Archibald Gardner

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Archibald Gardner

Archibald Gardner (1814 — 1902) was a 19th century pioneer and businessman who helped establish communities in Alvinston, Ontario, Canada, West Jordan, Utah and Star Valley, Wyoming. He was also an early leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

As a businessman, Gardner built 36 mills, 23 in Utah, six in Canada, five in Wyoming, and two in Idaho. Gristmills formed the economic center of each community, often being the community's first business. Skill was required to choose mill sites, construct, and run. Operated entirely by water power, gristmills were miniature factories with gears, pulleys, conveyor belts, and sets of machinery for cleaning the wheat, grinding, and sifting bran from the flour. As Archibald Gardner indicated: "The mill was built without nails. Wooden pins and mortises were used instead. All shafts, bearings, cog wheels, etc. were of wood, our mountain maple."

1 Early life
2 In Alvinston, Ontario
3 Mormon pioneer
4 Plural Marriage and Family
5 Memorials
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Early life

Gardner was born in Kilsyth, Scotland, in 1814 and emigrated to Canada in 1822 with his mother, Margaret Calinder, sister Mary, and brother Robert. There they rejoined his father and brother William, who had left Scotland a year earlier, after Robert had been imprisoned for six months in Stirling Castle, awaiting trail on a charge of speaking against the British by mentioning the battle of Bannockburn.

Archibald learned the skills to build and operate mills from his father, and he built his first mill at age 17. In total Archibald and his partners built six mills in Canada.

While in Canada, Archibald married Margaret Livington wherre four of their nine children were born, and one child, Archibald, died.

[edit] In Alvinston, Ontario

Alvinston, Ontario owes its beginning to Archibald Gardner. The hamlet grew up around a gristmill Gardner built in 1837 on the east end of the sixth concession of Brooke township. The mill cost $33 to build. Later, Gardner also built a sawmill, producing sawn lumber for floors, doors and window frames.

Gardner came to the locality in 1835 and found that the settlers had no mechanical means of grinding grain into flour. He dammed the Sydenham River to provide power to run two mill stones. Gardner's mill was the only gristmill within a radius of fifty miles. Often horses were unavailable and oxen could not be readily guided through the thick bush. Consequently, area settlers took their grain, or grist, to the mill in bags strapped to their shoulders, perhaps carrying fifty or more pounds along a blazed trail through swamps and bush. The area, a hill that faces Alvinston, was later called Gardner's Mill. The mill continued to serve the Alvinston, Ontario district until abandoned in 1874, though flour milling continued in the village until 1926.

Under pressure from disgruntled business associates, Gardner sold his mill to the Branan family at a reduced price and left Canada for the United States. At one point in his solitary journey Archibald raced across the Detroit River, jumping from one ice patch to the next in an effort to avoid his angry business partners. Harriet Beecher Stowe read of Archibald's escape in a Detroit newspaper and used several details in Uncle Tom's Cabin to describe a Southern slave escaping to freedom in Canada while being chased by an angry mob. The Detroit newspaper article is on display at a Harriet Beecher Stowe museum in western Ontario, Canada.

[edit] Mormon pioneer

[edit] Early LDS Church membership

In 1845, while living in Brooke, Kent, Western District, Canada (near Sarnia, Ontario), Gardner joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His mother, father, sister and brothers had already become church members. In 1846 Gardner's family and other church members chopped a road through the bush to the London Road and left their homes and businesses to join the Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. Archibald and his family arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois only to find that Brigham Young and most of Nauvoo's population had left weeks earlier. Gardner described the city : “There were plenty of homes open to us. We could have brick, frame, log or stone houses without cost. The Saints had nearly all left who were able to go, and their homes were standing empty and unsold. They had been driven out and what could not readily be disposed of was left behind. Some had furniture in‑‑chairs, bedsteads, etc.” After staying three weeks to gain supplies for the longer trip west along the Mormon Trail, Archibald and his family caught up with the main body of the Mormon Exodus in Winter Quarters, Nebraska.

[edit] Settlement in Utah

On 10 June 1847, Gardner left Winter Quarters for the Salt Lake Valley with the 2nd company under the leadership of John Taylor. In a train of 1500 people, Gardner was part of the second 100 wagons under the command of Edward Hunter, and was a Captain of the third ten. He traveled with his wife, children, his father and mother, brothers William and Robert, and their wives and families. Upon arriving, Gardner almost immediately started a temporary mill by disassembling his wagon. Archibald started a permanent mill at Mill Creek in 1848, in time for the fall harvest.

[edit] In West Jordan, Utah

In 1859 Archibald became Bishop of a ward of about 600 members. He planned the sturdy rock church building. After many difficulties the cornerstone was laid May 15th, 1861. Many men worked for nothing; others were paid with produce. As a religious and community leader Archibald served as Bishop for 32 years. During the 1857-58 Utah War Archibald was a Captain in the Nauvoo Legion. At other times Archibald was a member a group of four Bishops near Salt Lake City that petitioned Brigham Young, as Governor of the Utah Territory, for a trading coop in West Jordan, which assisted in creating ZCMI.

[edit] Business and Public Service

As a builder and politician Archibald was the de facto head of a Utah Territorial department that oversaw the building of bridges and canals. Archibald built many bridges and canals during this period, normally being reimbursed by the Territorial legislature. However at least one 1872 tunnel and canal project was not reimbursed. During this time the Salt Lake Temple faced a construction problem with a sagging foundation. Brigham Young requested Archibald's advise, and the temple was soon properly restored to level.

As a miner and land developer, Archibald sold several mining properties. The biggest was in Bingham Canyon, south of West Jordan, Utah that was found in 1863 while logging with a partner. [1] The Gardner partnership claim was initially a silver mine. By 1868 a gold mine in the canyon had produced $2,000,000. Later, the canyon developed into the Bingham Canyon Mine, the third largest copper mine in the US.

In the 1870's Archibald was twice elected to the Utah Territorial Legislature, his last term ending in 1882.

[edit] Settlement in Wyoming

Utah polygamy came under Federal attack in 1882 by the Edmunds Act. Archibald, having married his 11th wife, Mary Larson in 1869, was forced to leave Utah and spent two months in Mexico. To avoid arrest by federal officers, Archibald and his 11th wife Mary eventually moved to Star Valley, building five more mills. Neil, a son from his first marriage, his wife, and Archibald's fifth wife Althea, joined Archibald there.

Archibald lived in Wyoming until 1896, until the death of Althea. Archibald returned to Salt Lake City to bury Althea in the family plot, and remained in the West Jordan area to live with his children from his first wife, although he visited Star Valley as late as 1900. Archibald built his final mill in Spanish Fork, Utah at age 85. Archibald Gardner died in 1902, at age 87, and is buried in the family plot in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

[edit] Plural Marriage and Family

In 1849 Archibald Gardner entered into plural marriage at the urging of Brigham Young. With difficulty, he gained approval from his first wife and wed both Abigail Sprague and Mary Ann Bradford on the same day. Brigham Young was interested in assisting Abigail, and her four children, to find a husband after she and Fanny, an Indian girl, had greatly assisted in Native American translations and negotiations allowing the wagon train to safely reach Utah in 1847. The second plural wife was Archibald's original request for his first plural wife, but Brigham Young changed this plan. Fanny remained with Abigail's family and therefore she was also an Archibald Gardner family member. Abigail, Mary Ann, and Fanny are all buried in the Archibald Gardner family plot in the Salt Lake City cemetery.

Archibald married six other women, for a total of eleven. He fathered 48 children, and saw his family swell to 270 grandchildren by 1902. Archibald provided a separate home for each wife. Farms were worked by each mother and her young children. In the middle to late 1800s basic needs were food and clothing. Farming provided food for the family. Archibald's mills provided wool for weaving, and other needed items, such as wood, shingles and flour.

Archibald was a giver in life as his journal affirms on several levels. Giving was only one reason that he obtained multiple wives, as was the case with Serene Torjussen Evenson. Serena, raised in Risør lost her husband, a sea captain, prior to leaving Norway, and lost one child on her voyage to America. She arrived with 500 Scandinavian converts from of group of 680 that had left Denmark in two ships. In total hardships had taken the lives of 180. Serena arrived with four young children, speaking no English. Archibald assisted by dropping off wood and other items during her first winter in Utah. Several suiters had asked for Serena's hand in marriage, she being described as having long, beautiful, yellow braids. But her choice was Archibald, becoming his sixth plural wife, making her home in Spanish Fork, Utah after the birth of three of their four children in West Jordan.

Archibald's extended families have been graced with several well-known citizens and athletes. Mary Larsen, for example, is the great, great grandmother of Rulon Gardner, a Gold Medal Olympic wrestler. In 1990, an Archibald Gardner reunion was held in Afton, Wyoming, with 5,000 attendees. At that time, Archibald Gardner had 10,000 descendants, with approximately 5,000 from Serena's descendents.

An earlier book on "The Life of Archibald Gardner" was in great part dictated by Archibald to Delila Hughes, a daughter. Delila's book, and the journals of Archibald, and his equally pioneering brothers, William, and Robert, provide the primary sources of this information.

[edit] Memorials

On August 16,1946, one of the stones from Gardner's mill and a plaque were erected by Ontario members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, descendants and relatives of Archibald Gardner, and the Utah Pioneer Trails and Landmark Association. The stone was contributed by the Brooke and Alvinston Agricultural Society to whom it was presented by Duncan J. McEachren, who provided for its removal from the original mill site on the east bank of the Sydenham River near Alvinston.

In 1990, a monument to Archibald Gardner was erected in the town of Afton, Wyoming. The text of that momument says in part:

Noble, Generous, Kind and True to All

Pioneer of 1847

Born at Kilsythe, Scotland Sept. 2, 1814

Died in Salt Lake City, UT Feb 8, 1902

This monument has been erected as a tribute to him in remembrance of his accomplishments as a mill builder and his lifelong dedication to helping people. He arrived in Afton in October 1889. By December he was producing flour and lumber which were badly needed by the early settlers. The water powered mills were built at the mouth of Swift Creek Canyon. His foresight helped save the settlers from starvation the following winter. This monument is not just for his work in Star Valley. He was known as the pioneer builder of the west, having built over 35 mills, many canals and bridges. He faithfully served his family, church, community and country his entire life.

[edit] References

Hughes, Delia G. Life of Archibald Gardner. American Fork, Alpine Publishing Company, 1939.
Carter, Kate B. and Daughters of Utah Pioneers. Treasures of Pioneer History. Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1952.
Warrum, Noble; Morse, Charles W.; and Ewing, W. Brown Utah Since Statehood: Historical and Biographical. The S. J. Clarke publishing company, 1920.