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Show The Promised Land 143 the year 1849 a small crop of wheat was raised, but it grew scattered and short that when harvest came, much of it had to be pulled up by hand." During so The South Cottonwood area was not noted for its good land, crops timothy hay. One wonders and Tanner his who were John sons, good judges of land, chose why this poor location when better land was available. The ready avail ability of irrigation water may have been a deciding factor, but more likely they were "assigned" a place to locate and had little choice and the principal and alfalfa were in the matter. year to make plans for his who would soon be junior by twenty-five years of a number of children who included David Dan John Tanner had little young wife left with the - his care more than a - age ten and Sariah age eight at the time they reached the valley.' Her other children at the time they reached Utah were Joseph Smith age fifteen, Freeman Everton age and Myron age twenty-two. eighteen, Seth Benjamin age twenty, As previously stated, Myron, Elizabeth's son, did not come West with the family in 1848 because Apostle George A. Smith needed him back on the Missouri River more than the efficient and self sufficient Tanner family. He came West with Apostles George A. Smith and Ezra T. Benson in 1849, reaching Salt Lake City October 27. His account of his father's last illness and death indicates what suffering he went through. Here is Myron's account: In the fore part of the winter [1849-50] my father was taken sick with rheumatism from which he suffered very greatly, as it was in an acute form. We were obliged to turn him on a sheet and his suffer ing was so intense that we sometimes occupied half an hour in chang ing him from one position to another. For six months with but two exceptions, I remained with him every night until four in the morn ing. My recollection now is that he died about the last of March or the first of April in the spring of 1850 [April 13, 1850V interesting to know what John Tanner's neighbors, in Bolton who tried to dissuade him from joining the Mor mon church, would have thought on that April day in 1850 had they stood at his coffin and known what he had been through for the have said, "Poor fellow, we warned him?" sake. Would It would be the ones gospel's they |
