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Show Seth Benjamin Tanner 299 The Mormons are noted for their attention to education under the most adverse conditions. Montrose. even A statesman-historian once commented, "Happy is that people Seth must have been one of the happiest, as it is next to impossible to find anything about the early part of his life. It is reasonably certain he was with the family when they left Montrose in 1846 and headed westward. He must have been present whose annals are brief." Allen of the United States Army was recruiting men Battalion, but there is no information why Albert age twenty-one and Myron age twenty were taken from the Tanner family, and Seth, age eighteen was not. It may have been due to a mother's concern for a youngster she considered too young for the life of a soldier, and, of course, two men from the Tanner family would seem to have been enough anyway. when Captain for the Mormon With Myron and Albert away in the Battalion, Seth would have been the oldest of the unmarried children, and J ohn would have leaned heavily on him. Whether he liked farming or not, he would have been kept busy that hectic year of 1847, raising crops for the final westward migration and the "five teams and eighteen months 6 provisions" the family took along. Joseph Smith Tanner, a younger brother, has documented the fact that Seth came West with the family in 1847.7 As already nar rated in another chapter, "The promised Land," the family settled between the two Cottonwood creeks, about ten miles south of Salt Lake City, where they took up land in sufficient amount to farm. Seven of the ten Tanner children who moved West, were in the Cottonwood area in 1848, the exceptions being John Joshua who remained at the Missouri River until 1851, Albert who remained in California after his discharge from the Battalion, and Myron who remained one extra year at Kanesville, Iowa, to assist George A. Smith in the westward trek in 1849. in south Cottonwood about two years during which time busy building shelters for the family, constructing dams and canals to bring water from the Cottonwood creeks to the farmland, Seth he was was and clearing and planting. During the first year in the valley, he was the oldest of John's unmarried sons, and would have assumed much of the responsibility for the work. He turned twenty years of age on March 6, 1848, and was a large powerful man. With the coming of Myron in the fall |
