Contributed by Robert Vaun Gunnell
Nancy Elizabeth Tolman Banks Gunnell was a daughter of Joseph Holbrook Tolman and Emma Adell Wood. She was born 14 October, 1878 at Opher, Tooele, Utah. The 4th child and third daughter of a family of fifteen children. Five boys and ten girls. She married William George Banks 6 October 1896 and Robert Baxter Gunnell 27 September 1905.
Little is known of her early life. At the age of seventeen she married William George Banks, at Pocatello, Idaho. They were endowed and sealed at the Logan Temple on the 16 May 1900.
From the time she married most of her life was spent traveling from place to place with her husband who build railroads. She used to cook for the men who worked on the railroad. I remember well how the Indians used to come to camp so often to beg her for home made bread. They would give her anything for it. I remember how kind she was to them, and how they loved her, and she was never afraid of them as some were. Everyone who knew them said ‘Mother and father were the most congenial and happy couple they ever knew,” but their happiness was very short, for just seven years after their marriage father contacted pneumonia, and died, leaving her with three little children and one unborn, who was born on father’s birthday the following 17th January 1903. Father died 4 November 1902 on election day. Grandfather Banks was judge of election and couldn’t even come to us until after the polls had closed that night. Father died during the afternoon.
They took up a homestead at Bancroft some time before he died and mother stayed there one year more following his death to secure it. Grandfather and Grandmother Banks helped what they could and mother took in sewing to keep us. After the homestead was secure, in March, 1905 she went to Pocatello to work there. We all contacted measles and the little boy born after father’s death died. The rest were very ill. Grandmother Banks took little William back to Lund to bury him by the side of father and as soon as we were able we all went to Lund to live with Grandfather and Grandmother Banks.
While living there she married again to Robert Gunnell, and went to live at Central, Idaho. Just a few miles from Lund. Her second husband had four children of a previous marriage so she now was mother to seven small children. I remember so well that when ever anyone had to be left out of anything, she would always say, “Well I can slight my own and that’s my business, but no one shall ever say I mistreated another’s child.” I think the greatest tribute that could be paid to one was made to her second husband’s mother as she stood by mother’s casket, she said “There lies one of the best women who ever lived on the earth.”
Mother was always active in church work, always a Sunday School teacher and Relief Society President for some time at Central. She had three sons by her second marriage, Raymond, Earl and Albert Gunnell. A short time before her death we moved to Davisville a few miles from our former home. There on 11 February 1910 she died following the birth of her third son by the second marriage. The baby Albert died too and was buried on her arm. She was just past 31 years of age when she died. She was a teacher in Sunday School right up to the day she took sick. She was always a care free and happy person. I remember how she would sing and play with the three of us on the homestead after father’s death, and at night would put the three of us in the same bed with her so that none of us would be alone, and yet at night her pillow was wet with tears, but we never saw them during the day.
One of the greatest testimonies we ever had of our life hereafter was given by her the summer before she died. As Relief Society President she sat up with a young woman who died in child birth. The doctor pronounced her dead and she laid so for three hours, but her husband continued to pray for her to come back. She did come back to life and told them that she had been with her Father in Heaven and she had to go, so pleaded with her husband to let her go. She then told my mother saying, “Sister Gunnell, you will soon follow me too, for your husband has your place almost prepared for you, you will never see another summer.” After that she died again and was gone, and mother died the following February. She was buried at Lund, Idaho by my father and little brother William.
Our Grandfather and Grandmother Banks took us three children and raised us as their own.
Written by her daughter Letitia Banks Davis
October 1950
Visit FamilySearch to learn more about Nancy Elizabeth Tolman. Also visit the Thomas Tolman Family Organization to find out how you can get more involved in family history.