin Stewart, third andfourth from right in the second row, and C. L. VanderBee in the upper right corner.

dual purpose of providing employment for needy teachers as well as training women on the relief rolls in better methods of child care

Taken under the university's wing after the emergency programs expired, this is the only depression-era nursery school still in existence in Utah.

Five months later, in February 1936, Elsa Bate set up a similar nursery school in conjunction with her college program at USAC. It was located in a home off campus. She enlistedJudge, who was still a student, to help with the project because the women on welfare rolls eligible for employment under the WPA guidelines were unskilled in administering and directing such an enterprise Judge relieved welfare employees in the WPA nursery school while they received training in the college nursery school for periods of up to two weeks. She was not paid during the first year and performed these duties as part of her training. The next year she received a small stipend.

Working with underprivileged women and children was challenging forjudge atfirst, since they had different backgrounds from those she had known For instance, the children of college professors and more affluent community members in the college nursery were fussier eaters but generally seemed more accustomed to interacting congenially with others. The disadvantaged children usually ate the food prepared for them without complaint but often needed instruction in how to cooperate with and relate to other children.

Judge found it necessary to revise the schedules and adapt the procedures of the college nursery to the needs of welfare recipients She always found them willing to work and learn.They were proud and disliked taking welfare, she recalled. Expressing gratitude for the experience of working with these families, she said it gave her an understanding of problems she had not encountered previously and equipped her for the later work she was to do on a statewide basis.

As the need for child care services became apparent throughout the state,Verna S. Carlisle, head teacher at the USAC college nursery under whom Judge had trained, was selected as the state director of the program. Recognizing Judge's maturity and abilities, Carlisle asked her to become the field supervisor. Ample funds were provided to set up the nurseries where needed

Program leaders decided to try to establish the nurseries in cooperation with local schools, particularly institutions of higher learning where they hoped that some permanency could be ensured An arrangement similar to those at the University of Utah and at USACwas

MelbaJudge Lehner45

made later in 1938 at Weber College in Ogden. As the program expanded throughout the state, however, it was not always possible to find such accommodations.

One of the first steps taken was to send letters to college and university administrators, superintendents of school districts, and other community leaders asking if they would like to participate.Judge followed up on the responses, traveling around the state to meet with those who had indicated an interest in the program. Such organizations as the Ogden Martha Society Nursery School, Neighborhood House, the Children's Service Society, and the Wells Center in Salt Lake Cityoffered their facilities and help.

Judge proceeded to form committees of local individuals who would help find accommodations where the nursery schools could fulfill their goal of helping to improve the conditions of unemployed, impoverished families. Nurseries were set up in churches, elementary schools, public libraries, and community centers. Equipment and personnel were provided through the program. Although designed primarily to help the disadvantaged, the program received a certain amount of money to enable the hiring of professional, college-trained personnel likeJudge to guarantee a high level of quality

Accordingly, nursery schoolswere set up in St. George and Cedar City in connection with Dixie College and Southern Utah State College respectively. Other nurseries were established in Price, Helper, Parowan, Manti, Mt. Pleasant, Ephraim, Vernal, and Moab. In Provo the school was located in a Presbyterian church Additional nursery schools in Salt Lake City were started at the Neighborhood House, which had previously sponsored similar programs, and in cooperation with the Children's Aid Society. In Ogden the nursery school was located in a home near the old Weber College campus on 24th Street. Judge spent the winter of 1937-38 with a Mrs. Smoot in St. George while she set up the schools in southern Utah.

One carpenter based in Salt Lake made all the simple furniture for the schools. He and Judge together designed some of the equipment. They made creative use of such things as orange crates for chairs, shelves, etc., to economize. Later, their designs were compiled in an interesting bulletin, Nursery School Furnitureand Equipment,6 with detailed drawings of such equipment, published by the Department of Public Instruction in 1943 under the direction of Superintendent

Each child had a simple "locker"for belongings.

Bonneville Park Nursery children nap on cots made by carpenter.

Children learned basic social skills during mealtimes at the WPA and later Lanham

Charles H Skidmore The sturdy, simple items included both indoor and outdoor playground equipment, the design of which has not been greatly improved in more recent years

AsJudge traveled about the state organizing the nurseries she encountered some incredible circumstances such as shanty towns where families were living in tents or shacks improvised from all kinds of materials She remembers one that was covered with old license plates Appalled by these conditions, she did her best to try to mitigate the deprivations of these unfortunate Utahns.

The first WPA nursery schools were modeled after the earlier ones at the colleges and universities. It must be emphasized here that because Judge was responsible for the establishment of most of the WPA schools, her influence was predominant in their design and administration Her training at USAC had been under women schooled in the most advanced theories of child development They owed much to the modern studies and theories of such schools as the Merrill-Palmer in Detroit, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Iowa. Later, several of the head teachers and supervisors in the Utah program, likeJoy Wiswald, Ruth Skidmore, and Roma Tueller, were products of these schools. Child psychology was then in its infancy as a legitimate area of inquiry, although there had been earlier movement in this field initiated byEuropean pioneers like Froebel in Germany and Montessori in Italy They emphasized educating and developing children. This presented a marked contrast tojust caring for the children after the model of the French Creche that had been used in earlier endeavors to meet the needs of working mothers in industrial areas.

The techniques and philosophy that informed and guided the work of conducting the Utah programs were compiled by Melba S Judge in NurserySchools:AHandbookof In-Service Training for Nursery SchoolTeachers-W.PA.,7 published in 1940 by the Federal Works Agency, Works Progress Administration, Utah. Federal policies in place at that time did not allowJudge to place her name on this important document. It has stood the test of time and could serve today asan excellent manual for conducting preschool programs.

The WPAnursery schools operated from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and included a morning snack, lunch, and a nap Each school accommodated twenty-five to thirty children, ages twotofive Aparent education

7 Item in Lehner Papers.

program was instituted in connection with the schools. Parents were expected to meet once a week to study problems of child rearing Each school had a supervisor, cook, housekeeper, custodian, and two or three teachers aswell as other assistants. Discipline wasfairly strict, and standards of hygiene and personal responsibility were inculcated. For example,Judge's Handbook suggested that the children's hands be washed "in running water using soap only when necessary. Dry carefully to prevent chapping."

An important goal of the program was to give the children an experience of order and stability often lacking in their own families. Mealtimes especially were to be conducted with order and grace, with the children participating in the table setting and serving. Independence, self-reliance, and consideration of others were encouraged. The children were expected to replace their own dishes after meals and to pick up the toys they had used during play periods They were taught cooperation and respect for others Health concerns were also a part of the program; cod liver oil, a favorite dietary supplement of the thirties, was administered to each child daily. The Handbook directed that the attitude of the nursery teachers and assistants toward the children "should express common sense, naturalness, and sympathy."

Although the prescriptions and guidelines contained in the Handbook compiled byJudge are admittedly idealistic and may not have been rigorously observed at all times and in all places, one isimpressed by the broad, intelligent approach to the crucial task of shap-

Personal hygiene was another important element in the nursery school experience.

Pioneer Nursery School child receives his dose of cod liver oil, a popular dietary supplement of the 1930s. It contains large amounts of vitamins A andD.

ing and caring for small children in programs that were originally instituted for expedient and pragmatic economic and social reasons

Those involved in the nursery school programs enjoyed some lighter moments also On one occasion,Judge recalls, she was visiting the school in Helper during the story and music period that wasa feature of each school's daily activity. It was the only time when all the children gathered around the teacher who would tell stories and lead singing. The nurseries were usually notified ahead of a supervisor's visit, and, as expected, on this occasion the youngsters sang traditional children's songs.When they finished, theywere asked what else they might like to sing. One boy suggested "Roll Out the Barrel." This embarrassed the teacher but amusedJudge who directed the children to go ahead with the song

Judge remembers some distressing situations too.When children were absent from school, the nursery attendants would go to their homes to see ifthere wasaproblem On one occasion theyfound that a mother had not sent her children because they all had the "itch"

(scabies), one of the many distasteful afflictions that beset impoverished families. In another instance, afamily fumigating a shack to rid it of bedbugs had burned it down along with their meager possessions. There was a desperate need for cleanliness, food, and order among agreat number of people during the 1930s,Judge observed.

In "Final Report of the Child Protection Program," dated January 1943, Ruth Skidmore (McFarlane), who worked in the program from 1938 to 1943, notes that "Five Summer Training Sessions were held alternating summers at Utah State Agricultural College and the University of Utah." These seminars sought to make the workers in the program well trained and familiar with the best methods and policies of child care. Skidmore reports that the "full time of the workers for four to six weeks each summer was scheduled in concentrated study, discussion, observation and participation. Special consultants and authorities in child psychology, child guidance, nursery school procedures, nutrition and parent education were made available either through the institutions, or by direct WPA request."8 Judge played a prominent part in the sessionswhere child development and parent education were discussed, bringing her practical experience in the field to illuminate the academic aspects of the training The seminars attracted a number of participants from outside the state

Because of her training and reputationJudge was asked to go to Idaho in 1939 to help in the administration ofWPAnursery programs there under conditions of poverty similar to those in Utah Ruth Skidmore, who had been hired by and had worked under Judge as a supervisor in southeastern Utah, was selected to take her place. She found Judge an excellent supervisor and called her a methodical, accurate, and independent thinker.Judge could evaluate a situation and make a decision quickly, and she was usually right, Skidmore said.9 She was also solicitous of her supervisors and helpful in solving special problems. For example, on one occasion she arranged for a hyperactive child who disturbed all the other children during rest period to take his rest in the furnace room with thejanitor, there being no other place to take care of him

In her supervisory role,Judge drove all over the state, generally alone, and, Skidmore noted, she was reputed to drive very fast for

9 Interview with Ruth Skidmore MacFarlane

8 This report is part of Darrell J Greenwell's "Final Report of the State Administrator [Utah], Record Group 69, National Archives, Washington, D.C, microfilm copy in Utah State Historical Society Library

those times The roads during the 1930swere sometimes in poor condition and, considering the additional hazards of weather, one is impressed byJudge's courage Once she did have an accident and slid down an embankment, but the first persons on the scene were friends who rescued her only alittle theworse for wear.

Both Judge and Skidmore agreed that Utah communities were

The Martha Society Nursery School in Ogden, top, was photographed in May 1938; lowerphotograph shows children at the WPA nursery school in Vernal in late 1939 or early 1940.

interested and cooperative in supporting the nursery school programs. Individuals who were drawn into the federal programs that complemented and supplemented the nurseries also generally worked well together to achieve their objectives. The nursery schools were integrated with adult education and recreation programs. In 1940 Mack Nicholayson, Clifford L. Frye, and Darrell J. Greenwell were associated with these programs.

Judge's stay in Idaho was cut short by the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent entrance of the United States into World War II. Soon manyWPAnursery schoolswere closed throughout the country; others were converted within the next two years into wartime nurseries War industries and the military services quickly replaced the welfare programs that had been initiated during the depression

Several years earlier national leaders had recognized that the United States might be at war and that women would be needed in defense factories and other essential industries. After war was declared the need became urgent, and, asone account noted, women at work meant an increased need for child care:

It became clear early in the war that labor-starved war industries could never attract young mothers and keep their absenteeism to a minimum if some large-scale effort was not made to care for their children To meet the need for all varieties of social services growing out of the dislocations caused by the war, Congress passed, in 1941, the Community Facilities Act (or Lanham Act) to meet on a fifty-fifty basis the social service needs of war-impacted areas. In 1942, the Lanham Act was interpreted as being applicable to day care, and in October of that year the first grants were made to operate day care centers, more than eleven hundred of them former WPA nurseries.10

A clear distinction needs to be made between the WPA nurseries and the wartime or Lanham nurseries, although they did merge and the latter utilized the methods, equipment, and personnel of the earlier ones. Here again, it isimportant to recognize that many of the organizational and administrative methods employed in the WPA nurseries and later in the Lanham day care and extended day care programs in Utah were initiated byMelbaJudge although she gives much credit to her co-workers and others involved As field supervisor she had been in constant personal contact with the nurseries throughout the state; she did not administer her territory from a central office. It

Steinfels, Who's Minding the Children, p 67

isunderstandable that she would be chosen as one of the key persons to setup the new program

At the recommendation of Winifred Hazen, parent education director in the State Department of Education,Judge returned to Utah in 1942 to conduct a survey of the state to see where child care was needed to facilitate the war effort. Itwas not possible to automatically convert all the Utah WPA nurseries to wartime day care centers since many of them were not located in areas where war industries were being developed. Euphemistically labeled "The Child Protection Program," the Lanham nurseries were created as an emergency response to World War II labor needs Fortunately, Melba Judge, and others throughout the country who genuinely cared for children and had developed methods and philosophies for their best care, had established in the WPA nurseries a program that could be converted without agreat deal of stress to serve the country in wartime. The Lanham nurseries, named for Fritz Garland Lanham who had introduced the legislation, were integrated with the public school system rather than the institutions of higher learning, although colleges and universities were still involved. The administration of the program also changed to correspond more with the regional school districts that dispensed the funds They were set up under the direction ofJenny Campbell, state supervisor of elementary education

Since the largest wartime installation in Utah, Hill Field, was close to Ogden, Judge was assigned there and given an office in the Ogden City School District headquarters with a secretary, Phyllis Chapman, to help her carry out the establishment of wartime day care centers throughout Weber and Daviscounties Authorities at Hill Field, impatient with the state agencies thatwere trying to setup quality child care, had instituted its own program.Judge remembers visiting it and finding everything in disarray. According to her, itwasa "fiasco" because those in charge had no training or experience in child development. Their underlying assumption seems to have been that training was not necessary because anyone could "care" for children, a fallacy that has proved disastrous many times over.

Judge set out to find adequate housing, personnel, and equipment. In Ogden she was able to establish three child care centers immediately through the help of the Ogden City School District. One, the Pioneer Nursery School, was located in a church that had been serving asamuseum All the antiquities were moved out to accommodate the children. Another was set up at the condemned Quincy

Playground and lunchtime at Pioneer Nursery School, Ogden.

MelbaJudge Lehner55

School where the lower floor was still usable and the third at Bonneville, a wartime housing project at the north end of town. Fortunately,Judge was able to recruit a number of highly competent personswho had worked in the WPAnurseries,women like Roma Tueller Winn who was a trained social worker, having studied at MerrillPalmer. Winn was the head teacher at one of the WPA nurseries housed at the old Central School, a facility that was not ideally equipped for this purpose. She recalls having to take the children almost a block awayto use arestroom.11 Under the pressures offirst the depression and then the war it was necessary to make do with what was available.

Winn, who later transferred to the Granite School District's Lanham nursery program in Salt Lake County, felt thatJudge was an excellent supervisor with whom she and others in the program worked comfortably and shared basic philosophies about child care and development. Both Winn andJudge found that teachers who had been trained to teach in the elementary and high schools had a more difficult time adjusting to the preschool level than mothers and other unskilled workers. The teachers had a more regimented approach that was oriented to the curriculum rather than to the direct needs of the child. They had to acquire new attitudes and techniques to adjust to work in the nurseries.

Judge supervised all the nurseries set up in Weber and Davis counties, including those in Ogden City. They were established near or at wartime housing projects—Arsenal Villa, Washington Terrace, Anchorage, SaharaVillage, and Verdeland Park—to be convenient for parents working in defense installations A number of other day care facilities were set up throughout the state where they could support wartime activities The table on p 56 shows the location of nurseries and extended care centers asof September 15, 1944.12

The funds for the nurseries were received through the Federal Works Agency office in Salt Lake but administered by the various school districts. Although directives, bulletins, and guidelines were sent out from the FWAoffice,Judge had, because of her extensive experience, established sound working principles of her own One of her most successful strategies was to organize committees of prominent educators and able community members to advise and direct the

11 Interview with Roma Tueller Winn 12 May Stevens, Federal Works Agency, compiled this list

LANHAM ACT CHILD CARE CENTERS IN UTAH

program. Typical of thiswas the Weber County Child Care Committee which met regularly to discuss the problems of the community and the program. 13 In addition toJudge, the impressive list of members included:

Dale Anderson, Department of Welfare, Utah Army Service Forces Depot

Martha Mills,Utah Army Service Forces Depot

Ester W.Porter, Civilian Personnel, Naval Supply Depot

Chief Warrant Officer Ernest Walo, U.S. Adjutant General Section, U.S Quartermaster Depot

13 See committee file in Lehner Papers

Viva Olderoyd, Employee Relations Branch, Civilian Personnel, Hill Field

SaraWhite, Manpower Commission

Rev.G. R.Woods,African Methodist Church

Mrs. Frank Turner, Ogden Resident

Marcia Maish, Children's Aid Society

LaWanna Buffmgton, Employee Relations, Ogden Arsenal

Nellie U. Hendricks, Weber County Board of Education

George Simmons, Chairman, Weber County Commission

Sarah McCracken, Ogden CityBoard of Education

Harold Welch, Ogden City Commission

RayK.Goates, Ogden CityRecreation Department

June Coop, Ogden CityRecreation Department

W.Karl Hopkins, Superintendent, Ogden City Schools

Mrs George S Eccles, Citizens' Representative

Judge Theodore Bohn,Juvenile Court

Mrs Ira Martin, Executive Secretary, Office of Civil Defense

Lenore Billings, Civil Service Commission

Willamelia Smith, Weber County Welfare Department

LaVerna Peterson, Utah State Board of Health

Barbara Cordon, Community Building, Washington Terrace

Ezra Felstead, Executive Secretary, Community War Services Board

Under the WPA program parents were not charged for placing their children in the nurseries. During World War II it was suggested that part of the cost of day care could be met byamodest fee for each child—usually from $3.00 to $4.50 Since the program was designed to work closely with the schools and employ trained teachers, recommended salaries were to be consistent with the pay scale in the districts involved and the qualifications of the person, bearing in mind that day care staff worked six days a week during the school year and summer vacation period. The head teacher, according toJudge's files, received $185.00 per month. Assistants received from $125.00 to $145.00 per month. The chief cookwaspaid $115.00 and the assistant $105.00, while the housekeeper got $95.00 and the janitor $140.00 Since these salaries were higher in many cases than those of some public school teachers, willing workers were not hard to find Given this pay scale, operating expenses forJuly 1945 for the Pioneer Nursery School in Ogden, for example, amounted to $1,999.82.

The nursery school pay scale created one of the few stressful situations that Judge encountered in supervising the program She remembers approaching the superintendent of the Weber County School District, Dr. William P. Miller (later president of Weber State College, 1953-71), for help in recruiting teachers for the nurseries. With many teachers leaving the public schools for more lucrative defense jobs and the Lanham nursery program paying higher salaries than many school districts, Miller faced the problem of keeping the county's schools staffed. He responded curtly to Judge's need, although he apologized later, explaining that he wasunder a great deal of pressure at the time Judge and Miller became close friends during their years together atWeber State

The Lanham nurseries, although similar to the WPA nursery schools, were called day care centers because they were open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and cared for from fifty to seventy children. Like the former nursery schools, they had a supervisor, cook, assistant cook, janitor, and from four to six trained women teachers depending on the number of children. A lot of the equipment that had been designed and built for the WPA program was utilized. The experience gained in the earlier program helped immensely in facilitating the war effort by providing well organized and supervised programs of child care

Following the policies that had predominated in the evolution of such institutions, only children from the age of two to five were accepted at these centers. Parents had to arrange for infant care elsewhere. The children were divided into three groups—two year olds, three and four year olds, and five year olds—so that the ratio of caretaker or teacher to child could be adjusted.

Itwas soon apparent that this did not meet all the needs of working parents whose older children sometimes required supervision both before and after normal public school hours. Under the extended day care program children up to fourteen years of age could receive supervision and food Guidelines for this program suggested that "Since the extended school program is closely related to the elementary school department every effort should be made to integrate the before and after school program with the regular school activities."14 Addie Swapp was chosen to head this program in Utah. Many of the personnel were regular teachers who stretched their work day

14 Lehner Papers

Above: Simple WPA playground equipment was also used by Lanham nurseries. Left: Child demonstrates correct table-settingprocedure. Note small vase with flowers.

to contribute their skills to the war effort This program provided peace of mind and security to families engaged in defense work. Nationally, according to one report, "By the peak of the program in 1945, between 105,000 and 130,000 children were enrolled in these centers."15

A report submitted by the Weber County School District office, March 14, 1946, indicates that this district alone operated a program from January 1944 to February 1946 in which about 650 children were served. The Weber program addressed the health and education

MelbaJudge Lehner59

The WPA in Action (New York: Crown Publishing, 1962), p 228

needs of the preschool child with a schedule that "included mornin g inspection, breakfast, mid-morning lunch, noon-day meal, afternoon nap, rest periods, washing and toilet periods, and free play activities." Th e report noted that the program had "qualified personnel," including teachers with college degrees and some who "had majored in Child Development." Th e staff participated in a variety of training programs, including an intensive summer session during which "a nutritionist was employed and gave individual instruction in the centers as well as group instruction and demonstrations." 1 6

Th e weakest part of the wartime day care program seemed to be the involvement of parents It had been one of the main objectives of both the WPA and the Lanham nurseries to improve the education of parents about child development and care The Weber report states that "Because of the war situation and the long working hours of parents, it was impossible to do an adequate jo b in parent education." Nevertheless, informal daily contacts with parents, individual conferences between the parents and head teacher, distribution of mimeographed material pertaining to child care and guidance, and group meetings gave many parents new insights They often expressed their appreciation of the program and learned the value of having teachers who were trained to handle young children care for their offspring.17

As noted earlier, neither the WPA nor the Lanham nurseries had as their primary object the benefit of children Helping impoverished families in the depression and, later, the war industry were the principal aims. So, the positive values derived by families from the programs were actually by-products of social and economic necessities Given that historical background, Judg e expressed hope that present and future programs may change that emphasis to make the children's needs the central concern of day care

Typical of programs dependen t upo n temporary government grants, the day care centers, having made their contribution to the success of the war effort, were closed in 1946. Some national voices objected to this short-sighted action since a numbe r of women such as war widows and women with disabled husbands and other exigencies neede d or wished to remain in the work force.

Judge found herself unemployed It seemed that the immense

Report in Lehner Papers.

MelbaJudge Lehner61

amount of work and care that she had invested during the past ten years in providing quality child care in nurseries and day care centers throughout the state and region was to no avail. However, with her good record and wealth of experience, she was not without ajob for long. She had served on the state board of the PTA for several years, acting as chair of the Preschool and Parent Education Committee. Winifred Hazen, who was head of the parent education program of the State Department of Public Instruction, arranged forjudge to become the director of parent education in the Ogden city schools and to teach child development classes at Weber College She held these positions from 1946 to 1950

In 1950 MelbaJudge married Joseph Lehner, director of health services at Hill Air Force Base. He was a vigorous outdoorsman who taught her to ski and to playgolf and tennis They enjoyed these activities until his death in 1976

Lehner continued her career at Weber which in the late 1940s was in the process of planning the move from the lower to the upper campus Henry Aldous Dixon, college president, had asked the members of the home economics faculty to make suggestions for a cooking and sewing laboratory Even though Lehner was then only a part-time employee, she requested that plans for the department include a child development program and anursery school. Dixon told her that there was no room for it but changed his mind when two things occurred. He attended an accreditation conference in the Northwest where he wasshown anursery school with an observation window and became aware that the trend in education was toward studying personal relationships and child development psychology. Then he learned that the daughter of a friend of his who had taken Lehner's child development classescould not transfer her credits to another institution because she had not had the nursery experience Asa result, Dixon invited Lehner to help plan for accommodations for a nursery school at the college. The cooking and sewing areas were rearranged so that room could be made for the child development program.

When Alda Hurst retired as head of the home economics department at Weber College in 1950, Dixon asked Lehner to assume the position. She was surprised to learn that she was the whole department, obliged to teach foods, clothing, home management, etc Early in this new calling she taught twenty-eight hours of home economic subjects during the year Later she gained some assistance, hiring Bessie Mumford to teach clothing and Carol Tribe to teach foods.

In 1952 Winifred Hazen offered Lehner $2,000 from her state budget to set up a project at Weber relating to parent education.

Lehner organized a nursery school in the home that President Dixon had vacated on the lower campus of Weber College in 1951 upon acquiring a new residence The nursery was open from 9 a.m to noon, and parents worked one day in the nursery and attended a class related to child care. This format wasbased on the model of the parent cooperative nursery school and laid the foundation for the child development program on the new campus.

Later, in new quarters on the upper campus, the nursery school accepted about twenty children in a morning session and twenty-five in the afternoon. Lunch was not served, but other aspects of nursery school care in which Lehner was so well trained were incorporated into a program that still flourishes at Weber State University. When the new Education Building was constructed, the nursery school was designed byLehner, Ruth Williams, and Gordon Geddes, members of the faculty at that time

Presently the Weber State University program has expanded to include two nurseries or preschools operating from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. or 3 p.m. with the emphasis on child-parent training. There is also a day care center where children ofworking mothers can be cared for from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. All facilities have laboratories and kitchens and are used to train students in child development and family life theories and skills

Lehner feels that teacher training at all levels should include some experience in this area because many of the problems that occur in the elementary and secondary schools (and perhaps beyond) can be traced to the development of children during these early formative ages. Her long and valuable experience has resulted in an outstanding program. When she retired in 1972it had become a distinctive part of the educational curriculum In 1983 the Melba Lehner Children's School at Weber State was named in her honor In June 1992 WSU gave further recognition to Lehner for her contribution to child care and higher education byawarding her an honorary doctorate.

Soft spoken and gentle of manner, yetwith a forcefulness of purpose that impressed those who have worked with her, Melba Judge Lehner successfully established a crucial program that will inevitably continue to play a significant part in directing and shaping the future of our society through intelligent care of our children.

An Economic Kaleidoscope: The Stephen Hales Family of Bountiful

BY JANICE P DAWSON

Stephen Hales. Photographs courtesy of author.

Mrs Dawson, a descendant of Stephen Hales, lives in Layton, Utah Aversion of this paper was presented at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Utah State Historical Society

LAT E NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOUNTIFUL WAS A typical Mormon-dominated Utah community Still agriculturally oriented, but gradually developing commercially, it provided some economic opportunities for enterprising individuals In that setting this study of the Stephen Hales family examines their struggles, often fraught with frustration and disappointment, to remain economically viable through a period of depression an d change Despite his ingenuity and perseverance, an d perhaps because of the stigma of his excommunication, Hales eventually left Utah to pursue his career elsewhere.

Stephen Hales was an artist. Since there was n o opportunity to support his family with this talent h e turne d to other means of subsistence, often utilizing his artistic abilities in the process. In his early years Hales held a numbe r of commo n jobs. Later, h e became Bountiful's first official postmaster and its first photographer H e also undertook several business ventures, the most successful of which was an entertainment center known as Hales Hall. Th e 1893 financial panic challenged his ingenuity as he attempted various ways to remain economically stable.

Hales's wife an d children were also vital to the family's financial success. In addition to raising the children, Jan e Alice Crosby Hales kept the house, helped with the orchard and garden, and boarded working me n in he r home She worked alongside he r husband both as postmistress an d in their entertainment business. In later years she took over the managemen t of Hales Hall. As the children matured they became actively engaged in different family enterprises

Both Stephen an d Jan e Alice came from Mormo n pioneer families. H e was bor n in 1849 at Garden Grove, Iowa, to Stephen an d Eveline Lydia Carter Hales. Two years later the Hales family moved to the Salt Lake Valley where the father was employed as a stone carver on the Salt Lake Temple. In 1868 they settled in South Bountiful. Jane's parents, Joh n Knowles and Mary Jan e Johnso n Crosby, also emigrated to Salt Lake in 1851 an d the following year made their hom e in Bountiful where Jan e Alice was bor n in 1853.1

Stephen an d Jan e were married in the Salt Lake Endowment House on December 18, 1871, byJoseph F. Smith. They lived with the Crosby family in Bountiful in 1876 while building their own hom e at

1 Genealogical Records of Cleo Hales Page in possession of aufhor. Also see 1870 census and emigrant list, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City; "Stephen Hales," brief typescript by daughter Loanda Hales Burningham; Davis County Clipper, August 26, 1898

The Stephen Hales Family65

530 South Second West. This home, and the entertainment hall later added onto it, was center stage for the Hales family endeavors for most of their married life. There they reared their children and conducted their business enterprises.2

With one exception the birth of the seven Hales children followed a regular two-year pattern. Stephen Anthony arrived September 1872 andJohn Knowles in November of 1874.MaryJane was born November 1876, the same year the family moved into their new home on Second West. Irvin Orlando was born September 1878 but lived only nineteen months.3

Hales was an ambitious man. In his earliest working experience he assisted his father on the Salt Lake Temple by hauling rock and learning the rudiments of stone carving and carpentry He also worked as a farmhand, a laborer, and a freighter hauling goods from Salt Lake City to Black Rock Canyon, Eagle Rock, and later to Idaho Falls.4

On their five Bountiful acres the Hales family kept a cow and planted a large vegetable garden. Along with many other Bountiful settlers they also raised avariety offruit, much ofwhich was dried and used for barter Itwassometimes taken to Teasdel's dry goods store in Salt Lake and exchanged for clothing or other needs For many years Jane also provided board and room for some of the men employed at a nearby brickyard.5

In 1882, at age thirty-three, Stephen wasappointed as Bountiful's postmaster. Previously located in Woods Cross, the post office was moved almost a mile east to the Hales home, a more convenient site for Bountiful customers The office was set up in the kitchen at the front of the house Postal officials designated this location as the official Bountiful Post Office in 1883and closed the Woods Cross office.6 Hales also started another business in his home about this time. During the "early eighties"he took up photography which became his profession and his most enduring source of income. He took portraits

2 Page genealogical records; Burningham, "Stephen Hales."

3 Page genealogical records

4 "History of Stephen Hales," brief typescript by granddaughter Veta May Atkinson Brown; 1870 census

5 Second District Court, Davis County, Orders and Decrees 1896-1907, Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City; Davis County Clipper, October 3,1902; Brown, "History of Stephen Hales."

6 Open House-Bountiful City Post Office, commemorative booklet dated August 29, 1954, n.p., in possession of author. Several dates here differ from other sources. See also Bountiful Area Historic Sites, Bicentennial Edition (Bountiful, Ut., 1977), p 15; Davis County Clipper, April 29, November 24, 1892

in his home studio with the aid of "flashlight" powder and then developed them in Jane's kitchen. Later he mobilized his operation, taking pictures in patrons' homes and at different sites around the town.7

With all this activity in her kitchen, Jane naturally became involved Although it is not known if she assisted Stephen with his photography, she helped regularly with the postal work. When they took over this assignment in June 1882 Jane was six months pregnant. Their fifth child, Lydia Eveline, was born the following September Jane now had four youngsters to care for. Two more children arrived on schedule, LoandaJanette in 1884, and two years later, Walter, who died the same day. Balancing birth and death, household, farm, photography, and post office duties, along with civic, church, family, and financial obligations was a continuing challenge for this couple.8

But there was yet another complication. Stephen andJane were both raised in the Mormon church Jane served as secretary of the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association before her marriage and as MIA counselor about seven years later when she was pregnant with their fourth child However, Stephen did not keep pace In the intervening years something changed his attitude toward the gospel. In January 1885, thirteen years after their Endowment House marriage, Stephen was excommunicated. He was never antagonistic toward the church and even thought it was "probably the best church to be found." Nor did he object to supporting the church financially on occasion. When he and Jane went to Salt Lake City they were known to have stopped first to fulfill their obligation at the tithing yard before they went shopping But Hales could not accept certain key doctrines, including Joseph Smith's prophetic calling, so he was cut off.9

During the federal polygamy raids in Bountiful about this time, Hales was called a "tattler" and falsely accused of aiding the marshals who knew of his position and took advantage of it As suspected offenders were lined up, Hales was asked to identify those who had more than one wife. One account states, "He went down the line and shook his head." Later, "he said he knew alright[«'c], but [he] never

7 Annie C Carr, "Davis County," in Heart Throbs of the West, ed. Kate B. Carter, 12 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1939-51), 9:135

8 Page genealogical records

9 Kim Burningham, Bountiful, has collected a variety of material on Stephen Hales. See also Deseret News, January 26, 1885; Page genealogical records; East Bountiful Ward Records, LDS Church Archives; Brown, "History of Stephen Hales."

The Stephen Hales Family67

gave them away."He had no arguments with his neighbors about their lifestyle, but some of them still considered him a traitor.10

As a nonconformist Hales walked a tightrope in this close-knit Mormon community. His excommunication automatically meant he was also socially suspect. Some members referred to him as "the apostate" and spoke against him and his dance hall. Others accepted him for what he was Bishop Chester Call said "he had 'no feelings against' Stephen Hales, and respected him for his candor and morality." Although Hales remained prominent in business and community affairs for some time, he and his family still bore a social stigma.11

During this same period, 1884-85, Hales conceived of one of his more successful undertakings, a recreation center. Although entertainment was available in Salt Lake, it was inconvenient for Bountiful residents Recognizing this need, Hales built an extension onto the north side of his home that became known as Hales Hall.12

At first the hall was only a small room with a stage and portable benches; however, Hales later enlarged it to accommodate dancing and roller skating He built and painted his own scenery as well as a large oil painting that served as the stage curtain As curtain time arrived,Jane rang a school bell calling the audience to order and then rolled up the painted canvas curtain on such plays as TheMistletoe Bough,RipVanWinkle,EastLynne, and UncleTom'sCabin. Audiences also enjoyed operettas, vaudeville, ventriloquists, and minstrel shows presented by local ward talent as well as traveling groups. In the spring of 1892 "a musical comedy which [had] toured the east" was featured with a "free dance after the show." The Hales home was utilized for dressing rooms, and sometimes, when it was too late for the actors to travel on, they also spent the night there. This often entailed sleeping crosswise on the beds to make room for everyone. 13

Hales Hall became the central focus of this family's life. All who were old enough participated in its care and upkeep The janitorial work, described by a daughter as "strenuous," kept them busy The coal oil lamps around the room, including two large central chandeliers with eight lamps each, had to be cleaned and filled regularly.

10 Thomas Briggs Journal, LDS Church Archives, microfilm, March 12, 1887; Burningham, "Stephen Hales."

11 BriggsJournal, December 18, 1877; Burningham collection

12 "Hales Hall," brief typescript by daughter Mary Jane Hales Hulse; Burningham, "Stephen Hales."

13 Burningham, "Stephen Hales"; Brown, "History of Stephen Hales"; Hulse, "Hales Hall"; Davis County Clipper, May 20, 1892

This was a formidable assignment for the children, especially when the windows, opened by overheated dancers, caused the lamps to smoke. Hales took "great pride" in his dance floor. During performances a layer of sawdust protected it against scraping benches. To prepare for a dance, the sawdust was bagged for reuse and a "secret preparation" was applied to the floor. Then candle shavings were sprinkled over the floor and the dancer's feet polished it to a brilliant shine. Both parents and children shared in the work and the joy of entertaining others.14

Top: Hales Hall, Fifth South and Second West, Bountiful. Lowerphotograph shows the Hales home, where the post office was located, and additions to it that created Hales Hall.

14 Burningham, "Stephen Hales"; Hulse, "Hales Hall."

The Stephen Hales Family69

Dancing was the entertainment highlight at Hales Hall. On the beautiful dance floor square dances, the two step, polka, Virginia reel, grand quadrille, and even an occasional waltz were all enjoyed. Alocal orchestra usually supplied the music. One such ensemble consisted of a bass viol, two or three violins, and a drum. Later on Salt Lake orchestras also played there. Hales provided a separate room where small children stayed with a babysitter while their parents danced into the night. Afternoon dances for children were also held at times Benefit dances for departing missionaries were another special event, and at least one young man courted his future wife at aHales Hall dance while her missionary wasoff preaching.15

Masquerade balls offered an exciting variation. Hales usually led the grand opening march, giving everyone achance to review the costumes. Later in the evening, after prizes were awarded for the best characters, the unmasking took place The Hales children often participated in the festivities Lydia and Loa, twelve and eight years old respectively, led an opening march masquerading asTom Thumb and his wife. Admission was usually fifty cents for dancers and twenty-five cents for spectators. So that no one would miss the fun, the Hales familysupplied costume rentals for such events.16

With her hair crimped and wearing a "changeable silk dress," Jane Alice presided over the refreshments for different occasions. She often prepared a midnight lunch for the musicians. One evening, for example, she offered a "beautiful plate of fresh fruit . . . mince pie,

Jane Alice Crosby Hales.

15 Ibid.; Davis County Clipper, February 24, 1899; interview with Alvin Moss, Bountiful, August 2, 1983; interview withJ. Rulon Hales, Salt Lake City, September 1, 1983.

16 Brown, "History of Stephen Hales"; Hulse, "Hales Hall"; Burningham, "Stephen Hales."

fruit cake and coffee, [and]many other delicious foods." She also served fashionable oyster suppers to her guests.17

In addition to theater and dancing, Hales Hall was utilized for numerous occasions over the years. Twice weekly the hall was opened for roller skating, which became a popular pastime, with skates renting for twenty-five cents. The Hales children often joined in, for they each had skates of their own. Later on, basketball games were also played there. Different groups rented the hall for private balls, recitals,family reunions, weddings and receptions, elections, and avariety of meetings—including political conventions, phrenology lectures, and other events.18

In 1892, the same year Bountiful became a city, the steam engine affectionately known as the "dummy" reached Bountiful. This was an advantage for Hales as the track ran immediately east of his hall In anticipation of increased business from Salt Lake customers he made major renovations to his property that year. He moved the side walls of the hall out to expand the building, partitioned off several rooms, and "decorated" all with plaster. He added a ladies dressing room, a checking room for the men, and a ticket office, along with upstairs rooms for private gatherings such as family reunions. To finish it off, Hales purchased a beautiful Cornish piano, supposedly the first upright in Bountiful, and installed a shiny nickel soda fountain from which Jane dispensed refreshing drinks and candy During the summer awellwasalso driven on the Hales property.19

Another addition, Hales Gardens, was also developed in 1892 With provision for outdoor dancing, races, croquet, and a "big swing," it drew many summertime crowds such asagroup of 150from an LDS ward in Salt Lake who spentJuly 24th at the gardens that year. 20

Earlier that spring the post office was moved from the Hales kitchen to the front of their entertainment hall, facing Fifth South. Besides a more businesslike atmosphere, these new accommodations provided other improvements. The installation of 238 glass-front rental boxes simplified the Hales's work and eliminated waiting in line for the customers Money orders also became available for the first time in 1892 The Clipper commented that "these little steps in ad-

17 Hulse, "Hales Hall"; Brown, "History of Stephen Hales"; Moss interview

18 Hulse, "Hales Hall"; Burningham, "Stephen Hales."

19 Ira L Swett, Interurbans of Utah, 2d ed rev (Cerritos, Calif., 1974), p 9; Hulse, "Hales Hall"; Burningham, "Stephen Hales"; Davis County Clipper, June 24, August 24, 1892

20 Davis County Clipper, July 20, 1892

The Stephen Hales Family71

vance proves that our town is growing" and urged everyone "to support our public improvements." Sons Stephen Anthony andJohn assisted their parents with postal duties, including mail pickup and delivery to the Woods Cross railroad depot.21

In addition to the extensive hall and post office renovations, Hales was involved with other speculations that year. In March 1892 an open meeting washeld at the Bountiful Tabernacle to consider the organization of alumber and planing mill Acommittee, set up to determine the cost of machinery and lumber, discovered a new building for sale.Theyjudged the $4,300 price agood buy, and the project was considered a "sure go" after Hales offered to buy the building "if the rest of the Company will house it and stock up." However, the following month, with only $3,200 worth of stock subscribed, the board of directors disbanded. Apparently Hales and several others were overly optimistic about their financial resources. Within a short time two new lumber yards were organized, but Hales was not involved with them.22

Several weeks later Hales, along with William Putman, leased a brickyard from Jane's brother, John K Crosby, Jr This probably seemed like a safe undertaking, for brickmaking was Bountiful's largest industry. At one time the town was reputed to have manufactured more than half the brick produced in the territory. The outcome of the Hales/Putman investment, however, islost in the past.23

Alongwith his business ventures, Haleswasalso active in community affairs. He was a member of an executive committee formed to bring new manufacturing into Bountiful and was also called to jury duty. A firm Republican, he worked hard at the 1896 Davis County convention to "lighten the burden on the farmer by lowering salaries He told of gardners [sic] who worked twenty hours a day during the summer season and then did not make half as much money as some of our officers who work only eight hours a day." He also served on the committee on platform and resolution that year. 24

Consistentwith many small towns of the late 1800s,Bountiful supported a debate club. Its meets were sopopular that one evening a debatejudge had to siton the floor for lack of seating. Hales participated in many such events, defending the affirmative on such subjects as the

21 Davis County Clipper, April 29, November 24, 1892; Open House—Bountiful City Post Office.

22 The Little Clipper, March 4, 11, 19, 25, April 23, 1892.

23 Davis County Clipper, May 6, 1892; Bountiful Historic Sites, p 24

24 Davis County Clipper, March 2, 1893; September 25, 1896; February 5,June 11, 1897

"railroads have done more for the civilization and advancement of Utah than her schools" and arguing the negative on the proposition that "alcohol has caused more misery than gold" and that "prohibition would do more to relieve the financial distress of the United States than any other legislation."25

During 1893 Hales continued to explore new areas of investment, but itwasnot afavorable time for him or for many others That year "the American economy went into a slump that lasted until the turn of the century, both nationally and in Utah. . . . the total economy of Utah and the Mormon Church itself reeled under the impact of the depression of the 1890's. Production declined, businesses and mines failed, cash became scarce, and unemployment soared."26 Hales's new pursuits following that year were probably born of necessity.A number of setbacks plagued him until, seven years later, he left Bountiful to try his luck in Idaho.

Hard times produced a domino effect. As business slowed some companies curtailed credit, and this in turn affected other businesses and individuals By the fall of 1893 the depression was hurting Hales

One of the rooms in his hall, leased to Richard Solomon for a shoe repair shop, was vacated Due to the depressed economy the Bountiful Co-op discontinued credit and began a more aggressive collection of debts. The Co-op brought suit against Stephen Hales and Richard Duerden on their promissory note of $279.When neither of them appeared in court, the marshal levied their holdings at several Salt Lake City banks. Upon appeal the levy was dropped, but it was February 1896 before the courts settled the suit with thejudgment again favoring the Co-op. The following August a new note was signed, amounting to $346 plus costs.27

During 1894-95 the effects of the depression became evident even at social events. For example, a charity ball at Hales Hall raised money for the poor of the three Bountiful LDS wards, and at several "hard times" masquerade balls dancers were encouraged to "wear your old duds "28

25 Davis County Clipper, January 12, February 2, 1893;February 12, 1897; March 4, 1898

26 Dean L May in Utah's History, ed Richard D Poll (Provo, Ut: Brigham Young University Press, 1978), p. 237.

27 Davis County Clipper, September 28, November 16, 1893; Third District Court, Salt Lake County, Minute Book 1896, February 3, 1896;Judgement Docket, January 20, 1896 -June 16, 1898, p. 7; Case #12742, "Stephen Hales, et al.," December 22, 1893, Utah State Archives Jane Hales inherited 25 shares of Bountiful Co-op stock from her father Upon her death she had 22 shares

28 Davis County Clipper, January 25, 1894; February 1, 1895

The Stephen Hales Family73

The hardest blow for Hales was the loss of his position as postmaster in 1894. Perhaps it was not a surprise, though, for a year earlier two different petitions had circulated in Bountiful, "one to have and the other not to have our post office removed." Later the Clipper management complained about the delivery of their paper It had been taken to the post office, but Hales, "through an oversight failed to get it out in the first mail." In May the post office was moved uptown to the Opera House building at the direction of the "new Democratic postmaster," Charles H. Rampton. The change to Democratic control of the White House the year before most likely led to Hales's release.The Clippereditor, who had extolled Hales's post office improvements in 1892, now commented, "from now on it is hoped that we shall have good post office accommodations."29

The same year a new pleasure garden known as Eden Park opened in Bountiful. Located along Barton Creek and providing "the only shade in a Utah Park," it offered picnic facilities, refreshments, a ball diamond, and dancing. It also provided summertime competition for Hales Gardens.30

The financial strain on the Hales family was probably relieved somewhat when the two oldest children left the home in 1894: Stephen Anthony to make a career in California and MaryJane to be married two daysbefore Christmas.31

In the meantime, Hales came up with several new schemes to supplement his income. He became a sales agent for a new force pump used in fighting fires.AtaBountiful fire he demonstrated three of them to prove their usefulness.32 Then in December 1894 Hales announced that he had "discovered a linament [sic] which will cure all kinds of aches and pains." An agent was promoting both the liniment and the Clipper throughout DavisCounty, "one to killpains, the other to comfort hearts," as the Clipper editor expressed it. The following month Hales reported that hislinimentwas "givingsuch good satisfaction that the demand for it keeps him rustling." Perhaps this enhanced his reputation, for severalyearslater hisname appeared on alistoflocal debaters asDr Stephen Hales. Or maybe hejust felt the need of a title, for among his fellow debaters were listed a preacher, an attorney, and an ex-judge.33

29 Davis County Clipper, April 19, May 10,June 14, 1894; April 29, 1892.

30 Leslie T Foy, The City Bountiful (Bountiful, Ut.: Horizon Publishers, 1975), p 192

31 Page genealogical records

32 Davis County Clipper, August 16, 1894.

33 Davis County Clipper, December 27, 1894;January 10, 1895; February 12, 1897

After the liniment project was launched Hales announced penmanship classes to begin inJanuary 1896. From his years as postmaster he realized that many Bountiful citizens wrote poorly or not at all. The Clipper commented, "His ability as a penman iswidely known and his beautiful art productions have been seen by hundreds who have visited his dancing hall. It is a pity that our schools are not so graded that Mr. Hales could teach writing in them." Undaunted, he organized twice weekly evening sessions in three different Bountiful locations charging one dollar for twelve lessons.34

The results of these entrepreneurial detours remain unclear. Whether he sold any fire pumps or liniment, or whether the proffered penmanship classes were actually held, Hales was still unable to cope financially. With the loss of his post office appointment and the depression, meeting his obligations proved difficult.

It appears that Haleswassoinvolved in his numerous projects by now that he left the matter of running the hall to his family John collected the rentals, including a two-dollar charge for the city election Because they had not paid their license fees,Jane Alice had to negotiate with the city counciljust to keep the hall open. She pleaded that closing it "would work a hardship on her," but ifit remained open she would be able to pay all arrears more quickly. The city agreed, but "the marshal was instructed to collect each evening's license as it became due."35

In 1897 Hales offered to rent the hall for $50 annually to the local national guard for use asan armory. The offer was not accepted then, but later an addition was made to the southwest corner of the hall for the use of the militia.36

Hales began to concentrate more on his art and photography. He had received recognition earlier when one of his pen-and-ink drawings represented Utah at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 In 1897he sold lithographed copies ofan intricate family register he had drawn He also did crayon portraits and some cartoon work for the Clipper. That same year he and Alma Hardy, another local artist/photographer, painted the Great Salt Lake and its islands on twenty-twofoot streamers for Bountiful's entry in the July 24th Jubilee parade.

34 Davis County Clipper, December 27, 1895;January 10, 1896

35 Davis County Clipper, November 29, 1895;April 10, 17, 1896

36 Charles Rendell Mabey Diary, October 22, 1897, in possession of Ralph Mabey, Bountiful; Davis County Clipper, January 20, 1899; October 11, 1901;Hulse, "Hales Hall."

The Stephen Hales Family75

Tftis Family Register created by Stephen Hales displays his artistic skill and penmanship. He lithographed the ornate blankform and sold copies of it one of several endeavors to earn moneyfrom his artistic talent. Note that data at the bottom and upper right of theform was entered by a hand less skilled than Stephen's.

t j 'pffi;r°\f'¥*&*a&jf&JkJs**^

Covered with vegetables, the float touted Bountiful as "the garden spot of Utah."37

Hales also took advantage of the current popularity of stereopticon pictures After several busy months of picture taking he offered an assortment for sale in January 1898. He specialized in local subjects, including Lagoon's ice harvest, Woods Cross Cannery employees, Samoan relics of W. O. Lee, and several Ogden scenes. He also took pictures of local events such as the old folks dinner. These views for the stereoscope sold for twenty-five cents each.38

With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Hales and his oldest son, Stephen Anthony, who was then a photographer in San Francisco, kept busy photographing the troops. When the Bountiful volunteers left in May "amidst parades and great fanfare" Hales was there to record the event. Upon their arrival in San Francisco, son Stephen repeated the process. He reported a brisk business in taking pictures of the soldiers in California, "as the boys are crazy after photos and promise us large returns." Hales most likely did aswell on the Utah end, and he continued to exploit this theme when he constructed a snow sculpture in Bountiful's tithing yard square that winter and titled it "A Living Monument, Dedicated to the American Heroes."With a group of local ladies arranged around it, he recorded it for posterity with his camera. 39

Although the arrival of the interurban railroad in 1892 had heralded a period of prosperity for Hales Hall, ironically it was also one of the reasons for its decline. Simon Bamberger's first goal for his new line was Beck's Hot Springs, a popular resort four miles north of Salt Lake City. The line was then extended to Bountiful and included a stop at Hales Hall. Later, it continued on to Farmington where in 1896 a new resort known as Lagoon was opened. Lagoon's popularity soon outstripped most other attractions in Davis County This, along with the earlier opening of the even more popular Saltair in 1893, triggered the decline of many smaller places like Hales Hall.40 Saltair was established byagroup of Mormon officials "to provide a wholesome place of recreation under church control for ... families

37 Davis County Clipper, March 9, 1893; February 12, March 12, April 9, July 23, 1897; June 3, 1898; Brown, "History of Stephen Hales"; Hulse, "Hales Hall"; photographic copy of the family register in possession of author

38 Davis County Clipper, January 7, February 11, 1898

39 Davis County Clipper, June 10,June 17, 1898; February 24, 1899.

40 Swett, Interurbans of Utah, p 9; Nancy D and John S McCormick, Saltair (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985), p. 32.

The Stephen Hales Family77

and young people." There was a similar movement in Bountiful with intermittent but ongoing dialogue from Mormon priesthood leaders against private dancing parties, masquerade balls, and in particular, round dancing, which they felt was "injurious to [the] young and led to evil."Some of this talkwas aimed directly at the "apostate" Stephen Hales whom they felt did not operate his hall "according to standards." Both Bountiful wards sponsored dances at Hales Hall "for the purpose of controlling [them]." The more acceptable Bountiful Opera House competed with Hales Hall for many years by also offering a variety of entertainment. About 1900 the management of the opera house offered Jane Alice $80 ayear to close Hales Hall.41

Hales's participation in Bountiful affairs seemed to decline after 1898, for, compared to earlier times, very few of his activities were reported in the Clipper. With pressure on him to close the hall, the presence of a second photographer in Bountiful, and perhaps for personal reasons, Hales moved to Idaho sometime in 1900 where he became Rexburg's first photographer With their three younger daughters,Jane Alice remained in Bountiful where she died February 17, 1901, following a lengthy illness. After her death, Stephen Anthony opened a photography studio in the Hales Hall building. He left Bountiful tojoin hisfather in Rexburg in late 1901but remained only a short time, returning in May 1902 to reopen his Bountiful shop. The elder Hales later left Idaho, moving to Ohio, Florida, and finally Georgia where he remarried and continued his photographic work. He died in Cordele, Georgia, July 4, 1915. In the meantime, Hales Hallwassold to Richard Purcell and later to aMr.Deveraux. It continued in use asan entertainment hall into the 1920s.42

The economic activities of the Stephen Hales family of Bountiful were a mixture of the typical and the atypical. Part of their basic subsistence wasgleaned from farming, but their main business was entertainment This provided positive work and social experiences for both parents and children

While Hales fulfilled his post office assignment, he also became a professional photographer He was sustained in this by his wife and

41 McCormick, Saltair, p 23; East Bountiful Ward Records, Sacrament Meeting Minutes, 1884-1903, January 30, 1896, LDS Church Archives; Charles R Mabey, Our Father's House: Joseph Thomas Mabey Family History (Salt Lake City, 1947), pp 220-21; Briggs Journal, December 18, 1887; Hulse, "Hales Hall."

42 Post Register (Idaho Falls), December 27, 1966; Davis County Clipper, February 22, April 5, 19, 1901; May 23, 1902;June 11, 1909;January 26, 1917 Also see R L Polk & Co.'s Utah Gazetteer, 1903-04, pp 96, 764; Page genealogical records; Burningham, "Stephen Hales"; Hulse, "Hales Hall."

children, and his oldest son followed in his footsteps. Hales was an entrepreneurial explorer, but his heart was always with his art. Although fettered by economic reality, he continued to use his artistic talents in a variety of ways. Thus, the family's future was determined by a creative but restless husband and father who was independent in thought and action

While the Hales family remained part of the Mormon community, they did not feel at ease because of Stephen's excommunication; and the reverberations from this affected his business. Hales's explorations into new channels often proved to be financial dead ends; however, his more successful endeavors, photography and entertainment, sustained his family and also provided Bountiful with services unique at the time. In his failures he was not unlike others caught in the depression, except that his attempted solutions were singular. Nevertheless, Hales's adaptability and diversity could not overcome the triple force of a depressed economy, ecclesiastical distrust, and increased competition. For almost thirty years Stephen and Jane Alice Halesworked to befriend, serve, and entertain others while raising their family. Although their success wasvaried, their contribution to the social and economic condition of Bountiful was significant for their time.

The Dream and the Reality

BY HELEN B GARDNER AND QUENTON T BOWLER

Area south ofGunlock, Utah, photographed by Charles Kelly ca. 1940, was typical of the terrain where the PPTC built its lines. USHS collections. Above: PPTC minute book. Courtesy of authors.

Mrs Gardner, a freelance writer, lives in Gunlock, Utah Dr Bowler, her brother, is head of the Teacher Education Department at Southern Utah University, Cedar City Henry D Holt was their maternal grandfather and John H Bowler and J S P Bowler their paternal grandfather and great grandfather respectively

TH E YEAR WAS 1912 At his ranch home in Central, Utah, Henry Davis Holt sat listening to an itinerant dry goods drummer tell the story of how many telephone companies were being formed in northern Utah.1 Lines like silver ribbons, the man told Holt, were being strung across the state to connect homes and businesses. The telephone was a mostwondrous invention.

Telephones were not unheard of in this remote and isolated high desert area of southwestern Utah, but Holt and his rancher friends were a day's ride on horseback or wagon to reach one. St. George, Utah, thirty miles to the south was the home of the Southern Utah Telephone Company. It boasted of a one-line connection to Salt Lake City,four hundred miles to the north. The road linking Central to St. George was at that time nothing more than two ruts worn into sagebrush-covered flats and winding around barren hillsides covered with large lava rocks

A vision began forming in Holt's mind of placing telephones in every home in this isolated part of southwestern Utah. Adynamic and energetic man, he was the ideal person for the drummer to converse with about the telephone. Holt was known for his progressive ways and his willingness to try something new; moreover, he was a man of action He decided the country needed telephone service Here was the means to bind together the hard-to-reach ranches and small hamlets existing on the lip of the harsh Great Basin

The first man Holt contacted was James Samuel Page Bowler, who lived in Gunlock. This village, twelve miles southwest of Central, sat in a canyon on the banks of the small, winding, lazy Santa Clara River Bowler was postmaster of the town, justice of the peace, and choir director and superintendent of the Sunday School for his beloved Mormon church. A well-respected man, educated and erudite, he had left a life in England vastly different from the one he found in southwestern Utah where his church bade him settle. Invariably the teacher, Bowler felt his musical ability and love of books warring constantly with the coarse work of grubbing and clearing sagebrush flats for farm land to raise food to feed both his family and his animals. Isolation weighed heavily upon this man of letters. Bowler listened with fascination as Holt repeated the drummer's stories. Together they began to plan, both caught up in the dream of

1 Interview with Henry D Holt, Fallon, Nevada, 1946, recorded in the journal of his granddaughter Helen B Gardner

binding this wild land with telephone lines and telephones. Holt proposed that they contact men they trusted and form a telephone company The time for such a venture was now, Holt told his friend Bowler offered his life savings of $600 as part of the start-up capital for the company. He also agreed to become an officer, acting as secretary-treasurer because of his knowledge of finance and his fine penmanship.

Holt and Bowler asked four other men—relatives or neighbors— tojoin in forming the company. One man,John H. Bowler, was a son ofJames Samuel Page Bowler and owned a ranch five miles north of Gunlock on Magotsu Creek. He was also an astute businessman, having been taught well byhis father

Holt approached his neighbor and another trusted friend Marcellus E. Bracken. "Cell" was the healer in the area. He set broken bones, poulticed bruises and contusions, and knew just the right amount of laudanum to give His wife had died giving birth to their youngest son, and Cell was raising nine children alone. Noted for his steadfastness and dependability, he was a homebody.

Another participant, A. H. "Bert" Truman, was a son-in-law of J. S. P. Bowler and a brother-in-law ofJohn H. Bowler. Truman's holdings were three miles north ofJohn Bowler on Magotsu Creek. A gregarious man who loved nothing better than a good laugh and a social evening, Truman also held the undisputed title of the "best damn cowboy and cattleman in the country." The prospect of being able to

L-R: Henry D. Holt, James Samuel Page Bowler, and John H. Bowler. Courtesy of authors.

People's Progressive Telephone Company Service Area

communicate with his relatives and neighbors by telephone was exciting to him.

Robert Chadburn, a Scotsman, was the next man enlisted by the group He was a gardener and orchardist and a brother-in-law of Henry Holt, having married Dinah, the sister of Henry's wife, Alice. They lived downriver from Central on a homestead bordering the Santa Clara River. Truman's farm reflected his skill as a farmer, his thrifty nature, and his careful stewardship of his holdings. A quiet man, he felt the isolation but not as much as his wife. Her nature craved the company of others. For her sake he waswilling to leave his beloved farm to build the telephone company. He would commit the time needed to complete this brave new venture.

Towns in Utah and Nevada served by the PPTC are printed in all caps

All these men were respected in this vast area of farms, small towns, and ranches that dotted this rough and forbidding part of Utah They provided a perfect mix of the traits needed to build a communications network through the hills,valleys, desert, and mountains.

On June 25, 1912, the group gathered at the home of Henry Davis Holt in Central. His daughter Blanche Holt Bowler, who was then seven years old, recalled in her eighty-sixth year that ". . . The electricity in the air at the time was contagious. The men all sat around the kitchen table. There was a lot of planning and jubilation in the room. At one point, 'Uncle Bert' [Truman] jumped up and danced ajig around the table We [children] could hardlywait for everything to get started."2

Holt proposed that the company begin its lines at Enterprise, about fifteen miles north of Central. He suggested that the line branch east to Pine Valley and Newcastle residents and then south to Central, connecting all the ranches in between. From there the telephone line would stretch over the hills to Gunlock, Veyo,and ranches in that area. The lines of the fledgling company would skirt St. George since Southern Utah Telephone Company, owned by E. H. Snow, was already operating there. The switchboard connecting the miles of new lines would be placed in Holt's home in Central It was an ambitious plan.3

Work began soon after the initial meeting OnJuly 12, 1912, Holt contacted Western Electric Company in Salt Lake City and ordered the following material: 22 miles of telephone wire, 1,250 feet of #14 iron wire, 250feet of inside wire, 6 "A"protectors, 250#1 Blake insulator staples, 250 feet of #19 TW.Pr. R.C. inside wire, 675 painted oak brackets-12", 675 pony glass insulators #9, 6#1317-R telephone sets, 6 4/2 x 5' ground rods, and 18 Blue Bell batteries. The cost of this order was $132.28. On August 22 an additional 24 bundles of telephone wire was ordered from American Steel and Wire Company. The new telephone companywasnow ready to begin construction.4 Although the men involved allhad stock and ranches to maintain,

2 Interview with Blanche Holt Bowler, Gunlock, Utah, 1988

3 Minutes of People's Progressive Telephone Co.,June 15, 1912, to September 6, 1913 Minutes and other records (PPTC Papers) cited hereinafter are in possession of Rita Holt Pulsipher, Mesquite, Nevada. The only account of that first meeting was one line: "Meeting held June 25, 1912, omitted here." It was written at the top of a page containing minutes from the September 6, 1913, meeting It appears to have been written as an afterthought

4 Invoices from Western Electric Co. and American Steel and Wire, PPTC Papers.

they nevertheless dropped everything and began digging post holes and stringing telephone lines to tie together the remote hamlets and ranches of southwestern Utah Progress would come to this part of the country, they told one another, and they would be the catalyst for thiswonderful newway of communication.5

Each man had invested all the cash he had As news of the project spread, people began coming to the homes of Holt and J S P Bowler, bringing any money they could spare to invest in the new company. The initial capital investment totaled $1,330. Stock was offered at $1 per share. There were seventy-five stockholders at the end of the first year. The amounts invested ranged from $7 to $600. More often than not, these amounts represented the entire life savings of these struggling settlers.

On April 13, 1913, one day before the last mile of the first fiftytwo miles of telephone lines was finished, corporation papers were filed with the state of Utah. Henry D. Holt was listed as president, Marcellus E Bracken asvice-president,J S P Bowler as secretary-treasurer, and Robert Chadburn and Bert Truman as directors In the stockholders' meeting Lawrence Bracken was appointed as business manager of the company. 6

The switchboard connecting towns was installed in Henry Holt's parlor. This meant jobs for his daughters Blanche, LaVerne, Vilate, and Ruby. Blanche Holt Bowler remembered her father talking very seriously to them about their responsibilities as telephone operators. He formally hired them at one dollar per month, divided among the four sisters, and charged them to take constant care of the calls coming in and cautioning them to always make the proper connections. At age seven Blanche was too short to reach the connectingjacks. She stood on a chair to plug in the connections thatjoined two towns together.7

The first annual stockholders' meeting on May 24, 1913, opened to a full house at Henry Holt's home in Central.8 Financial and statistical reports were read and approved. Several subscribers present voiced opinions on the management of the telephone company. "It was considered adviseable [sic] to make some changes," the minutes noted A motion byA L Huntsman suggested that all telephone ser-

5 Holt interview

6 PPTC Minutes, April 1913

7 B. H. Bowler interview.

8 PPTC Minutes, May 24, 1913

vice to GrassValley (an area with afew ranches north and east of Pine Valley) be discontinued. The motion was seconded and carried. Vicepresident Bracken made amotion that "afee of $25.00 be paid before any installation of a telephone and then a charge of $1.00 per month phone rental and line fee." Furthermore, he added, "anyperson not a family member should pay $12.00 in advance for use of same." It is unclear to whom the $12.00 would be paid, and the minutes record no reasons given for the fee. Nevertheless, the motion was seconded and carried.

A letter from attorney SamuelJudd was read to the stockholders and discussed. It proposed obtaining a few telephones in use in Newcastle and the Mesquite/Bunkerville Telephone Company and consolidating them with the People's Progressive Telephone Company On a motion from Bert Truman, secretary J. S. P. Bower was instructed "to contact Attorney Knox, company soliciter [sic] and arrange this matter." The Newcastle telephones and the Nevada company soon became a part of PPTC.

Officers for the coming year were elected by a show of hands Henry Holt was reelected president with John H Bowler replacing Marcellus Bracken asvice-president.J. S. P.Bowler again assumed the mantle of secretary-treasurer. Bert Truman remained as a board member, and A. L. Huntsman replaced Robert Chadburn. Lawrence Bracken remained as manager of the company, but EarlJ. Tullis was added to PPTC personnel to assist Bracken on the southern end of the lines Tullis lived in Gunlock

Ranchers and townspeople alike felt grateful for this new communications link. Prior to the formation of PPTC the nearest telephone to the outside world was in St. George. The day that PPTC's telephone service officially began it was rumored that Dinah Chadburn, wife of Robert Chadburn, spent the entire day making calls. Blanche Holt Bowler remembered that "Aunt Dine would ring central and asked [sic] to be connected first to one person and then another She would say, 'just connect me with anyone. Ijust want to talk.'"9

The logistics of keeping the new telephone lines operational were awesome. Ultimately 260 miles of lines had to be maintained, and much of it could only be reached on horseback.10 The country bordering the Utah/Nevada line was remote and very rough The

9 B H Bowler interview

10 Interview with Milton A Bowler, Gunlock, Nevada, 1979

PPTC line traversed the mountains and desert west of Gunlock and crossed into Nevada near the plateau/desert created by the Beaver Dam Wash drainage area. After leaving Mesquite and Bunkerville the line closelyfollowed the banks of the Virgin River, going southwest toward Moapa, Nevada, where the company ended its line. The men responsible for maintaining this line lived with the certainty of having some part of the line grounded and shorted out nearly every day. Theywere seldom disappointed

In some places lines were simply fastened to branches of the indigenousjuniper treeswhose stubby, sturdy branches were sometimes barely long enough to provide the length needed to keep the lines clear of static-causing interference On some stretches cairns of rocks were erected Ajuniper branch or a small cedar post was placed between the rocks to keep the "pole" upright and hold the wire high enough to keep it from grounding. These crude monuments served for years. Makeshift equipment like this did little for the clarity of voice as people tried to communicate. PPTC patrons occasionally grumbled about the problem.

Minutes of the September 6, 1913, board meeting indicate that the company was having problems keeping a business manager. Lawrence Bracken resigned. Although managers received a dollar a day while on company business, various minutes show that managers

Moapa, Nevada, April 1907. Buildings include hotel and store. Shiplerphotograph, USHS collections.

came and went. The lines were too long for one man or even two to maintain on horseback and still have time to collect monthly telephone bills. During this meeting the board decided to increase revenue bydividing the company territory into divisions.The minutes do not show the boundaries of these divisions, but they do note that a charge of ten centswasadded to each monthly bill However, BullValleyranchers were to pay twenty-five centsfor telephone use in their division, and thirtycentswasadded to the Mesquite/Bunkerville/Moapa division.11

The PPTC did not receive the revenues projected when the company was founded. In addition, maintenance costs were much higher than expected. Subscribers used the lines to capacity, but they did not pay their monthly telephone bills. Mounting costs and dwindling revenues constantly challenged the company. 12 The board decided to install phones at cost in every home wanting a telephone and allow the subscribers the use of it until the $25.00 installation fee was paid at the rate of $1.00 per month. Almost everyone within the PPTC coverage area had a telephone installed, and the line load increased accordingly.

In December 1913 when the Mesquite/Bunkerville Telephone Company officially came into the PPTC fold, its former owners, Hubert Leavitt and Vie Hancock, were paid with PPTC stock The two men received jointly 1,700 shares of stock "issued by said secretary upon proper receipt of deed and bill of sale" from Leavitt and Hancock. A. B.Andrews was named business manager of the Mesquite division.13 The company continued to grow and optimism ran high. Those stockholders who grumbled that no dividends had been paid to date were given the explanation of "growing pains."

At theJanuary 2, 1914, board meeting held in Gunlock, Holt reported on a trip he had made to Enterprise at the northern end of the line. Some subscribers were monopolizing the lines, he stated. A motion was made and carried, limiting each call to five minutes. Subscribers were to be notified of this new rule.John H. Bowler reported that some subscribers were making unauthorized purchases for telephone repairs Officials passed a motion stating, "Anypersons making anyagreement, or signing anycontract pertaining to supplies or repairs

" PPTC Minutes, September 6, 1913

12 Holt interview

13 PPTC Minutes, December 6, 1913

or lines of PPTC without the approval of the board, would be responsible for same." Bowler also proposed that "improper language shall not be allowed on our lines."The motion carried.14

Collections continued to be a problem, the board learned Money was not coming in SecretaryJ S P Bowler was instructed to notify each subscriber by letter that "bills must be settled promptly at the end of each month." The board also instructed Bowler to transmit a copy of the minutes of this meeting to A. B.Andrews, business manager, who had been transferred to Enterprise, and to Vie Hancock, who was now the manager in Mesquite at the southern end of the company lines Bowler was to advise the two managers "to take up capital stock for necessary improvements." The minutes verify the struggle PPTC was having to maintain a proper cash flow for day-to-day business. The company had succeeded in providing isolated families with communication, but it was hurting for operating capital. The lack of consistent follow-up by the managers was believed to be one of the main problems in collecting from subscribers. The money crunch had a negative effect on all company operations

Another topic of importance discussed by the board at length centered around the signed agreementJohn H. Bowler had obtained from Vie Hancock in which Hancock agreed to begin construction of the last leg of the telephone line from Mesquite to Moapa. Hancock agreed to begin work on February 1, 1914 Equipment and material would be needed, and secretary Bowler was instructed to order 30 miles of telephone wire from Western Electric in Salt Lake City at a projected cost of $300 to be paid in three installments of $100 on February 14,March 31,andJuly 1, 1914.

Officers of PPTC began to dream of connecting their company with Southern Utah Telephone Company in St. George. It was a logical expansion. Overtures to connect the two systems met with solid resistance from E. H. Snow, owner of SUTC. He expressed no concern about residents of remote areas not being able to call the world outside of the PPTC telephone lines St George was the hub of the country, and when ranchers drove to town they generally spent money. If the two telephone companies connected, some businessmen in St. George believed that there would be fewer visitors to St. George from the outlying districts. Merchants might suffer.

H PPTC Minutes, January 2, 1914 Attending this meeting were Holt, John H Bowler, J S P Bowler, and Bert Truman There is no mention in the minutes regarding the absence of other officers

On April 28, 1913, after many meetings and persistent requests from PPTC to SUTC and the city of St George, an ordinance granting a franchise to PPTC to operate within the city was passed PPTC had not, however, come to an agreement with SUTC to hook into their already existing lines. The franchise, granted for a period of twenty-five years, included some stringent requirements. City engineer Leo Snow, who was opposed to allowing PPTC in St. George, made it very clear that there was no possibility of connecting PPTC lines to those already in place. PPTC was allowed to place its telephone poles only on designated streets.The franchise contained specifications for length of poles, type of wood used, number of cross arms, distance between cross arms, and distance between poles The franchise also stipulated that "the City of St George shall have free use of one telephone, furnished and connected to PPTC lines, placed at a designation indicated by the St. George City Council, for the use of city business with free connections to all PPTC service areas." Further, "the city [was] to have full use and right of all the upper five feet of the Peoples Progressive Telephone Company telephone poles; however, all maintenance of the poles and lines would be the responsibility of said company." Nonuse of the franchise for a period of two years would result in a forfeiture of the rights and privileges granted Thus the cityof St George gaveway grudgingly.15

Despite all the effort spent in obtaining the franchise, lack of revenue and the stifling franchise requirements prevented the company from taking much action. On March 30, 1914, a board meeting was held at the Bigelow ranch, home ofJohn H. Bowler. The minutes reveal that the mayor of St. George, ThomasJudd, attended along with SUTC owner E. H. Snow and city engineer Leo Snow. PPTC service was in St. George, but it was not to the liking of some office holders and the movers and shakers in that community. Secretary J. S. P. Bowler reported on "a meeting held with St. George City Council on March 24, 1914." PPTC had requested that the city consider "an extension of PPTC franchise lines to enable our company to give service to stockholders in St. George." MayorJudd stated that PPTC must repole the streets. Leo Snow said there could not be two sets of poles on St. George streets. Nothing definite was decided, "excepting E. H. Snow stated that PPTC might be able to hook into his switchboard with PPTC lines and hispoles and theywould connect usfor five cents

each call, butwe must take our own phones."The board discussed the matter at "considerable" length and asked the secretary to take the rate matter up with SUTC. The meeting lasted until 2 a.m. 16

In the meantime, billing and service problems surfaced in Pine Valley, Utah. They demonstrate some of the day-to-day difficulties of running a company like PPTC. H. O. Gardner, a Pine Valley subscriber, wrote to company vice-presidentJohn H. Bowler onJune 12, 1914:

Received my phone bill and I think my bill was paid up in the first of March Your Pa will know I think he had a receipt from the bank for some time in February Will enclose $3.00 Phone has been out of commission for a long time. Can't use it at all now, only would like to have it fixed as soon as possible.17

During a board meting on April 21, 1915, a new slate of officers took control of the company. Bert Truman was elected president; Lyman Canfield, vice-president; Delos Hyatt, secretary-treasurer; and Frank O. Holt andJames L. Bunker directors.18 There is no record of discord within the company, but with this new group of officers the

16 PPTC Minutes, March 30, 1914

17 Gardner toJ H Bowler,June 12, 1914, PPTC Papers

18 PPTC Minutes, April 21, 1915.

Pine Valley LDS Chapel. This once remote area of Washington County was served by the PPTC. USHS collections.

founders of the company, with the exception of Truman, were no longer in positions directing the course the company would follow.

The company continued its struggle to survive. Fierce winter storms brought many lines down. Fewmen werewilling or able to ride the weary desert miles to make the necessary repairs Moreover, records indicate that the company had almost no money available for repairs or other expenses

Milton A. Bowler, at the urging of his father,John H., rode without pay as often as possible through the desolate hills and desert between Gunlock, Utah, and Mesquite, Nevada. In bitter winter weather he and his horse, fighting cold and fatigue, would trace and repair more than fifty miles of telephone lines He often found that a sagebrush stick was all he had to repair the line with Hisjob was to see that the line did not touch the ground, and it was he who built the rock cairns to hold up the "poles."John H., though not an officer at that time, still had faith in the company and felt responsible for itswelfare. When he could, he rode with hisson to help with line repair.19

On June 15, 1915, by a decision of the board, the ranches were cut off the main line byaswitch.The ranchers now had to repair their own lines if theywanted telephone service.20

There were more changes in company officers, and Lyman Canfield was appointed business manager. But the PPTC was floundering. The drive and vitality of the founders of the company was missing. In the constant change of business managers and board members, collections suffered badly. No salaries were being paid, and money was owed to Western Electric Company for wire. Payment was long past due. Director George O. Holt was asked to write to Western Electric for an extension of time before the bill had to be paid.21

There was not another board meeting held untilJune 19, 1916, when the officers convened at the Truman ranch for the stated purpose of "doing business necessary for the welfare of the company." Even though there was almost no money with which to operate, the board voted to pay the corporation license tax along with county taxes. G. Delos Hyatt, schoolteacher and son-in-law of Henry D. Holt, wasasked to remain asbusiness manager of the upper division, which included Enterprise, Newcastle, Central, and Veyo.22

At aJanuary 1917 board meeting in Gunlock company officers were elected. Bert Truman remained as president with Frank O. Holt andJames L Bunker retained as directors On Bunker's motion J S P Bowler was asked to again assume the post of secretary-treasurer, which he accepted.23

Again the matter of connecting PPTC lines with those of Southern Utah Telephone Company in St. George surfaced. Apparently, E. H. Snow now desired to connect his lines with those of PPTC in order to be able to offer his St. George subscribers access to Mesquite and Bunkerville residents PPTC director Frank Holt agreed to negotiate an arrangement with Snow and report back to the board

Lack of money and collection problems were, however, the main topics of discussion at this board meeting J S P Bowler undertook to write to each subscriber and list the amount owed the company.J. L. Bunker and Bert Truman were appointed to ride to Pine Valley and Central either to collect all past due rent and message fees or to remove the subscriber's telephone. The meeting concluded "with all final actions agreed upon."

The date ofJune 17, 1917, was published for the annual stockholders' meeting. When this was found to conflict with an LDS church conference, another date ofJune 23was set. No one came except the board of directors. Nothing was done. The incumbent board decided to "hold the present board in position until a change can be effected." There was no mention of further dealings with E H Snow or the Southern Utah Telephone Company. The words quoted above were the last recorded minutes found of the People's Progressive Telephone Company.24

Founded with such high hopes and altruistic motives, PPTC wasa valiant effort that lasted five years. Without the financial support of those subscribers upon whom the founders had depended and built their dreams, the company failed

The area of southwestern Utah encompassed by the PPTC was home to poverty. Many residents were poor beyond most standards. Their courage and indomitable will kept them alive.With limited capital and manpower the PPTC found it nearly impossible to keep its miles of lines repaired and operational The distances were so great, the terrain so rough, and although those who lived there needed and

wanted the telephone, many could not pay the monthly rent. Blanche Bowler summed up the company's problem:

Well, the main reason it failed was that people did not pay their bills. Money was so hard to come by in those days and the managers of PPTC would go out to collect and there wasjust not much money to be had There were rumors of mismanagement and shady business with what cash was collected, but as far as I know there was no stealing. Some said there was, but I can't say that. . . . When you go out to collect and you know everyone, or are related to everyone and you know their circumstances, it would be hard to disconnect their phones if they couldn't pay. My Dad (Henry Holt) always was the softest touch and he used to say that he couldn't cut off anyone's phone and he could see why the managers didn't do it

Everyone needed or depended on their phones. To take out a phone from one of the remote ranches would have been almost criminal That's mostly why the company failed People just didn't pay their bills because they had no money. And the managers and directors just didn't have the heart to take out the phones if the bills were not paid.25

Six men especially nurtured the PPTC—the five founding officers andJohn H. Bowler, who probably gave more time to the venture and mourned the passing of this dream asmuch asor even more than anyone But all of them were tired, troubled, and disillusioned by 1917. Some officially resigned; some simply left the company without any notice, leaving their investment in time and money behind. Most felt the loss of their time and their dream more keenly than anything else.

Lewis Pulsipher, a stockholder in Mesquite, acquired the Nevada portion of PPTC. The lines and telephones in Mesquite, Bunkerville, and Moapa became and still operate as the Rio Virgin Telephone Company servicing those towns originally as part of the Hube LeavittVie Hancock Virgin Telephone Company and then as part of PPTC before passing into the RioVirgin Telephone Company

Aslate as 1945 ranches and homes in and around Gunlock, Veyo, Central, and Enterprise maintained and used PPTC telephones and lines.Aline to the Royal Hunt ranch midway between Pine Valley and Central was connected to both towns. In 1941 Hunt, shot and robbed by a drifter he had picked up in St. George, managed to drag himself to hiswall-hung phone, ring the handle to alert neighbors miles away, and whisper into the phone, "Help, I've been shot," before he died.

(This set off a manhunt that lasted well into the next day before the assailant was found some ten miles away hiding in rough underbrush.) Also,a telephone at the Truman ranch in 1945was connected to the Bigelow ranch, the home ofJohn H Bowler in Veyo, and several homes in Gunlock.26

For all intents and purposes, however, the PPTC had collapsed. Remaining assets in the form of telephones in the homes of subscribers and miles of telephone lines north from Mesquite toward Gunlock were left in place.

The consensus of older residents of the PPTC service area is that Southern Utah Telephone Company took over PPTC lines. The franchise granted to PPTC by the city of St. George provided that in case of a default by PPTC its lines would be taken over by SUTC. That seems to have been the case, although no written record other than the original franchise has been found Later, these older residents assert, Mountain States Telephone Company (later Mountain Bell, presently USWest) acquired former SUTC customers.

As late as 1946 Henry Holt still shed tears when he spoke of the People's Progressive Telephone Company. So did John H. Bowler. Their tears refreshed the memory and washed away the dream.

With Glory Hunter, Brigham D Madsen, professor emeritus of history at the University of Utah, builds on his earlier studies of northern Utah Territory's Indian affairs, church history, and army exploration to produce a full-length biography of P Edward Connor, one of the Great Basin's second-tier business and political leaders of the Gilded Age In the process, he gives us a far more complete understanding of Connor than have previous biographers with their exclusive focus on Connor's relatively brief but better known military career as an Indian fighting Civil War general That Madsen has been able to do so largely successfully despite destruction of Connor's personal and business papers is no small accomplishment; Glory Hunter reflects the author's diligent research into what he calls the public record: newspaper articles, army records, mining claims, legal papers, and the minute books of business and civic organizations

As Professor Madsen has been able to reconstruct it, Connor began life in County Kerry, Ireland's Killarney district, during 1820 or 1821 as a member of the O'Connor family which immigrated to New York sometime in the early 1830s Madsen then traces Connor's 1839 enlistment in the army's First Regiment of Dragoons as an ambitious, action-oriented but probably poorly educated teenager

Five years of duty as a soldier in Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa provided a maturing Connor with employment, a company-level military education, rugged exposure to the plains West, and—Madsen speculates—proximity to the LDS communities of the Mississippi Valley and the anti-Mormon attitudes that surrounded them. Following discharge in 1844, Connor returned to New York to run a grocery, Anglicize his name, and assume U.S. citizenship

On the eve of the Mexican War, Connor migrated to Texas and joined a company of volunteer infantrymen who elected him their captain—a process that probably reflected his dragoon experience and which began his life-long ability to organize and lead men in contracting, mining, or military roles. February 1847 brought Connor's company to the battle of Buena Vista, an action during which the unit sustained heavy casualties including Connor himself who was wounded in the hand Three months later Connor resigned his volunteer commission due to the disability of "chronic rheumatism."

By 1850, after a three-year series of undocumented but presumably western adventures, Connor literally surfaced in northern California, having swum ashore from a shipwreck to join the gold rush at the Trinity River mines There followed a colorful series

Glory Hunter: A Biography of Patrick Edward Connor. By BRIGHAM D MADSEN (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990 x + 318 pp $27.50.)

ofjobs elsewhere in California during 1850-1854: piling contractor, harbor pilot, surveyor, customs collector, and officer of the state ranger company that captured and beheaded Joaquin Murietta. By 1855 he had married Johanna Connor, an unrelated fellowimmigrant from County Kerry, and had settled in Stockton. During the balance of the antebellum period Connor built roads and water works as a general contractor while serving in a wide range of relatively minor civic, political, and militia organizations Madsen speculates that in Stockton Connor was probably exposed to the anti-Mormon attitudes of both his neighbors and their newspapers as he may have been affected years earlier while a dragoon private

Four months after the outbreak of the Civil War, Connor, a California militia captain, entered federal service as a colonel of volunteers and was assigned to defend the overland stage route through Nevada and Utah territories against Indian attack with a mixed brigade of cavalry and infantry troops, many of them former gold miners. In seven chapters Madsen then traces Connor's progressively more responsible five-year military career, a colorful period during which Connor advanced to brigadier general while relentlessly and ruthlessly pursuing Indians across the Great Basin to the point of extermination as at the Bear River Massacre in 1862 and less decisively on the Powder River Expedition three years later. Background music for these enormously popular thrusts were a series of controversies in which Connor pitted himself against Brigham Young while simultaneously establishing Fort Douglas on the slopes above Salt Lake City and opening a heretofore closed Utah to a near-flood of non-Mormon miners seeking copper, silver, and

lead In some cases the mining claims were those filed by Connor himself or his troops, as in Rush Valley where, notwithstanding his army commission, he founded and virtually owned the town of Stockton. In the spring of 1866 he was breveted a major general of volunteers and mustered out of the army.

Tracing Connor's next twenty-five years—until his illness and lonely death in a Salt Lake hotel in 1891— Madsen tells a seven-chapter story of the general's civilian business life, encompassing a succession of vigorous but ultimately ruinous mining, railroad, real estate, and steamboating ventures in Nevada and Utah Madsen also sketches a political tableau in which the Republican party in Nevada and anti-Mormon Liberal party in Utah used Connor's reputation to advance their own objectives while failing to support him effectively in his personal efforts to seek a series of progressively less significant local offices With all of his shuttling from place to place on the frontier, the postwar years were, on a personal level, a sad and bewildering period during which the general became totally estranged from his wife She eventually moved from Utah to California with most of their five surviving children

What kind of a man was Connor?

Madsen portrays him as an impatient, hands-on, action-oriented, and unreflective sort of person who apparently wrote poorly, possessed few administrative skills, and spoke publicly in an uninspiring manner, although he was clearly able to lead men in a military setting. His entire business career— initially promising in California but ultimately unsuccessful in the Great Basin—was largely geared to employment or contracting situations involving government at the local, state, and federal levels. Although presumably a

self-assured person, it is highly likely that throughout his life Connor in some way bore the psychological scars of prejudice against Irish Catholics. It is significant that the general chose to change his name from O'Connor to Connor and to emphasize his middle name (Edward) rather than his first name (Patrick) Although they never met, Brigham Young, a Vermont Yankee, could not resist the temptation to describe Connor to others as "Pat," a usage that probably did little to mute what became Connor's thirty-year vendetta with Utah's Mormon leaders As a military officer, Connor chafed under bureaucracy and repeatedly displayed a penchant for summary executions where Indians were involved

Although Glory Hunter has shortcomings, a lack of even-handness on Brigham Madsen's part is not among them as some reviewers have argued. Madsen describes General Connor's flat spots as well as his successes; he also points out the difficulties encountered by gentiles in living in an LDSdominated society now as well as during the nineteenth century.

Aside from Professor Madsen's uninspiring style and excessive attention to the details of some of Connor's minor business and civic involvements, perhaps this reviewer's greatest disappointment in Glory Hunter is over the author's reluctance to provide context for the injection of P Edward Connor and his Californians into Utah Territory in 1862. Barely mentioned are the fact that Lincoln's predecessor had ordered nearly onethird of the U.S. Army to Utah less

than five years earlier and that with one minor exception—a mounted company called into federal service for ninety days—Lincoln was totally unwilling to activate the Nauvoo Legion (the nation's largest, most experienced militia force) to guard Utah's own communications links. For that matter, Glory Hunter is equally silent on the nature of the stage lines, mail contractors, road system, and telegraph line that the U.S. government was so intent on protecting

Although handicapped by source limitations, what Brigham D. Madsen has done well is to soldier on with what material he has assiduously uncovered. His book—despite its unavoidably bloodless, two-dimensional portrait of Connor—is well worth reading It should stimulate biographies of other, even more senior (but forgotten) western officers for whom personal papers are also missing: Generals William S. Harney, Edwin V. Sumner, John E Wool, and David E Twiggs Limitations notwithstanding, Glory Hunter tells us more about P. Edward Connor than Margaret M. Fisher's Utah and the Civil War (1929), Fred B. Rogers's Soldiers of the Overland (1938), James F. Varley's Brigham and the Brigadier. General Patrick Connor and His California Volunteers in Utah and along the Overland Trail (1989), E. B. Long's The Saints and the Union, Utah Territory during the Civil War (1981), or Alvin M.Josephy, Jr.'s The Civil War in the American West (1991)

News media in the United States have served many purposes, but, as

Barbara Cloud points out in her preface, they always have been businesses.

WILLIAM P MACKINNON Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

The Business ofNewspapers on the Western Frontier. By BARBARA CLOUD (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1992. xviii + 255 pp. $27.95.)

Her readable book looks at the business conditions of founding and operating western newspapers between 1846 and 1890, covering the area from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast. She demonstrates that newspaper publishers even in the far reaches of the most remote frontier gave serious consideration to the economic aspects of their endeavors.

In the introductory chapter the author uses census data to present illuminating tables that correlate numbers of newspapers with population. She suggests that prospective publishers carefully considered not only the size of a market but also such factors as the financial prosperity of the population and its literacy, stability, and growth potential. Only rarely did someone start a newspaper for some highly personal reason, ignoring rational business considerations, in spite of the stereotype of the frontier editor as a colorful eccentric In addition, success often had more to do with business acumen than withjournalistic ability

Extensive research has provided the author with multitudes of examples to illustrate the conditions of western newspaper publishing. Chapters on sources of income discuss methods of building circulation, attracting advertising, and providing job-printing services—a common activity of frontier publishers Chapters on expenses look at setting up a shop, staffing, finding material to print, and acquiring supplies The final chapters examine pressures on the press and assess its successes and failures, with a case study of the economic challenges faced by a hypothetical editor as he prepares to start a newspaper

The author explains that she uses

the masculine "he" advisedly, because the great majority of western publishers before 1890 were men, with women first entering western publishing in substantial numbers during the 1890s However, at least 30 publications headed by women between 1854 and 1890 survive, and they could have provided examples comparable to those in the book, virtually all of which concern men While the examples add color and interest to the book, the reader might occasionally wonder if the two or three provided to support a particular point are representative

The book offers detailed descriptions of what the newspapers looked like Illustrations would have enhanced these One longs to see, for example, the nameplate of the Enterprise of Oxford, Idaho, which had figures of men reading newspapers draped among the letters of its name The book has copious notes, an extensive bibliography, and an index

A quotation in the concluding chapter reminds the reader that most frontier newspapers led precarious lives A county historian, writing about the La Porte, California, Mountain Messenger, stated, "The ground on which the building stands is very rich in gold, which gives the Messenger an advantage not often had by newspapers, of having a solid basis upon which to do business." This book builds a solid foundation for an understanding of the business side of the frontier press, without which no real understanding of the frontier press as a whole is possible.

SHERILYN C BENNION Humboldt State University Areata, California

Book Reviews and Notices99

Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West. ByJONi LOUISE KlNSEY. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992 x + 237 pp Paper, $34.95.)

This intriguing interdisciplinary study of three major paintings of Thomas Moran (1837-1926) offers new avenues for understanding how art influenced the way Americans perceived Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and the Colorado Rockies The author demonstrates that Moran's paintings were the product of a cooperative effort among the artist, government surveyors (Frederick Hayden and John Wesley Powell), railroad promoters, publishers of popular magazines, and photographers (William Henry Jackson and Frederick Dellenbaugh), all of whom benefited More important, she credits Moran with creating a new image of the West even as he reflected back to his American viewers their post-Civil War attitudes of suffering and self-renewal

His most successful transformation, according to Kinsey, was his first Moran's The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872), she says, changed America's perception of that region from one of "hellish" mudpots reported by early explorers to a western "wonderland"—a place not to shun but to visit. Similarly, with The Chasm of the Colorado (1873-74) and Mountain of the Holy Cross (1875), the artist created images imitated in the popular press to such an extent that his views became the icons that defined these areas and attracted people to see them.

In Moran's Chasm of the Colorado the author finds reflected John Wesley's Powell's proposals for managing arid lands The tension of water as destroyer of the land through erosion and lifegiver through rain (a storm and rainbow over bare rock) is a central element of the painting. Less well

known today is the remote Colorado mountain on which melting snows formed a cross each summer The scene was popularized after Moran painted it using artistic symbolism suggesting a pilgrimage of struggle and sacrifice through rugged terrain leading to salvation for body and soul. Moran's image became an icon for those promoting Colorado's mineral springs, which attracted hundreds seeking relief from respiratory ailments

Moran's images helped create national parks for two of the sites and a national monument (rescinded in 1950) for the third. The railroads multiplied his images through reproductions in guide books to entice investors and tourists. In these ways art became the handmaiden of nationalism and commerce, but it was commerce (and a generous Congress that purchased two of the paintings at $10,000 each) that supported the creation of the national icons.

Moran, an American immigrant artist trained to imitate the brilliant colors and dramatic landscapes of painters such asJoseph M W Turner of his English homeland, found a moral order in the universe and a witness of the Divine in nature, including a cosmic tension, a struggle between disaster and grace. From American painters such as Thomas Cole, Moran learned that art can celebrate nationalism. The rocky landscapes of Moran's paintings, Kinsey argues, became visual substitutes for European castles and cathedrals as evidence of America's God-given greatness.

Kinsey's research is well-founded and her narrative clearly stated. At times her art history stretches to create a consistent interpretation, but

her attempt to bring together insights from various disciplines enriches this handsome book. Enhanced by eight full-color plates and dozens of carefully selected illustrations to support the arguments of the text, this thought-

ful study is worth the attention of students of the history and images of the American West

GLEN M. LEONARD Farmington, Utah

The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Edited by SHAWN LAY (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992 viii + 230 pp. $32.50.)

As a boy growing up in Salt Lake in the 1950s, I remember older people talking in hushed voices about the Ku Klux Klan—burning crosses in the hills behind the Capitol, meetings held at a trailer camp only a few blocks from where we lived, a robed presence in the mining camp at Bingham where many of my family and their friends worked I became aware that the Klan of the 1920s was not strictly a southern phenomenon, nor was its ideology linked simply to race. Inherent in people's remembrance of Klan activities—which they did not particularly approve of—was a sense that those attracted to the secret society had a larger and more fundamental agenda: providing order and stability in a period of change

Recently a number of scholars have asserted what I sensed as a youth, arguing, in the words of Leonard J. Moore, that the Klan "acted as a kind of interest group for the average white Protestant who believed that his values should be dominant in American society." As much a populist as a terrorist organization, the Klan "became a means through which average citizens could resist elite political domination and attempt to make local and even state governments more responsible to popular interests." Moreover, while linked by a "common name and a commitment to secrecy," and epitomizing racism, intolerance, terrorism,

and vigilantism, over the past century the Klan has not been a monolithic organization but has been characterized in each of its eras by "distinctive organizational features, recruiting patterns, and sociopolitical agendas."

The Klan of the 1920s, which developed between the specifically antiblack Klans of the 1860s and those of a century later, was a mass-based, nationwide, and politically successful organization with support from the American mainstream Reorganized in 1915, the Klan remained largely a southern institution until World War

I During and after the war the Klan defended traditional standards of law, order, and social morality, focusing its wrath on Jews and Catholics as well as blacks United by a commitment to white supremacy and "pure Americanism," the Klan grew throughout the decade and had a major impact on the Democratic party

Shawn Lay is a long-time student of Klan activities in Texas and New York

In this fine collection he brings together the work of several scholars who have turned their talents toward understanding the Invisible Empire in the American West. While readers of Utah Historical Quarterly will recognize the work of Larry Gerlach in chronicling the activities of the Klan in the Beehive State, Lay's collection sheds important light on Klan actions in Denver, El Paso, Anaheim, Eugene

Book Reviews and Notices101

and La Grande, Oregon, as well as in Salt Lake City.

For Lay and his contributors understanding the Klan in the West rests with a case-study examination of the hooded empire at the local level Drawing upon membership lists, minutes, interviews, and local records, the contributors discovered that the Klan was an organization with a multifaceted appeal to a cross section of overwhelmingly Protestant people who were not on the social margins but in the mainstream. Consequently, the Klan was representative of larger populations and was shaped and influenced by local questions and local conditions

As the essays in this book demonstrate, the Klan declined in the latter part of the 1920s for a variety of reasons, including personal scandals within the organization, the lack of skilled leaders, factionalism, opposition by significant local groups (in Utah especially the LDS church), and other factors. Lay and his colleagues downplay the traditional explanation of the support and growth of the Klan, including the rise of intolerance, rural-urban splits, ethno-cultural factors, etc., in favor of a more localized interpretation. At the same time, the scholars do not lose sight of

the central issue of the racism and antiblack activity of the Klan which is part and parcel of the hooded empire in all of its incarnations. Indeed, Lay and other scholars who have studied the Klan place the secret society into a larger perspective without losing sight of its legacy of terrorism. As Lay admits, the essays raise as many questions as they answer but the solid research points the direction for future studies.

In evaluating the factors that produced support for the Klan in Anaheim, Christopher Cocoltchos offers an assessment that seems accurate for a broader understanding of the hooded empire in the West and throughout the country as well: "Anaheimers joined and supported the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s primarily because they hoped to create a more moral, law-abiding, better ordered, more balanced, and formally bound community In a very basic sense the Klan was attempting to transform the traditional informal social controls of small-town civic culture by intensely scrutinizing and regulating the behavior of the community residents."

JOHN R SILLITO Weber State University

Lives of the Saints in Southeast Idaho: An Introduction to Mormon Pioneer Life Story Writing. By SUSAN HENDRICKS SWETNAM (MOSCOW: University of Idaho Press, 1991 188 pp Paper, $12.95.)

This fine study needs to be read by historians, folklorists, literature specialists, anthropologists, and family historians studying the Intermountain West and/or Mormon cultures. Written by an English professor at Idaho State University who is not a Latterday Saint, it argues that biographical and autobiographical writings by LDS

pioneers and descendants in southeastern Idaho (1860-1920) deserve serious scholarly attention Her two purposes are to show the scholarly value of the genre and to introduce readers to the writings through generous excerpts

Using an Idaho Humanities Council grant, Swetnam appealed via

groups and the media for the public to contribute personal, family, and place histories to the state archives and ISU library In response she received some 7,000 pages of materials in six months. Her book is based on 3,300 pages in 209 biographical, 87 autobiographical, and 5 unclassifiable LDS accounts Such narratives, in archives or private hands, are primary sources "ignored" due to historians' biases against LDS personal history, to folklorists' preference for oral over written stories, to perceptions that LDS life stories aim at uplift but not accuracy, and to the assumption that LDS life accounts are too personal to express cultural realities

LDS autobiographies and biographies as a genre display particular conventions of content and form (Swetnam feels that church directives for Saints to write histories motivate and shape the narratives; but my autobiography and diary workshops show that such directives mainly reinforce and confirm those already underway.)

I agree with Swetnam that these accounts are valuable because they contain details important for western history and for women's studies as well as unsolicited perceptions about a subculture that anthropologists and folklorists can assess They also contain several finely crafted narratives meriting literature specialists' attention LDS narrators, she found, did not pen "conventional spiritual biographies"; less than 10 percent reflected "pronounced shifting from chronicler to preacher."

Despite some moralizing, writers mainly desired "to save the memory of a world gone forever," to recall a "time lost." Their accounts, therefore, contain reasonably reliable information on such topics as settlement patterns, farming techniques, house building, furnishings, family relation-

ships, religious interrelationships, and childrearing patterns. Narratives give readers "a detailed look at the way that ordinary people lived their lives" and a "psychological truth" about how they felt.

The author notes some unique themes common to LDS narrations: the westward journey which, unlike non-LDS renderings, is told with lofty, even epic overtones; divine help during trials; hardship stories told to reinforce a theme of "suffering-for-theGospel's-sake"; accounts of community cooperation; depictions of adept housekeepers and family happiness. No non-LDS accounts she collected contain divine intervention stories, but 99 LDS narratives do Stories of healings, promptings, and dreams serve didactically, she believes, to show what it means to be a good Mormon. LDS writers did not fabricate these "fantastic" stories but were "telling the truth as they see it," which fact shows "how pervasively a people's assumptions inform the group's most basic perceptions."

The author includes two chapters dealing with stories of "little rebellions" or "minor sticking points." She states that 20 percent of the documents contain mention of lapses, maverick tales, or quarrels. Told good-naturedly, the stories served as humor, as vents to let off steam about the church and its leaders, and to "give common sense" to some LDS "cheery myths." She explains that in a third of the biographies written by women a female forebear told of exceptions to LDS ideals of domestic abilities, feminine deportment, acceptance of church marriage teachings, obedience to males, and selfless service.

The authors of these accounts wrote biographies about twice as often as autobiographies Of 212 authors identifiable by gender, 162 were

Book Reviews and Notices103

female and 50 male, leading her to suspect that Mormon "women are by and large the ones expected to be guardians of family history." (My analysis of some 200 LDS family histories published since 1970 agrees—women authored 5 out of 8. However, Davis Bitton's 2,800-plus entries in Guide to Mormon Diaries and Autobiographies indicate male writings outnumbered female by 5 to 1 or more.) Here males wrote twice as many autobiographies as biographies while females wrote twice as many biographies as autobiographies

This book shows that LDS life story writings, in repositories or in private hands, are small gold mines for schol-

ars who study the American West The afterword identifies several studies that could be made of this collection (and others). Lives of the Saints should cause those of us who teach autobiography, biography, or family history writing to reconsider how and what we teach The author provides endnotes for each chapter. Her bibliography contains not only the LDS narrations she cites but also a valuable list of publications that deal with the issues and controversies inherent in biographical and autobiographical writing.

WILLIAM G HARTLEY Brigham Young University

Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History. Edited by GEORGE D SMITH (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992. x + 314 pp. Paper, $18.95.)

This collection of essays, all but two of which have been published previously, addresses the issue of the proper, appropriate, or best way to write Mormon history The lines of the debate separate those favoring "history in the service of faith" from those calling for "history faithful to the past." The controversy between traditional history and the new Mormon history, as it is called, has come to a head during the past two decades, years when the historical profession outside the Mormon community has exercised an increasingly strong influence upon the historians of Mormonism. The same years have witnessed a burst of intellectual energy directed toward discovering, understanding, and interpreting Mormon history. On the surface one might expect these developments to delight all parties involved—Mormons and interested non-Mormons alike Yet, in fact, the rise of the new Mormon history has generated intense controversy

and produced official disapproval and ecclesiastical censure for some of its advocates This debate over the assumptions and methods of religious historians shows little sign of abating.

The editor of this volume has assembled representative statements from both sides of the controversy as well as essays from individuals commenting on the struggle The perspectives of the essayists vary widely, from Richard L Bushman's explicit call for the "spirit of Christ" as an operative principle in the life of the historian and Richard Sherlock's presentist conviction concerning the reality of God to Lawrence Foster's sharp criticisms of traditional Mormon historiography as "neither faith promoting nor good history" and D. Michael Quinn's frank, sometimes anguished autobiographical account of his intellectual odyssey from the center to the edge of Mormonism as a result of his role as a practitioner of the new Mormon history Commentary from out-

side this struggle is provided by Martin E Marty and Edwin S Gaustad, both distinguished historians of American religious history. The most shrill of all the essays is by David Earle Bohn, a self-proclaimed champion of the traditional perspective, who seeks to defend that historiographical position by a systematic attack on the epistemological and methodological assumptions of modern professional historians, including intellectual contempt for the notion that it is possible to achieve objectivity in the writing of history and almost personal disdain for the view of Lawrence Foster whom he singles out for special criticism.

George D Smith, the editor of this volume, is strangely silent on the ultimate purpose of this collection He adds to that confusion by his inclusion as an epilogue the personal testimony

of the highly respected Leonard J. Arrington who seems to suggest the possibility of the faithful historian rising above the controversy simply by dint of personal religious and/or intellectual conviction

More useful for all individuals attempting to write religious history from either a traditionalist perspective or a revisionist standpoint is the judgment of Martin E Marty and several other essayists that all historians come to their task with a certain critical preunderstanding that inevitably shapes their account of the past Recognition of that fact ought to induce a measure of intellectual humility in all parties.

STEPHEN J STEIN Indiana University Bloomington

Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology.

By ERICH ROBERT PAUL. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992 xii + 272 pp $29.95.)

This excellent volume could have been written only by a scholar competent not only in Mormon intellectual history but also in contemporary astrophysics and the history of modern science. Professor Paul of Dickinson College has produced a book that deserves the highest marks as an exposition of the attitude of Mormons toward science, the official and unofficial positions of the LDS church on major scientific developments, and the impact of science on the church and its theology Several chapters concentrate on the history of science to provide a background for Mormon conceptions of such items as age of the earth, the immensity of the universe, or the hassle over evolution in the church. Of individual Mormons, Orson Pratt and B H Roberts receive

prime attention, which is entirely justified; and James E Talmage, John A Widtsoe,Joseph F. Merrill, and Joseph Fielding Smith figure prominently in the account of the twentieth-century disputes within the church.

Paul devotes extensive space to what he calls pluralistic cosmology in Mormon thought, the belief in an infinitely large universe with countless worlds that may be inhabited by intelligent beings. On this subject he quotes extensively from the Mormon scriptures and the early creators of Mormon doctrine and provides a rich diet of related philosophic speculation and scientific findings He brings things up to date with a late chapter on the technological problem of investigating extraterrestrial intelligence.

I am inclined to think that today's Mormons are not as interested in this sort of thing as were their antecedents in the nineteenth-century. This may be because of a decline in theological interest and a more mature disposition with respect to speculation I suspect that those who are joining the church in droves are more interested in what the church can do for them now in this life on this earth than in the state of anthropoid affairs in distant universes

Paul has very effectively placed Orson Pratt in the context of Mormon theological speculation and the findings and speculations of nineteenth-century science. In his description of Pratt's talents in astronomy and mathematics, he calls attention to Pratt's severe limitations as an amateur scientist while clearly acknowledging his intellectual talents. His treatment of B. H. Roberts, the other leading intellectual in Mormon history, is equally competent While not in any sense a scientist, as a Mormon leader and the church's most prolific writer, Roberts was an influential exponent of science He and Talmage and Widtsoe, both scientists, had a strong impact on the Mormon people and church officialdom in opposing the antiscientific trends in Mormonism, especially in relation to evolution Paul fails, however, to point out clearly that these three advocates of science were severely impeded in their thought on evolution because of their failure to abandon the biblical literalism that saddled them with the creation myths of Genesis This accounts, for instance, for the nonsense about pre-Adamites that caused Roberts so much trouble.

There are a few things in the book that bother me: Paul's handling of such subjects as natural theology and

realism and his frequent references to a Mormon epistemology, for instance. But these are minor items compared to the virtues of his book—his exposition of nineteenthcentury and post-Newtonian science, his cautious treatment of possible influences on Joseph Smith, and careful estimates of the strengths and weaknesses of the Mormon advocates of science. He makes a convincing case that from its beginnings the church has generally been proscience rather than antiscience in matters pertaining to religion In dealing with the internal conflicts, he touches the main bases, the hassle over evolution at Brigham Young University and the battle between B H Roberts and Joseph Fielding Smith, for instance, as well as the more recent problems associated with Smith's antiscientific book, Man: His Origin and Destiny.

Paul does a good job in describing the limitations of science, especially with respect to religious thought, and the hazards of trying to make a scientific case for religion. He is fair and frank in treating the excesses of some Mormon writers, especially Widtsoe, in their enthusiasm for Mormon claims in relation to science. I personally think that on the whole he is a little too easy on the Mormon leadership in its handling of the science problem, and I suspect that he may be unaware of the extent of LDS opposition to intellectual advancement in some fields, biblical scholarship, for instance.

Professor Paul has done impressive research on his subject. His bibliographical essay alone is worth the price of the book.

STERLING M MCMURRIN University of Utah

Mirage-Land: Images of Nevada.

By WILBUR S. SHEPPERSON (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1992 xx + 190 pp $19.95.)

It is probable that every adult resident of Utah has developed some kind of impression, good or bad, about Nevada For some, it is a horrible place, a land of stark, ugly mountains and desolate valleys, of casinos and brothels—a perfectly appropriate choice for a nuclear waste dump. For others, who admire its solitude or enjoy slipping across the border for an evening of adventure, Nevada is a wonderful place, full of unusual beauty, promise, and hope Clearly, there are many images of Nevada, some positive and others negative, some grounded in fact and others based on nothing but illusion Wilbur S. Shepperson, one of Nevada's foremost historians, has woven hundreds of these images into a perceptive commentary about Nevada's land and people as they have been seen by its own citizens and by its many visitors

The book contains six major chapters, each focusing on an important phase of the state's history. In less than two hundred pages, Shepperson moves from the days of Jedediah Smith and Peter Skene Ogden to the Comstock era, then to depression in the latter part of the nineteenth-century and partial recovery in the years after 1900, and finally to the emergence of the Nevada that we know today. Word images created by travelers' accounts, newspaper stories, and articles in popular journals reveal how people thought and felt about Nevada and how these attitudes changed through time Each major chapter

concludes with a summary statement that places the events under discussion within a framework of western America's contemporary social and intellectual climate

Shepperson's writing style is smooth, occasionally elegant, and always entertaining He combines the views of others with his own observations and never allows the reader to forget that life in Nevada has rarely followed the path of mainstream America. His final thought, that "contemporary Nevada, perhaps more than any other society in history, is the product of the present and a child of the grand illusion," is a straightforward declaration of the book's basic thrust.

There is little to criticize about this work Because it is interpretive in nature it naturally lacks depth, and readers seeking detailed analyses of major issues in Nevada's past should look elsewhere. A typographical error on p. 27 and failure to correctly locate the Metropolis reclamation project on p 81 are minor slips that detract very little from the book's overall quality. Shepperson has given us a thoughtful, well-crafted essay, blending his own wisdom with a sense of how others saw the state to make Mirage-Land indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand the Nevada of yesterday, today, and perhaps tomorrow

MARSHALL E BOWEN Mary Washington College Fredericksburg, Virginia

Book Notices

Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism. Edited by MAXINE HANKS (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992 xxxiv + 460 pp Paper, $19.95.)

Of the nineteen selections in this collection, one is a sampling of excerpts from the Woman's Exponent of the 1870s, one is a series of statements and thoughts taken from various contemporary sources, and seventeen are essays from an impressive group of Mormon scholars and writers A few of the essays, such as Linda King Newell's "The Historical Relationship of Mormon Women and Priesthood" and D. Michael Quinn's "Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843," are predominantly historical Even those that are mostly personal still proceed from a historical context All deal in one way or another with the questions of a Mother in Heaven or women holding the priesthood

If the reader has time for only one selection, he/she should turn to Lavina Fielding Anderson's "The Grammar of Inequity," there to ponder anew the many ways that sentence structure, conventional usage, and simple vocabulary dominate thought processes and values

versity of Nebraska Press, 1992 xx + 65 pp. Paper, $6.95.)

Originally published as a monograph in 1940, this slim volume is a thought-provoking analysis of relationships engendered by horses, warfare, and social ranking among the Plains Indians The Kiowa provide the central basis of this study that argues economics, not just war honors, served as a motivating force for horseraiding and intertribal rivalry The belief that Indian cultures were egalitarian is challenged by ethnography, elucidating the various rank structures and what warriors did to obtain them

The Grand Canyon: Intimate Views. Edited by ROBERT C EULER and FRANK TIKALSKY (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992. xx + 114 pp Paper, $15.95.)

Rank and Warfare among the Plains Indians. By BERNARD MISHKIN (1940; Bison Book Edition, Lincoln: Uni-

First-time visitors to the Grand Canyon could do worse than equip themselves with this expanded version of The Grand Canyon: Up Close and Personal (1980) Specialist contributors focus on the natural history, Indians, and exploration of the canyon, with a concluding chapter on hiking. The essays are necessarily superficial, since this is only an introduction, but the brief and current bibliographies are effective guides for further investigation Attractive historic and contemporary photographs add to the appeal.

The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail. By WALLACE STEGNER. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992 xiv + 332 pp Paper, $12.95.)

Stegner's 1964 classic remain s on e of th e best single-volume accounts of th e Mormo n migration west.

tur e an d personal experiences Th e results are forms like Pearline, whose thirst for adventures educates he r to life's lessons Pearline fluctuates between confusion an d clarity, reverenc e an d mischief, while searching for he r niche in life."

Mud Woman: Poems from the Clay. By NOR A NARANJO-MORSE (Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 1992 127 pp Cloth, $35.00; paper , $15.95.)

Naranjo-Morse, a sculptor wh o gathers he r own clay nea r he r Espanola, Ne w Mexico, home , is also a poet This boo k combine s these talents by juxtaposin g he r sculptures— critically acclaimed for their blen d of humo r an d tradition—with poem s inspired by th e clay figures Th e sculptor/poe t writes in th e preface: "My work does no t generally confor m to standards set by th e curren t India n art market. I exercise my creative license in a menageri e of characters that travel throug h time, inspired by cul-

Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles. 2 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. vi + 591 pp . Paper, $23.95 set.)

These colorful memoirs , illustrated by Frederic Remington , were first published in 1897, nea r th e en d of Miles's career. Volume 1 covers his role in th e Civil War an d his campaigns against th e Plains Indians, endin g with th e battle of th e Little Big Hor n an d th e surrende r of Sitting Bull. Volume 2 follows the genera l to Washington Territory an d finally to the Southwest wher e h e takes o n th e Apaches an d Geronimo In addition to relating his own adventures, Miles brings fur traders, trailblazers, gold seekers, an d missionaries into his narrative.

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, CIRCULATION

The Utah Historical Quarterly (ISSN 0042-143X) is published quarterly by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84101-1182 The editor is Max J Evans and the managing editor is Stanford J. Layton with offices at the same address as the publisher The magazine is owned by the Utah State Historical Society, and no individual or company owns or holds any bonds, mortgages, or other securities of the Society or its magazine

The following figures are the average number of copies of each issue during the preceding twelve months: 3,511 copies printed; 138 paid circulation; 2,856 mail subscriptions; 2,994 total paid circulation; 39 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means; 3,033 total distribution; 478 inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing; total, 3, 511

The following figures are the actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 3,419 copies printed; 122 paid circulation; 2,922 mail subscriptions; 3,044 total paid circulation; 39 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means; 3,083 total distribution; 336 inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing; total, 3, 419

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Department ofCommunity and Economic Development

Division of State History

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY

MARILYN CONOVER BARKER, Salt Lake City, 1993 Chair

PETER L Goss, Salt Lake City, 1995

Vice-Chair

MAX J. EVANS, Salt Lake City Secretary

DOUGLAS D ALDER, St George, 1993

DALE L BERGE, Provo, 1995

BOYD A BLACKNER, Salt Lake City, 1993

HUGH C GARNER, Salt Lake City, 1993

DAVID D HANSEN, Sandy, 1993

DEAN L MAY, Salt Lake City, 1995

AMY ALLEN PRICE, Salt Lake City, 1993

PENNY SAMPINOS, Price, 1995

JERRY WYLEE, Ogden, 1993

ADMINISTRATION

MAX J EVANS, Director

WILSON G MARTIN, Associate Director

PATRICIA SMITH-MANSFIELD, Assistant Director

STANFORD J LAYTON, Managing Editor

DAVID B MADSEN, State Archaeologist

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, die Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical materials: collecting historic Utah artifacts; locating, documenting, and preserving historic and prehistoric buildings and sites; and maintaining a specialized research library Donations and gifts to the Society's programs, museum, or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

This publication has been funded with the assistance of a matching grant-in-aid from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, under provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended

This program receives financial assistance for identification and preservation of historic properties under Title VI of die Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of die Rehabilitation Act of 1973 The U.S Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or handicap in its federally assisted programs If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office of Equal Opportunity, U.S Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C 20240