I have taken the information for this specific
blog Binghams's Fort, and would encourage all of you to go to that blog and explore. It took me all day to read through it but it was well worth it.
Our ancestors, the GATES and GARDNER families arrived in Salt Lake City in 1852 as quoted from the Moses I. Gardner journal. "James Gardner got in Salt Lake City, 27th day of September, 1852."
Just reading those words from the journal was an exciting experience for me but the information that I got from the Bingham's Fort Blog, helped me to put my ancestors into the history of Nauvoo, Utah and Ogden. I got an idea of what life was like for them, how they reacted to the Johnson's Army threat and their dealings with the Indians. Read what I am posting and then go to the source and explore for yourself. There is so much more info on the blog. I am also using the footnotes that appear in the Bingham's Fort blog. There may be someone who wants to explore further.
If you click on the 2009 links on my blog, you will find the other genealogy stories about these families.
SAM GATES b. 14 Mar 1804, Livonia, Wayne, Michigan
Sam Gates was born in in New York March 14, 1804. He was a stone cutter and an iron foundry man when he married Lydia Downer in 1830 in Lavonia, Michigan, where they lived for eight years before Mormon missionaries came in the vicinity to preach. The course of their life changed when they joined themselves to the Mormon church and moved to LaHarpe, Illinois in April 1842, 23 miles east of Nauvoo. In LaHarpe they became acquainted with the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum who often visited them and stayed in their home. Sam’s Elder’s License* is signed by Joseph Smith.[1
In LaHarpe he also became acquainted with Erastus Bingham and Isaac Newton Goodale (it is possible that he first knew Goodale in Michigan). After the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum the Gates family abandoned their farm and moved into Nauvoo where Sam set up an iron foundry. It was an urgent time for the Saints as they worked feverishly to complete the temple while making preparations to abandon the city. Persecution forced an early evacuation of Nauvoo in February 1846. Sam’s foundry was burned by a mob. Afterwards some of the mob approached him and said, “Mr. Gates, we like you, and if you would give up those d…d Mormons, we will set you up in business again.” He refused the offer.[2]
Lydia gave birth to their 11th child, Nancy Jane, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1850.
This picture of Nancy Jane was found on the above blog. They arrived in Salt Lake City in September 1852. In October when Sam Gates arrived on 2nd Street, he was greeted by Isaac N. Goodale who “showed him some land”.[3]
Sam was 48 years old and starting a new home again. In 1852 he made a free claim for the 40 acres of farm land opposite the Bingham farm and built his cabin across the lane from the Bingham family cabins. This new farm would be his final home.
In April 1853 Sam’s daughter Genet married Erastus’ son Willard Bingham.
After building a cabin and beginning his farm, Sam’s first community project was to build a molasses mill on 2nd Street for the sugar cane that the farmers began to grow. The mill was located within the walls of the fort. See map for location.
In 1854 Brigham Young made Sam Gates a Captain of a company sent back to assist the oncoming pioneer companies and help them through the mountains. This is a typed copy of the letter sent to Capt. Samuel Gates from Brigham Young is recorded in the Journal History of the Church.
In March 1857 Sam and Lydia consecrated all their temporal possessions to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is a copy of the consecration document.
None of this was actually transferred to the Church, but it demonstrated their faith in God and a willingness to share assets like the early Christians in the Book of Mormon and in the New Testament in Acts. Isaac Newton Goodale and Erastus Bingham did this also. The actual sharing of assests was left to individual conscience and also was given in tithing, donations and offerings. Notice that Sam Gates’ 40 acres were valued at $300; in 2004 these acres became the Fort Bingham subdivision. [5]
In 1858 Sam was married in polygamy to Martha Waite, an eighteen-year-old lady who had been briefly married and divorced. They had 6 children.[6]
In the 1860s Sam ran the toll gate at the mouth of Ogden Canyon for use of the road to Huntsville. One day while working at the toll gate he found a homeless Danish boy named Peter Sherner and took him home into his large family.
In 1871 Sam built an adobe mill next to his house and in a few years expanded the adobe mill into a brick yard five blocks north of his house. The adobe mill and brick yard were connected by Sam Gates’ Lane. Six houses still remain on 2nd Street in 2010 that were built with adobes or bricks from the Sam Gates’ mill.
Samuel Gates loved his wives and his children and was a faithful and devoted husband and father. The home of his daughter and son-in-law James Gardner remains at 156 2nd Street, and the home of his adopted son Peter Sherner remains at 122 2nd Street. As an old man he spent so much time at Peter’s house that he was teasingly called “Sam Gates Sherner”.
When he died in August of 1877 he had an 80 acre farm on the north side of 2nd Street. Most of the farm was purchased by James Stone family and remained agriculture for 151 years until subdivided in 2004.
Blog for Sam Gates[1] Lisa J. South and Pamela S. Olschewski, Samuel Gates, Jr. and Lydia Downer, manuscript, 2001, p. 1-5.
*An Elder’s License – As the Church became more spread out some dishonest men began to take advantage of the situation by going into an area “as an Elder sent by the Prophet to collect tithes and temple donations”. Then the money would disappear. It became necessary to issue a license to elders in good standing to prevent this. Sam’s license is in possession of Genevieve Sherner in 2010.
[2] Ibid, p. 7.
[3] Transcribed by Elden J. and Anne S. Watson, The Isaac Newton Goodale Journal 1850-1857, manuscript, 1981, p. 37.
[4] South and Olschewski, Samuel Gates, Jr. and Lydia Downer, p. 10, 11.
[5] Ibid, p. 9,13,14.
[6] Ibid, p. 14.
Posted in 6. Roads in Fort Bingham Estates, i. Sam Gates Road 1 Comment »
Adobe BricksSam Gates established an Adobe Mill in 1870 on the north side of 2nd Street about three-fourths of a mile from Five Points[1]. Excellent clay for adobes was available in the sloughs by Stone’s Pond.[2] His son, George Gates, and his son-in-law, James Gardner, assisted him. The adobe mixer was located by Sam’s house at today’s intersection of 2nd Street and Century Drive.
The adobe bricks (“dobies”) were made from marsh mud and were sun-dried. Usually the mud and water were mixed by feet, hoe or shovel. Feet were ideal as one could sense when the mud was properly mixed with as little water as possible. After mixing the mud was placed into molds and sundried until firm enough to be stacked.
Joseph Romrell, son of George and Patience Romrell, was born in 1870. His first job as a young boy was at the Gates adobe brick yard where he carried the bricks from the molds to the drying yard. The next day they were topped and turned over to dry on the other side. The bricks for his family’s home at Washington and Fourth Street were made at this mill. [3]
Some people wanted a more durable brick, so James Gardner built a kiln to fire the sundried bricks into a burnt brick. Sand and gravel were not suitable for brick making; small particles of limestone even smaller than a pea made that type of soil unsatisfactory and could cause the brick to explode when it is fired. The marsh mud around Stone’s Pond was ideal. The burning usually took from three to four weeks. The bricks nearest the fire and farthest into the stack became the hardest and were used on the outside walls as they were more weather resistant. Soft bricks were better insulation and were used on the inside walls.[5]
Gardner located the kiln and brickyard about three blocks north of Sam’s cabin and the adobe mixer. The site of the kiln is on the south side of North Street across from the house located at 371 W. North Street. This site was close to the marsh and to Stone’s Pond. The adobe mill and the brickyard were connected by a lane, the old Sam Gates Lane.
Jim Gardner was b. 10 Apr 1830, Hanover, Seneca, New York
His name was James Harvey Gardner and he lost his parents as he crossed the plains coming to UT. There is a copy of the Moses I. Gardner Journal if you scroll down. James and his brother, Charles both made it to UT. This is the story of Jim Gardner, as told on the
blog.
HISTORY OF THE HOUSE
The original burnt brick house was classified as a half-cross wing as pictured in the c. 1940 photo with the entrances on the long side.
The bricks were made at the Gates Adobe-Brick Mill located near Stone’s Pond by James Gardner. The house was built in the late 1870s and was considered a “starter” plan. Builders of this type planned to construct a perpendicular wing in the future as time and money allowed. This type of house became popular in Utah in the mid 1870s peaking in the 1890s.[1]
When James Gardner built the house in the 1870s no one anticipated that the rear addition would not be added on for 100 years. In 1944 the George Stokes family purchased the house, and in the 1970s George’s grandson, David Collins, built the long awaited rear addition changing the classification from a half-cross wing to a cross wing house. The floor plan resembles an “L”, but the second roof line is not perpendicular. In this modification of the old plan, both roof lines are parallel.
James Harvey Gardner was born in Seneca County New York in 1830 and arrived in Weber County in the fall of 1852. In November 1852 he married Mary Gates, daughter of Sam Gates; he was 22 and she was 20. They built a log cabin next to Sam Gates’ cabin on 2nd Street; both cabins are identified on the Bingham Fort map.
James Gardner was 40 years old he assisted his father-in-law with the Gates Adobe Mill located by Sam Gates’ cabin on 2nd Street. Dissatisfied with the durability of adobes, James devised a kiln to fire the sun baked adobes into a more reliable brick called a burnt brick.[2] Today’s location of the James Gardner kiln is on the south side of North Street opposite today’s house located at 370 West North Street; this location was close to Stone Pond and the “2nd Street Swamps”.Gordon Jones, author of Pioneer Forts in Ogden, Utah, visited this site in 2001 and remarked that the best bricks of the nineteenth century were made from mud beneath bulrushes on swampy land. [3]
James and Mary had ten children, one of them named Sam Gates Gardner after his grandfather. In the 1870s James built the house with burnt bricks at 156 2nd Street for his family. The house has two doors on the long side. Mary used the south door, the one closest to 2nd Street, as an entrance to her little store that she kept in their home. By this time Mary was in her forties, but she held the respect of the young men of Lynne Community, and her store was “a gathering place for the boys in the evenings”, and whenever a question arose concerning religion Mary was regarded as the “Bureau of Information”.[4]
Lynne Ward records show that James and Mary Gates Gardner were sealed in the temple in 1873 and that James was president of the deacons in 1885. In 1889 they sold their house to neighbor Ianthus Richards and moved to Pocatello, Idaho to be near their children.[5]
In 2011 the house has been owned by the Stokes/Collins family for 67 years.
[1] Cory Jensen, Historic Architecture in Utah: The Cross Wing, Utah Historical Quarterly, Spring 2001.
[2] William Terry, Weber County History Is Worth Knowing, abt.1988, p.120-122.
[3] Interview Chauncey Stone, 1972; interview Clara Stone, December 1999. NOTE: In the years that followed the closing of the Gates Adobe-Brick Mill, another brickyard began a few miles to the north in Harrisville; this business continued to harvest marsh mud from the wetlands on 2nd Street for many years.
[4] Mary Melling Stone Crane, autobiography, manuscript, 1922, p. 8.
[5] Some old timers will remember the brick house of Ianthus Richards build west of Jim Gardner’s at 142 2nd Street.
As I stated above, there is more on the Moses I Gardner Journal if you scroll down. There are also pictures of the Journal.
