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Show FALL 2013 UHQ pp 304-385_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 9/16/13 1:25 PM Page 308 UTAh hISTOrICAL QUArTErLy schemes to make their properties appear more attractive to potential buyers.10 In October 1889, the first handful of half-starved bison shipped from Manitoba arrived in Lake Point. Glasmann, who by now lived in the Clinton house in Lake Point, carefully nursed his animals to health, and by March 1890, his herd swelled to seventeen. Glasmann enjoyed all the elements of a first-rate real estate development. He figured that all he needed was the promised infrastructure and the lots would sell themselves. Eagerly, he threw himself into the task at hand and worked tirelessly on the project for the next two years. Sometime during 1889–1890, William began courting a twenty-oneyear-old widow, Evelyn Ellis Jenkins, who was born on October 23, 1868, in Piedmont, Wyoming.11 On June 11, 1890, Glasmann married Jenkins and moved her into the Clinton House in Lake Point. The next year, on May 9, 1891, Evelyn gave birth to their first son, Roscoe.12 That same month, Glasmann officially incorporated the Buffalo Park Land Company. That incorporation basically reflected the partnership between John and Bella Clinton Lynch and William and Evelyn Glasmann.13 However, the Utah real estate bubble burst in December 1890 when news of the failure of the London banking firm Baring Brothers rippled through Utah. Overnight, property values dropped, resulting in lower profits, overextended credit, and tight money.14 Property that had sold for ten times the pre-1889 price now went for just a fraction of the former price; but Lynch and Glasmann exuded confidence that real estate in Utah still was a good investment. By the end of the year, the lots remained unsold, but the expenses kept mounting. Lynch and Glasmann desperately tried to liquidate their inventory of lots. By the summer of 1892, the Lynches left, cutting their losses and moving on. Jeter Clinton had died on May 10, 1892, and by July 26, 1892, Evelyn had replaced John Lynch as secretary and treasurer of the Buffalo Park 10 “The Antelope Island Herd,” Macon (GA) Telegraph, January 15, 1897. A small railroad hamlet founded just before the Union Pacific passed through southwest Wyoming, Piedmont sat on the Union Pacific route that led to the historic meeting with the Central Pacific Railroad at Promontory, Utah. Joseph Ellis, his wife Carrie, and their two daughters Addie and Evelyn left Piedmont when the railroad was completed and relocated to Salt Lake City, where Joseph hired on as a painter for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. For years, the family resided at 16 Willard Court, near 500 West and 600 South, in the heart of the LDS Sixth Ward in Salt Lake City. See “Long Illness is Fatal to Mrs. Glazebrook,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 25, 1955. See also Salt Lake City Directory (San Francisco: Kelly and Co., 1889), 67. 12 William Glasmann named all of his sons after prominent Republicans whom he admired. Roscoe Conklin Glasmann (1891–1964) was named for Roscoe Conkling; Abraham Lincoln Glasmann (1893–1970) for the sixteenth president; Robert Ingersol Glasmann (1895–1897) for an Illinois attorney general and prominent Republican orator; William Wiese Glasmann (1897–1964) for a friend and fellow Republican who campaigned with him in Iowa in the fall of 1896; and Blaine V. Glasmann (1900–1972) for Senator James G. Blaine, who, among other things, was popular in the West because of his efforts to lower the tariff. Family tradition related to author by Myrene Glasmann Temple. 13 “Buffalo Park,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 23, 1891. 14 Ronald W. Walker, “The Panic of 1893,” Utah History Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Kent Powell (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 413–14. 11 308 |
