John Tanner and his family

Page 424

BIOGRAPHY OF MYRON TANNER. that when 7 camped on the Mississippi bottom, I was barefooted, during the journey 1 had suffered much through lack of food and clothing. About eighteen miles from Quincy we rented a little farm, and remained there until the spring of 1840. From there we moved up into Iowa that spring and began breaking ground for a new home on the Half Breed tract, about four miles south of Montrose and about eight miles from Keokuk, Iowa. There we remained for four years where we went through a severe struggle to supply ourselves with the necessities of life. I very distinctly remember that during those years our diet con­ sisted almost exclusively of corn bread and milk, and not unfre­ quently the corn meal gave out and our meals were still further we and that reduced. When the green corn season came around and we grew potatoes, we were able to add another article to our diet. "Under such circumstances," said Myron, "in those four years, which ance we was had fenced six hundred plowed up, fifty used for pasture. improvements around acres of land, two hundred of of it put into meadow, and the bal­ In the meantime, we began to get us, and to get some stock. In the midst harassed by the demands made of for the a note of $30,000 which he father payment upon my It took everything we had endorsed for the Prophet Joseph. of these difficulties we were could spare, except what we needed for the barest necessities of life, to 'relieve ourselves from the obligations of this note which What portion of this note was paid was paid in the year 1845." Tanner does not appear, but from the circumstances of the fact that he and his boys were enterprising and successful those four years, the amount must have been considerable. by John "My father," said Myron, "was intensely devoted to the Compared with the necessities of the Church and the Prophet. financial relief of the Prophet in the hours of his distress, money to him dross." By his liberality to Joseph in Kirtland help, the Prophet in his gratitude to John Tanner was mere and his efficient blest him and declared that .neither he, his children It was dren's children should ever want for bread. as well as a nor a his chil­ benediction spiritual comfort that buoyed up John Tanner and his a distressing ordeal through which they were children in many required to pass.