A brief sketch of a man among men, born into the church of stalwart and faithful Latter-day Saint pioneers who shared the trials adventures and accomplishments of Brigham Young and many of God’s appointed servants. A heritage that makes man the hard way, like carving an image out of the toughest marble. His forebears were men of vision, not afraid of what lie beyond a never before plied horizon, ever pressing onward and upward in pursuit of an ideal. Such a man was my father.
I am certain that my father was one especially chosen for his mission upon this earth, endowed with the desire for adventure, progress and the development of the new territory, and like all mortals was badgered by the choice between good and evil. His physical and spiritual strength overcame much of the evil that at times threatened his very soul.
Father was born July 17, 1851 and raised in Bountiful, Utah.
He married my mother, Emma Adella Wood, February 27, 1871 in the Endowment House. He also married Mary Ellen Cahoon in the Logan Temple November 17, 1887. The two families lived together until the Manifesto in 1890. Father was endowed with great mechanical ability. As an inventor, a creator, always able to produce his creations to perfection regardless of the circumstances. If he had not the wherewithal to produce he would manufacture the machines to manufacture his inventions. I can imagine his restlessness, herding sheep for his father or in later life driving stage for Blythe Forgo, while all the time in his mind he was building sawmills or carriages or boats, all of which he did during a life time. He was a builder of beautiful homes and churches, many of them still standing in substantial array throughout Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. There is a monument to him on Dempsey Creek, a beautiful home with a church steeple on top, called now Tolman’s Temple. It was in this home I spent much of my childhood. One event I shall never forget while there, I was tagged along behind father down the trail to the barn, unbeknown to him, I picked up one of his cigar butts and proceeded to vanish with it into the brush near by…an hour later, mother called for father to come quick as I was deathly ill, so she thought. The outcome, one pale green nine year old boy with tobacco poisoning, one embarrassed and ashamed elder, who never to our knowledge used tobacco again.
Now in retrospect, father built a sawmill in Bountiful. It was called a pit mill, The lumber from which built many of the homes in Bountiful. In 1878, he moved to Chesterfield, Idaho (now a ghost town) took up a homestead where he engaged in farming, carpentry and black smithing. He was an excellent woodworker and during this period he made all of the caskets for the neighborhood. Restless for the sound of the whirling wheels and the buzzing of the sawmills, he moved his family once again to north canyon near Chesterfield where he built a steam sawmill from which he furnished lumber for Chesterfield, Gentile Valley and Soda Springs. Fire destroyed this mill and he moved to Bancroft and bought another sawmill. This was the nearest mill to an up and coming city, named after an Indian, Chief Pocatello. It was from this mill that all the lumber for the first sidewalks in Pocatello were built. Well do I remember the number of slivers my bare feet picked up trodding these unplanned boards and the odds and ends and loose change I retrieved through the cracks by means of a hunk of chewing gum on a stick. (That of course quite a number of years after the boards were laid. From Bancroft he moved to Fish Creek, taking the sawmill with him. Fish Creek was my birth place, I say was because I returned there for the first time recently, checking my genealogy.. There was no Fish Creek as a place, just a beautiful stream running through beautiful rolling verdant hills. I have no idea how it looked when I was there as we left for Grace, Idaho a year and a half later in 1897. This sawmill must have been a charm…he took this same mill to the new home and began soon after cutting lumber for the Last Chance Canal Company.
He replaced a broken piston ring from the large cylinder of his steam engine, by one he forged himself, being many miles from a mail order house. Father’s skills were a blessing in many ways. If he wished to have something made in the factory, somewhere he would make a mold or pattern and send it to be duplicated in metal of bronze. The broken parts of his firearms he carved out of spring steel.
From Grace he moved to Dempsey Creek, selling the steam mill and building. The one at Dempsey Creek to be powered by water. Instead of building a dam on the creek, he selected a suitable pond site down stream and proceeded to survey for a mill stream so that when completed would fill the pond with adequate water for a days run. The pond as I remember was about fifty feet above the creek bed into which the water from the penstock and wheel house flowed after turning the water wheel which run the mills. This marvelous wheel, he too, shaped forged and balanced to operate in perfect form. This wheel was so unusual it is now in a museum along with many more of father’s artifacts.
We moved now to Inkom, Idaho another water mill, with the same procedure in construction but this time a “store built turbine” to run the mill. I neglected to state that all surveys made by father were laid out with the aid of a surveyors instrument made by him which gave him as fine a graduated grade as an expensive transit now in use.
Since the manifesto my father’s house has been divided. My memory of this division in my youth is very vague. However, as I matured I realized the seriousness of polygamy and the tremendous responsibility upon all those who were required by law to observe it. My father was no exception. He had to strive twice as hard in as much as there were two separate households to maintain. He was loyal to both families to his death despite the close check made by the authorities who were morally bound to enforce the law. It was fortunate and a great blessing that father was so gifted with all the abilities to make ends meet. He could organize, develop and supervise in many ways. From his mill at Inkom, Idaho he furnished lumber for the Harkness Grist Mill in McCammon, Idaho also the opera house there. He helped move the Round House from Eagle Rock (Idaho Falls) to Pocatello. While in Pocatello (where my mother’s family lived) he took the contract to build the Pocatello Sixth Ward.
Father’s second wife, Mary Ellen Cahoon, was lovingly called Aunt El. She and her and her family lived at Inkom and I learned to love them dearly in my brief working periods with father at the mill. While in Pocatello and in high school, father and my brother Joe taught me black smithing and carriage making. Joe’s oldest son continued this mechanical work to become one of the nation’s leading mechanical engineers. He with his son are called upon often to contribute their skills to many technical projects of the U.S. Government.. I rebelled after high school and went my merry way and became as Gilbert and Sullivan puts it, a wandering minstrel, a thing of shreds and patches. I still have my God given desire for my father’s skill and have done quite well since giving up the classic arts, following in my father’s footsteps.
Father ran a grist mill and furnished ground grain to many of the farmers in the valley. He was a fine wagon maker and repair man, blacksmith and shoer of horses. He built the Hofhine house (sister Ettie’s husband) in Pocatello. Father contributed to the poor by building caskets for burial. In 1918, he set up a sawmill for Mr. Monroe. It was given a trial run by him and his son Joseph Leroy before turning it over to the owner. In 1919, father contracted to operate a large sawmill for a Mr. Sheppard at the foot of Mt. Sherman up Eight Mile Creek. It was a mill with a lower and top saw requiring at least eight men to operate. A far cry from the original Pit Mill in Bountiful. This modern mill was later moved to Rockland, Idaho and father put it in operating order. In the interim he operated a dairy with Ruland Hofhine, his son-in-law.
The mill site in Inkom was a beautiful site and a profitable one, but when Joseph Leroy and I enlisted in the Marine Corps, he sold or traded the property to Dr. Newton for ten acres of ground at the forks of Rapid Creek and Jackson Creek where he built his last home. He bought the lumber from Pocatello Lumber Co. for this fine three bedroom home, modern in every way, with as you might know, a shop for all his precious tool and bric-a-brac. Father’s health began to fail and he was no longer able to ply his trades. In 1928, the Anderson Lumber Company foreclosed and he lost all but one hundred dollars in cash. Father and Aunt El retired to Lava Hot Springs to be with his daughter, (my sister), El’s daughter, Della and her husband, Ernest Byington. They gave him a spot of land and in one day the sons-in-law, Earnest Byington, Russ Fowler, Clarence Cooper, Joseph Leroy, (his son), my mother’s boys, Joseph and Lamoni built a cozy one room house, later brother Mone built an extra room on a truck and moved it from Pocatello to Lava Hot Springs and attached it to the big room. Father was hospitalized soon after, very strong of body, but his blessed mind and soul were so tired he could no longer endure this mortal existence. He passed away September 30,1935. He was laid to rest in the Inkom Cemetery in a plot of his choice, his wife Aunt El is also laid beside him. January 17,1970, his daughter Leona was laid beside them both. My mother, Emma Adella, died a short time before his passing and is buried in Pocatello, Idaho in the Fifth Avenue Cemetery.
My sister, Della, writes: “Father would go to the canyons and haul logs to the mill yard, to be sawed into lumber for sale and for the completion of bridges and other buildings on the acreage. Many of the slabs, edging and the bark was used for firewood. We children loved to search the logs for pine gum, this we did enjoy as we new nothing about any other kind. The mill pond was filled with fish. The fish would get against the screen of the penstock which carried the water down onto the wheel that made the power, we would take a garden rake and pull them up to land. Take what we need for the meal and prepare them for a fish bake. Fish was the only source of meat we had with exception of an occasional chicken. In a year or so after getting settled in Inkom, a large strawberry and raspberry patch was planted. Then fruit trees and a large garden were planted. They produced very well, enough for both families.
“In 1916, father was made a High Councilman in the Pocatello Stake, He visited different wards of the Stake, carrying messages from the Stake Presidency and delivering forceful gospel sermons. As time went on he became rather fanatical and our morning family prayers became sermons. We had been up early and had done many hours work, then called to breakfast. The family circle around the table, kneeling beside our chairs. If it was father’s turn to pray, oh for sure we would be late for school. We girls, I’m sorry to say, decided this had to stop, our bedroom was just off the kitchen. We didn’t have a door to the bedroom, just a piece of old fashioned carpet hung in the door opening. So we would kneel along side the table, next to the door opening into our room, get ready for school, listening pretty close to what was being said and we learned exactly when to creep back to our places. Mother would reprimand us, though she didn’t approve, she found it necessary to go along with us, or we’d be late for school.
“In 1917 father bought us a car, oh we were in seventh heaven, it was a Maxwell. Father wanted mother to learn to drive it, well her first lesson was her last one too. She was going to drive to church. She did well until time to stop, she turned it to park it, instead of stepping on the brake, she hit the gas feed. Wow!! She took off the church steps and the covered porch. This meant that father had an unsolicited job. But it proved a blessing in disguise, because when father finished with that porch and steps, they were no longer wobbly, but strong and easy to climb and with railings.
“Our father was a righteous man, was ordained a High Priest in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints December 18, 1910 at Pocatello, Idaho by Thomas L. Cox and was duly received as a member of the High Priest’s Quorum of the Portland Stake of Zion.”
My older sister, Effie, writes: “I can only think of father as a very religious man. He had great faith, in fact when our sister Allie was killed, someone spoke to him and told him that she was in danger, he arose from his bed and made a call for help, saying that he knew Allie’s husband had come back and her life was in danger. Before his prayer could be answered, Allie’s life was taken by her husband. All the while I lived at home father never spoke an unkind word.”
There are some deep and satisfying sentiments between a father and his family that need not be spoken; but neither should they always remain silent and unsaid.
( Written by his son, Clarence Henry Tolman, with excerpt by daughters Della May Tolman Byington and Effie Tolman Forkner and edited by Loraine T. Pace.)
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