Archibald Gardner

For other uses, see Archibald Gardner (disambiguation).

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, millwright and practical engineer, Archibald Gardner built 36 mills, mostly gristmills, 23 in Utah, six in Canada, five in Wyoming, and two in Idaho. He also built hundreds of miles of canals, and many bridges.

Alvinston, Ontario

Archibald was born on September 2, 1814 in Kilsyth, Scotland. Archibald, brother Robert, and their mother emigrated to eastern Ontario, Canada (near to Port Dalhousie) in 1823, about one year after their father, sister Mary, and brother William. At 17, Archibald built his first mill by following the direction of his father. Six years later Archibald went on his own, moving to southwestern Ontario. In Alvinston, Ontario he built a gristmill in 1837 on the east end of the sixth concession of Brooke township. As was common to the technology of the period, Archibald Gardner's gristmills were "built without nails. Wooden pins and mortises were used instead. All shafts, bearings, cog wheels, etc. were of wood..." Gristmills often formed the economic center of a community, producing flour to bake bread. The gristmill area was on a hill that faces Alvinston. The area was called Gardner's Mill for several years. Archibald also built a saw mill in this area to produce shingles. Under business pressure, mostly based on his joining the LDS Church, Gardner sold his Alvinston area mills at a reduced price. Archibald fled Canada in 1846 for the United States, documenting a miracle escape across an ice flow filled river.

Mormon pioneer

In 1845, while living in Brooke, Kent, Western District, Canada (near Sarnia, Ontario), later named Alvinston, Gardner followed the example of family members and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Archibald was forced by a 'legal' mob to flee to Detroit across a partly frozen river based on a false warrant (years later $10,000 was paid to Archibald for the business transaction that had caused the false warrant). The family and others, 100 wagons total, left Canada, meeting up with Archibald in Joliet, Illinois. The Canadian group tried to meet up with Brigham Young in Nauvoo, Illinois. The group stayed in Nauvoo two weeks, and then caught up with the Mormon Exodus at Winter Quarters, Nebraska. In 1859 Gardner became an LDS Bishop of a local ward of about 600 members, a position that he held for 32 years.

Life in the West

Arriving in Utah in 1847, Gardner first built, with his brothers William, and Robert, a mill near Warm Springs. In 1848 the family moved the mill to a site on Mill Creek where the water flow was greater, in time for the fall harvest. There the family claimed to have sawed the first lumber in the Salt Lake Valley. West Jordan business boomed with the building of a gristmill. "Gardner Mill inspired a cluster of small industries, including blacksmith shops, logging and hauling operations, woolen and carding mills, a tannery, several stores, a shoe shop, and later a broom factory". In total Archibald, partnering with many others, built 23 mills in Utah, with several of the mills selling its products to Camp Floyd and Fort Douglas. Archibald, working with other partners, also built miles of canals, tunnels and bridges. Archibald's canals, tunnels and bridges of this period were predominately reimbursed by the Utah territorial legislature.

Archibald was also a miner and land developer, partnering and selling several mining properties. The largest was a site in Bingham Canyon, south of West Jordan, Utah, that was found in 1863 while logging with a partner. For several years Archibald was the county recorder, recording mining claims and other deeds in the Bingham Canyon area. From 1878-1882 Gardner served in the Utah Territorial Legislature.

Archibald, and brother Robert, became polygamists by the requests of Brigham Young, and the approval of their first wives. The last of Archibald's 11 wives was 'illegal', taking place after the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act. Due to an unsettled polygamist status after 1882, Archibald was chased by federal agents enforcing anti-polygamy laws. In 1886 a trip to California to visit brother William was made. On his last trip evading federal agents Archibald visited Mexico, and brother Robert in southern Utah. In 1889 Archibald established a home in Afton, Wyoming (Star Valley). In Star Valley additional mills were built, he lived near and with two wives, Laura Althea Thompson, his fifth, and Mary Larson, his 11th, and near or with several of his 48 children. When Althea died in Afton in 1896, Archibald buried her in the Salt Lake cemetery's Gardner family plot. Archibald stayed on in Utah building another gristmill in Spanish Fork. Archibald Gardner died on February 8, 1902, and is buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. A new headstone was dedicated after a 1989 Afton, Wyoming family reunion when 5,000 of his 10,000 descendants attended.

Legacy

Gardner's life is memorialized by a plaque in Alvinston, Archibald's Restaurant, and restored gristmill in West Jordan at Gardner Village, and a monument in Afton Wyoming. Olympic Gold Medalist in wrestling, Rulon Gardner is great great-grandson of Gardner.

References

• Bartholomew, Becky. Gardner Mill and the Birth of Salt Lake Valley's West Side. History Blazer, November 1995.
• Carter, Kate B. and Daughters of Utah Pioneers. "Archibald Gardner, the Miller." Heartthrobs of the West, vol. 3, Salt Lake City, Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1948.
• Carter, Kate B. and Daughters of Utah Pioneers. "Journal and Diary of Robert Gardner." Heartthrobs of the West, vol. 10, Salt Lake City, Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1951.
• Dedication West Jordan Church. Deseret News, 1867-08-14.
• Furse, B. S., editor. A History of West Jordan. Salt Lake City, City of West Jordan, 1995.
• Hughes, Delilah Gardner Life of Archibald Gardner. American Fork, Alpine Publishing Company, 1939

External links

• Alvinston History by the Alvinston Community Access Program
• [1] Archibald's hand written journal
• The Miller, the Bishop, and the “Move South” by William G. Hartley, Brigham Young University Studies, Volume 20, no. 1 (1979), p. 99, Brigham Young University. Covers West Jordan Mill activities in 1858.
• millpictures.com - Picture of Gardner Mill in West Jordan
• Rootsweb.com - Genealogy and Family info
• The Sprague Project - Family Information
• Archibald's gravestones at Find A Grave