John Tanner and his family

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324 John Tanner and His Family he had a preference for farming and stock of the Tanner family. Joseph may have turned out to be the most dedicated and most successful farmer of the Tanner brothers. While they were in San Bernardino, he seems to have been the one who remained closest to the soil, while his brothers who were in partners in their large farm freighted, drove Joseph relates that raising, a characteristic horses to Salt Lake, and followed various pursuits. The best description of Joseph is that he was a large and power­ ful man, able to do the work of two average men scarcely knowing his own strength. An interview with Hildur Marie, widow of Leonard Tanner, vertifies the fact that he was a large man physically and highly regarded. 6 The seven years in San Bernardino where the Mormons started with nothing and built a prosperous community, gave Joseph plenty of opportunity to use his enormous strength. It was during the San Bernardino period that he grew from a promising young man of eighteen into a powerful leader who would play a prominent role in the affairs of Payson for a half century. Like the other San Bernardino colonists, Joseph returned to Utah in the spring of 1858. It was his distinction to come in the company of Colonel Thomas L. Kane, "who had been appointed by President Buchanan to mediate between the Federal Goverment and the Mormons."? Joseph relates: "Ebenezer Hanks representing the church furnished three mules and a buggy I furnished one, making a four-mule team. The party reached Parowan on the 20th of Feb­ - new teams were furnished." Joseph did not Kane to Salt returned his own but to Lake, wagons which accompany were on the Santa Clara. He then accompanied the wagons to Payson where they arrived March 8, 1858.8 ruary, 1858, where Joseph's older brother Myron was married and had been in Payson for nearly two years where he had built a home by the "herd grounds" three or four miles from town. To this four-room, two-story house. Myron invited the entire family from California, which includ­ ed his mother, an aunt, three brothers, a hired girl, and some hired men. This made quite a house full, approximately ten adults. Joseph sensed the overcrowding, and commenced building a home in town. This was the first built in Payson by a Tanner but it would not be the last. Payson would soon be filled with them. With the breakup of San Bernardino, there was much property to be disposed of, which occasioned some difficulty since so many were -