Voices from the Past The Institute of Religion program at the University of Idaho in Moscow, ID Interviewee: George S. and Mildred Tanner September 19 th, 1970 Tape #50b Oral Interview conducted by Harold Forbush Transcribed by: Chase Rockwood March 2009 Edited by: Aubrey Steffen April 2009 Brigham Young University- Idaho
Harold Forbush: The Upper Snake River Valley Historical Society located at North Center Rexburg, Idaho is pleased to copy from a reel to reel tape onto a C60 cassette. The following interview and this is being done on the 21 st of April 1984. It s my real privilege and opportunity this morning, it being the 19 th day of September 1970 here at Rexburg to have come to my office Brother and Sister George S. Tanner. A couple who were responsible for more or less taking care of me when I was at Moscow University of Idaho as I stayed at the LDS house where Brother and Sister Tanner was house mother and father I suppose. Brother Tanner is director of the LDS Institute on the campus at the University. My purpose, also, for interviewing these people is because they were, for a long time residents and kind of first generation pioneers of the Salem area, where Brother Tanner was Bishop at one time and I presume Sister Tanner must have been highly involved too. Sister Tanner first with you, I would like to have you state your full name, the date and place where you were born. Mildred Tanner: Mildred Louise Hoge Tanner. I was born in Salem 1906, January 16 th, 1906 Now would you state the full name of your father and just briefly state a little of his background. His name is George Hoge. His parents came from the Morgan Valley, Utah, and they were pioneers in the valley, {inaudible} and worked for the Utah Sugar Company. He became the bishop of Salem in his later years. They were the parents of ten children. Mother s name was Eddington, Laura Louise Eddington; her family background was English and Salt Lake City. Her father was a Scotchman. Do you know, specifically, what the circumstances are perhaps the inducement that brought them into the upper Snake River Valley, and what year this was? Each of the little Valley from Utah gradually filled and the young people of the original pioneers moved out, just as they did in an area, and the Snake River Valley was being settled by the big Ricks Family, and they went {inaudible} looking for land for our home. They came there {inaudible} and I m not certain of this date, about 1905, my elder brother was born in Utah and I in Idaho so it was about 1905. Now you kept your schooling at the Sugar City Schools. Do you recall some of the early teachers there at Sugar Salem? Mrs. Garner is one that I remember as having taught about three generations there {inaudible}. Of course Uncle Humid, he taught there for many years. Sister Roberts was my favorite teacher. {Inaudible} was another teacher. I don t remember any others who lived in the area that came in. They were all teachers from Utah. If you were to mention one or two individuals who had a real influence for good upon your life and perhaps at the course of your life for good in the Salem, Sugar city area, who perhaps would you like to mention and give tribute? I know this is a tough one maybe.
The Shirley Family were very close to us. Sister Sarah Shirley and her husband and their family. They were very close friends. She was a very intelligent woman. {Inaudible} The Virgin Family were our other very close friends. Brother Charles Virgin and his family. Those are the two people I d like to mention now. Where was your home located in Salem? Where the present Fred Shirley home is. And then my parents moved to North Salem where the Leap Family now lives. I didn t live there but I lived in the little house where the Shirley s now live. I see. Incidentally the Leap Family sold out there and others lived there of course now, but I know exactly where you meant because Melvin Luke of course, who has been a great favorite of mine over the years. Well I appreciate those comments Sister Tanner. Now turning our attention to your good husband here, George S. would you state your full name and the date and place where you were born. George Tanner: I m George S. Tanner; I was born in Joseph City, Arizona on the 26 th day of January 1897. My folks were early pioneers to this particular town. This is the earliest Mormon settlement in Arizona. Two-hundred families were called into that section in 1876 by Brigham Young to make four settlements along the Little Colorado River. These leaders were Lot Smith, Jessie Ballenger, George Lake, and William C. Allen and each was to have about 50 of these pioneer families and each was to make a settlement there on the Little Colorado. My father was one year after this original call his name is Henry M. Tanner and he was from Beaver City, and my mother was Eliza Ellen Parkinson and she was also from Beaver. These folks were married in January and the next month left for Arizona as pioneers. Mother was nineteen and father was twenty four years of age at that time. They came there and settled in Joseph City and made a home where they lived out the rest of their lives. Mother had eleven children all of whom grew to maturity and marriage and additional family. My father s totaled us and it should, at this date, probably number approximately 500 people including the living and the dead. Now this was from his soul wife then too. He had a second wife, this was during the polygamy period and she had six children, three of whom lived to maturity, and when I mentioned the total, approximately 500 people, and that would include the children of these, the grandchildren and so on of this other wife as well. Now the Tanner name is well known, and of course our beloved President N. Eldon Tanner from Canada. Is this a relationship? Yes. We came out of the same stock with a man by the name of John Tanner was converted in New York near Lake George in the early days of the church by some missionaries by the name of Carter, Simeon Carter and Jared Carter. He was a wealthy man at the time and his side of the Tanners had achieved considerable amount of fame. He funded a great deal of the money to the building of the Temple in Kirtland, probably thirty or forty thousand dollars all together came from him, and as far as we know he was the only man of considerable means that was converted to the church in the very early
days. We have a genealogy book of this young Tanner family and Nathan Eldon Tanner comes from one of the sons of this man and I come out from another, so we are very distant cousins I suppose, would be about seven, thirty cousins but we do come from the same family. Now Brother Tanner did your parents and other members of the family come into the upper Snake River Valley. No, no none of the Tanners had been in the upper Snake River Valley; I m the only one that I m fairly aware of. There have been some others that have been in and out through there. There was a George W. Tanner who s been in here just a little. {Inaudible}I m not acquainted with any contributions that the Tanner s have made in the Upper Snake River Valley. What were the factors that brought you into the Valley? I came up as a teacher. I graduated from the University of Utah in 1923 and I was hired to teach in the seminary for the church and I went one year into Vernal and taught and the next year they transferred me and I came and opened up the seminary here in Sugar City. During the six years that I taught here I also opened a seminary in Teton and also here in Rexburg. Now this is Teton city? Yes. It wouldn t be Teton Basin No, Teton City. And here at Rexburg. That s right; I started three seminaries while I was here Now what years were these started, do you recall? I mean I think this, historically, is rather significant. I d have a little trouble being exact on that but I came here in 24 to open the Sugar City seminary and I would think that it was the next year, that it might have been in 26 that I opened the one in Teton City, and about that same time the one here in Rexburg. And now the one in Rexburg, of course, would be associated with the High School that s over here, but the one in Teton City wouldn t be. Yes it was, they have a little High School in Teton City.
Is that right, well that s interesting to me, I didn t realize that. Yes they did, and I might just tell you that at that time, the High School era was under the control of mostly non-members and when I asked for permission to teach some classes there, there were some questions about it and at the close of the year I then went to the board to see whether they were willing to have it continue, and the president of the board was a woman whose name I can t recall, but she said, Well I thought we had the seminary, I didn t know that there would be any question about it. That was her way of endorsing what we had done there. Interesting, interesting. Where did the seminary meet in Sugar City? It met over the bank. I don t know whether that bank building is still there or not but Frank Davis was the cashier and manager of the bank and they set up a room over the bank evidently. As I recall this is where I went and took seminary in the late 30 s and early 40 s and it was taught by Leon M. Strong. Yeah, Leon Strong who had been previously been over in the Teton Basin, and moved in when I left. Just a little personal interest, perhaps, in connection with this, the women whom you just interviewed, Mildred Hoge Tanner, was a senior in High School at the time and took one of my seminary classes so I had the chance to train her pretty much just like I d like to have her and then I married her. This is a very excellent arrangement I would say. This is interesting though, students and instructor, this is real wonderful. I d like to continue just for a word here. After I had been here six years in 1930 the commission of education who at the time was Apostle Joseph F. Merrill wanted to know if I would like to do a year of graduate work in Chicago, at the University of Chicago in preparation for my going to Moscow Idaho to become director of the LDS Institute there. And we were gone a year and then in 1931 in the fall we moved to Moscow Idaho. At that time, as far as I can find through research, there were two students from Madison County who were LDS that we got acquainted with who were at the University of Idaho, two from Madison County. And who were they? One of them was Harris boy from, I don t believe I better try to tell you that, Wiley {inaudible} came the next year didn t he? John Solomon was one of the earliest students. But that was a little later, but anyway we started the cooperative movement there at the University of Idaho the Student Cooperative Movement and within a short number of
years, possibly three or four, I can t tell you exact, I counted out again and we had fifty four students coming from Madison County there. This was during the time of the depression, of course, and students needed a place where they could live rather cheaply and the first year that we ran those cooperatives up there we boarded the boys nine months for $80.50 total which would have been fifty cents less than nine dollars a month for the nine months nine times would have been eighty one. And that was the thing that pulled them in. When we went to the University there probably was something like seventy Mormon students all together and while I was there we reached the highest 414 students. And this program that we had was one of things that helped bring them in. In the early days I cooked one hot meal or one hot a dish a day, and sent it over at lunch time, it was either soup or a casserole {inaudible}. Now at the time the institute was constructed they had in mind kind of a dormitory floor for the institute I suppose. They had room there for twenty eight men now this is the thing my wife has just been talking about us cooking the meals, for their noon meal. This was in the basement of the LDS Institute, and this is the year before we expanded into this big cooperative movement. I wouldn t know how much it cost them that first year, it probably was even less than this nine dollars a month. But the first year that we operated in the regular University Hall the President of the University turned over one of their Halls, that was known as Ridden Ball Hall, for the purpose of this cooperative, and it was there that we fed them. And then later on they turned Linda Hall to us and then still later they built the Idaho Club for us, so that at the height of this cooperative movement we had, perhaps, 450 students all together. These were not all LDS understand, anybody could come into this who wanted to, the LDS probably didn t constitute at any time more than half or maybe not even that much of the total cooperative group. Now Brother Tanner I understand that you succeeded two other directors at the Institute, would you name them and give a little bit of their background just briefly? Yes, the first man to go there was Jay Willey Sessions, well traveled and knowledgeable person who was sent up to explore the feasibility of our doing something on the University of Idaho campus. And I m not sure the year Willey went there, but it was probably 25 or 26 and after being on the campus a little while he recommended to the brethren in Salt Lake that the University of Idaho would be a desirable place to establish an institute of religion. So the building was built there and finished, and this was the earliest institute of the church, it was taken over in 1928, and I m not sure the year the next was organized; it may have been the one here in Salt Lake. This is on record though; if you have any questions finding it typed the thing out. Sessions was there only the one year after the building was built and then Dr. Sydney B. Sparey was working at that time towards a PhD, replaced him and took over 1929 and 30, so that there were two directors there before we came, and we came there in the fall of 1931. Later on Dr. Sparey become the head of the department, was it History or Religion?
Religion. Down at the Brigham Young University. And still is there. And still is there. A man who has written a good many church books and who is known throughout the church, also has written many articles for church magazines. I claim just a little bit of relationship with him and I knew his wife who was a Braithwaite girl. Did Brother Sessions become the commissioner of education? Oh no, Brother Sessions never was commissioner of education but Brother Sessions went from where we were, from up there to Wyoming, wasn t it, and he opened the institute. He has been the great promoter and I think all together he also went to Arizona and opened the one there, so he has opened a number of institutes and then he went to the BYU and he became the senior man there in the department of religion, head of the department for a number of years. Well now, Brother Tanner, of course we ve skipped a few years when we talk at least as far as the chronological order is concerned, and I d like to go back to the time when you were made bishop of the Salem Ward and if you will kind of detail some of those factors that lead up to this calling and maybe some of your experiences in Salem. Well George S. Romney was the Stake President here at the time and of course I was the seminary man and quite widely known throughout the stake and particularly I think I was chosen to go there and become the bishop because of my interest in the young people and the fact that I had made some sort of a record with them. I remember very definitely the first conversation that I had about this, I was in the Stake house and Brother Romney came and said, I would like to have a little interview with you. And of course I was completely uniformed about what was going to go on and I said, Did you want us to get a chair and sit down? And he said, Well I guess we better, you probably will want to have a chair. (laugh) So he told me what he had in mind, and I told him that I didn t know whether I would be available to do that type of thing, that I d have to discuss this with the people of Salt Lake with the commission of education who d be my boss. He said if that s the only thing that was holding me up, he wouldn t worry about that at all he knew that would be ok, and so I was put in as bishop. Now were you a resident of the Salem Ward, a member of the Ward? No I was not; I was a member of the Sugar City Ward and lived in Sugar City. They chose me and took me out of that and had me go down and become a bishop in Salem. I chose as my councilors Orvil P. Morganson, a young fellow maybe two or three years younger than I, and Francis Belnap. Francis, by the way, still lives in Salem, the only one
of the three of us. I don t have the date exactly but it would be about 1926 or 7 and I was bishop for about 4 years at the close of that time the commissioner of education asked me if I would like to go the University of Chicago for this special training. And that was followed, of course, by being appointed in 31 as a director. That s right. It was with an understanding that I would be the director of the University of Idaho but I went back to the University of Chicago for the special training. Just briefly, Brother Tanner, can you describe and perhaps suggest the trend of the attitude of the non LDS up there towards the members of the church, I mean I m sure the feelings towards the Mormons must have been a little bit anti at first then surely warmed up considerably through your efforts there. That s a very good question, and one that I m glad you asked. When we went there, there was considerable antagonism, of course I suppose there is always a certain amount, but there had been anti-mormon meetings held there and while Brother Sessions was there earlier there had been a lot of opposition to our coming in. I think that the Chamber of Commerce and people of that kind who can see a few dollars flowing in has something to do with getting us in in the first place because they knew a building would be built there would be plenty come in there from the church and there would be a teacher hired and he would spend money there, so I think that we could say to begin with the financial interest are the things that got us in, but after we got there and really got going there was a great deal of good will developed and it probably came as much as any other single thing, from the success of our students. We, as I already suggested, had less than 100, probably in the 70 s there, about 70 students when we came there first in 1931. These students were superior. There seemed to have been some sort of selection take place for these students came so far to the University of Idaho, and they achieved in a rather remarkable way, for instance the LDS group of 22 men who lived in the LDS group for a long, long while had the highest average grade of anyone on the campus. I think out of about, if we were there all together 28 years, it seems to me like about 25 of those 28 that would give a good idea in a way, had the highest grades of anyone on the campus. Some of the fraternities were pretty jealous of this and made a fuss, and the more fuss they made, you know the more it advertised us. Our students are really superior on this campus. We were just mentioning, I was just speaking here a minute ago {inaudible} and I that a number of these students must have came from the Driggs area where your interests held. Two boys we had up there were the Dirchy boys, Ray Dirchy and Reed Dirchy. Ray Dirchy was in the Law School and has gone on to become a judge in Boise, you know who he is there. Of course he s in the newspaper frequently now, very talented and one of the finest young men we know. Reed Dirtry is a professor at the Utah State University. And these boys are brothers. These are brothers and just outstanding. Now they re just two of hundreds that we could name, but we mention them as two fine fellas who made a success. While were mentioning it, there is a boy from Rexburg Orvil, what was his-
You might mention Robert Kerr was an outstanding student. One of the earliest Law students there was Robert Kerr but there s boy here from Rexburg who during the Second World War when they were rationing food was taken to Washington D.C. and became the Head of the meats division and the total Rationing Program. His name is Orvil Erickson Orvil Erickson, yes, that s the boy. A brilliant young fellow there. One of the brightest boys that I ve known. We could name on and on and on people of this caliber you see who has gone on to considerable success, in my opinion has made this partial that the University of Idaho s LDS students were prominent way beyond the total number that we have turned out and they have gone on to tremendous positions. One of them, Rex Lee, from Rigby became the Governor, or H. Rex Lee became the Governor of American Samoa American Samoa, yes. And he s back in Washington D.C. a very prominent person there. That s very interesting. Well now eventually they established, the church was able to establish a ward at Moscow, is that correct? That is right. Now there are two wards at Moscow at the present time, one of them is composed of students. They picked a bishop from among the local people there, in fact {inaudible} there is a counselor for students and they have a student ward which would be, I don t think that the group has grown there any since we left, it may not be even as large as it was. The emphasis on Ricks College here in Rexburg and other places, BYU has pulled the Mormon students here rather than to Moscow, but that ward would have between 3 and 400 students and then there was a local ward there as well, and recently they have built within the last several years, four or five years, except it was dedicated here about a month ago they built a beautiful chapel there so that there are two wards there. The students meet in the LDS Institute building and the townspeople meet in the ward building. Now it might be interesting to point out here for the records sake that the old institute has been raised and the new building is now completed. That s right, and it was dedicated about two years ago I imagine, but the church was dedicated only last month. It has been built for a number of years but probably wasn t paid for and was dedicated about a month ago, we had an invitation. Now Brother Tanner I m sure in your remarks about the development of Goodwill, and you scribe a lot of this to the success of the students that in all fairness, and I m sure because of their own personal modesty, you haven t suggested the influence in goodwill
that you generated among the Moscow people. It s my understanding that you were Head of the Red Cross and perhaps other civic organizations during those years and if you will just kindly suggest that maybe with the urging of your wife just some of these things. He took a very prominent part in the community affairs. We were they type of people who weren t afraid of non members. I joined the Chamber of Commerce. I was, for probably fifteen years, head of the American Red Cross, I was interested in what they call the Welfare Program there and there wouldn t have been anybody in the county who didn t know who George S. Tanner was. I do think that we did have and did play a considerable part in the breaking down of the prejudice there but don t any of us kid ourselves, there is always still some prejudice left. The very quickness of success frequently creates antagonisms. The fraternity boys on the campus were very jealous of the Institute boys while they were making these fine records and doing everything they possibly could to try to keep us from receiving a scholarship cup so you have success and you re just going to have some enemies along with it. That s very true. My husband was head the ministerial association there and the PTA and there was a time mediation group for young people, he was very well known in the community. I would like to comment here that Brother Tanner is the type of man that had a wonderful influence on the non LDS who would come for council and advice and for years you taught a marriage class or two which was attended by a lot of non LDS isn t this correct? That s right, I might mention one other thing to say of my attitude about people, we had a negro boy who was in the Law School, did you happen to know him Harold? He s a Lawyer in Idaho Falls at the present time. Oh yes. What is his name? Greg Melreese To continue reading and listening to the interview, reverse the tape onto side two. Side two continuing the interview with Brother and Sister George and Mildred Tanner (laugh) No she was from Driggs. Oh she was She was from Driggs, if we are talking about the same person, and I believe we are.
We are, we are talking about the same person, and he used to come down and trap so there every now and again and I understood his situation very well, but then I just knew that there was something that couldn t be entirely cleared up and her folks insisted that this romance didn t break up they d take the girl out of school, and of course he was compelled then to break up the romance, but I wanted to mention that he came down to Idaho Falls to practice and later was up in Moscow at a convention of some kind that the Lawyers were having and he saw me seated back in the audience and the minute that the program was over, he was on the program, then when it was over he came dancing down to say hello to me so I don t have any problems mixing freely with anybody at all, I just happen to think all people are fine. There s another little comment that just a little bit on the levity side that I d like to mention. We fellows in the house, of course referred to Brother Tanner, I m sure affectionately and respectfully as Pop Tanner and we d kid him about this old car that he used to drive around. And I remember finally we returned one fall semester and Brother Tanner had a new Buick, remember that? Yes, I remember very well. That old car. {inaudible} He drove it for over 17 years. You might mention in connection with this, this wasn t because we were so hard up we couldn t buy another one or that we didn t desire another one, but this was just the close of the war. Our entire manufacturing process had gone towards the war efforts and cars were just unavailable, and we had quite a time. I finally made a trip all the way to Phoenix try to get a car, I did pick up a Chevrolet there and brought it home with me but when I got to Moscow I found that I could buy a new car, and so we bought this new Buick. And now Sister Tanner as we close this interview we d like to have you tell us something about your family, your sons and daughters, when they came along and where they are now, and their names, that s it. When we first came to Moscow, I went to school, I had these three children but they were in the little preschool at that time. I graduated from the University of Idaho. {inaudible} I might break in her just enough to say that our children are all married and college graduates and I have figured this out {inaudible} that the group of us all together has been in college a total of 48 years, that s Mrs. Tanner and me, our three children, and their spouses. That s quite a record isn t it?
{inaudible} In Moscow, he s a doctor and studied at Washington State University under Dr. Dorton. Brother Tanner, what experiences have you had since leaving Moscow? This has been one of the very pleasant experiences of our lives. We were called to Moscow in 1960 and left there in February and went to Hawaii and spent two years in the Hawaiian Islands, I was director of the {inaudible} of information and my wife and I were both called on regular missions, were sent to Takashi, two years there. Then when we returned, of course our place had been filled in Moscow, we came back to Logan where I taught at the institute there for three years then we came to Salt Lake and decided to build a home in Salt Lake because two of our children were there, and we built a home just two or three blocks from our son, because we wanted to fairly close, we didn t want to be too close, but we wanted to be fairly close to them. The last six years I have been completely retired as far as the teaching is concerned, and I ve been busy collecting old diaries and journals of pioneer periods, and I ve found an amazing number of these and we re seeing a film, microfilm and many of them are put on Xerox so that I have, for instance, put a diary made by John Bushman in Arizona in his hometown on Xerox microfilm and then we typed it, and each of these processes has fourteen libraries in Utah and Arizona and California. This is a tremendous and challenging experience I would think. This is as interesting as any teaching I have ever done. It is a fascinating thing to be able to dig up things that people didn t know and I probably am the best informed personal life on the history of Joseph City and the Little Colorado in Arizona, and I am presently writing a book that s published three fourths or a little more complete, and it will be published probably within a year or so. Very interesting, isn t that wonderful, I think that s wonderful. Now these primary documents disappear unless someone takes an interesting like to them. Some old letters are lost to which he s had access and found. Letters that were written by General Authorities to the people, to the colony in Arizona {inaudible} they are very rare documents. Elaborating on what my wife has just said I discovered that at the University of Arizona in Tucson there were a number of letters that Brigham Young and John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff and other brethren had written to Lot Smith who was one of the captains of these four companies that went out. And there were perhaps fifty of them and I suggested to the University of Utah that they should take a good share of copies of these letters and bring them to the University of Utah which they did and then they let me take them and just bring my wife and we were able to translate some of those letters. They were written in long hand by the brethren and some of them almost impossible to read, but we succeeded in getting a pretty good copy of those and there were about fifty of them, and then we had them Xeroxed and sent all over. And I sent some up to the
Church Historians office in Salt Lake and I asked them if they had these and they were amazed to find that I had fifty letters written by the brethren that were not, they had not kept copies of them in the Church Historians office so these you see are new material if they had an immense importance in connection with how the pioneering was carried out in those early days. This would be one of fifty or one hundred different experiences that I ve had in these last few years and that s why it s so exciting. Isn t that wonderful. Brother and Sister Tanner I want to say, and I want you to know how much I ve appreciated this visit this morning and the visit we had last night. A little surprise, my wife kept the secret and so I didn t know that two people had come up to the Henry Eddington Funeral so it was a lovely experience for me last night and much more so today to have this on tape. Now as we close would you have any comments about the upper Snake River Valley as an area of settlement by the Mormon Pioneers? We were very much interested in this and coming up yesterday we commented on this. My folks went into this Arizona section which is a very, very uninviting and impossible place to colonize and I said to my wife as we came along, some difference in the folks who came here. We have admired the first of Brother Ricks, what was his given name? Thomas C. Thomas C. Thomas C. Ricks who came and these others. We think this is one of the finest sections of the church. The caliber of the Mormon people here is outstanding and the opportunities they have is tremendous. Another thing that we d like to comment on is how Ricks College has grown. We visited yesterday afternoon with Artel Chapman and his wife, who were some of our students at the University. They are now prominent here on the campus and have been for 30 years or more. And the spirit of this college is quite wonderful, and the way it has grown is astonishing and we wish every success to the people here in this upper Snake River Valley. I add to {inaudible} first child born in Rexburg. She is descendent from Ricks, the Ricks family And her name? Her name was Anne Dallin, another {inaudible} Very interesting, well again We commented here about the beautiful water supply here at the Deep Lake Canal. {Inaudible} I think a picture of the upper Snake River Valley is unlimited, marvelous. Well again thank you so very, very much. I truly appreciate this.
We ve enjoyed our visit with you.