Oral History Program George Theron Taggart Interviewed by Michael Sanders 2 February 1972 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah George Theron Taggart Interviewed by Michael Sanders 2 February 1972 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed Kelley Evans, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Taggart, George Theron, an oral history by Michael Sanders, 2 February 1972, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with George Theron Taggart. The interview was conducted on February 2, 1972, by Mike Sanders, in Ogden, Utah. Taggart discusses his memories of Morgan County, Utah. The Taggart name has been associated with Morgan County, Utah, since the days of the earliest settlement. MS: Mr. Taggart, where were you born and raised? GT: I was born in Morgan City, Morgan County, May 4, 1895. MS: How long did you live in Morgan? GT: First period about 5 years. We spent a little time in Evanston, sometime in Echo then to Ogden until 1901 when we moved back to Morgan. My dad worked for the Consolidated Wagon & Machine Co. There we lived until I was married in 1917 living in Morgan until 1923 and then to Smithfield, Utah, then back to Morgan in 1927. Ten years back in Morgan until we moved, to Ogden and have been here until the present time. MS: How long has the Taggart name been associated with the Morgan area? GT: Since about 1860. The original Taggart was with the Mormon Battalion. He was supposed to have come here but they left Winter Quarters and went to California then came back to Salt Lake. His family was still in Winter Quarters so he went back to bring them into Salt Lake. In about I869 he and his brothers built a grist mill in Morgan where they made flour, etc. MS: During the time you were growing up what was the town like? GT: It was during the horse and buggy days. We did our courting in horse and buggy and during the winter time we had a big time horse racing and cutter racing. Everybody had a horse, and everyone knew everyone else. It was just a good old country town. 1 MS: How many people were there in the immediate area during this time? GT: Maybe 1,000 in the town at that time and 2,500 in the county. MS: Was the main occupation farming? GT: Yes it was mainly farming. At one time Morgan had the biggest pea cannery in the United States. This was begun in 1908 and built up to a big plant in 1916. I think it canned about 12,000 cases per day. That was the big industry. There was also a little creamery. I hauled milk for that creamery when I was a kid. MS: Was peas the main crop at this time? GT: The canning crop - yes, it was peas only, and it remained that way. The climate is too cold up there for anything else, in late vegetables, tomatoes, etc., that is. They can't get by with them economically. MS: How long would it take you to get to a major town? GT: We would have to go to Ogden once in a while. It would take about 10-15 hours on a horse jogging along. The road was just a dirt road then, almost impassable in certain seasons of the year. MS: You mentioned the winters up there - was this sort of a rest period for everyone when they didn't have to work quite so hard? GT: We went to school - we spent a lot of time at school. When they built the high school there I was in the first class that graduated in 1915. This was the first high school they ever had there. It has been built up to a really modern school system now. That is one thing Morgan has always had - really good schools. The best there was. MS: What was the reason for this? Were people any different in Morgan than elsewhere? 2 GT: Well they were rather fortunate in one way in that the railroad came a long way through Morgan and they always picked up a lot of taxes from the railroads. This has been a good source of taxes along with the cement plant which was built in Morgan County at Devils Slide. They made a big industry out of this plant and it is still is. They have had their ups and downs, but it still is a going thing. A lot of people working at the cement plant live in Morgan, which is only a distance of about seven miles. MS: What was the impact of the railroad coming through? GT: Well that was before my time. I've heard them tell about it. I've talked with people who said they rode the first train that came through there. MS: Were there a lot of people living in Morgan who worked for the Union Pacific? GT: There were some yes. My grandfather worked on the railroad for a long time. This gave the people quite a boost, in fact, it gave a boost to the people in Utah. They cut and made a lot of ties. They had a contract to make ties for the railroad. MS: I take it the L.D.S. Church was the dominant religion? GT: Yes, it was strictly L.D.S. The people were pioneers and L.D.S. They had to live together to keep alive. There was no place for an individual in the beginning. MS: This brings out an interesting sideline. Did you ever know any of the old polygamists? Were there any living there who hadn't been run out by federal law? GT: Well yes, there were two families who were neighbors to where we lived. I went to school with a girl from one of those families. A boy from back east was teaching in a class she was taking and he mentioned that the polygamist children were not up to par. She jumped up in a hurry and shut him up by saying she was from a polygamist family and she was one of the smartest girls in the class. We didn't hear any more about polygamy from him. 3 We didn't see very much of it in Morgan. In fact there was none of it legally after I was big enough to worry about it. Q,. Were there just a few families - mostly large families? GT: In the beginning there were, yes. The families were scattered out in the counties. For instance, Porterville was made up of Porters, Richville of Riches, Croyden was Hopkins and Condies, Thurstons lived in Littleton, the Bohmans and Petersons in Petersons and the Stoddards lived in Stoddard. Jessie Stoddard was quite a pioneer and Indian fighter. Stoddard was named after him. MS: Did the families intermarry quite a bit? GT: Well not too much, although there were not very many outsiders at that time. There was no intermarrying that I know about within the families. A lot of people left Morgan, but many of the good old stand-by families are still there. MS: How big a family did you come from? GT: I was number one of thirteen children, five girls and eight boys. MS: What was your father’s occupation? GT: He was a cabinet maker to begin with and worked at milling at Richville. His father had the mill. When he was at Evanston he was running a grist mill and when at Echo he was also running a grist mill. When he lived in Morgan he went to work for the Consolidated Wagon & Machine Co. where he worked until his death. MS: Did most of the family stay around that area? GT: No they didn't. My grandfather took his big family and went out to the Big Horn Country of Wyoming in 1901 and left my dad, his brother and two sisters here. The rest of them were in the Big Horn Country. 4 GT: I WAS interested when you mentioned horse racing. What about this? MS: It was just entertainment for the kids. Each of us had his horse and each thought his was the best. We used to run races lots in the winter time. We also raced in sleighs. MS: Was it any kind of organized racing? GT: Not really, it was just one gang of kids against another gang of kids and it wasn't always the same gang. We were pretty well mixed up. We just classified ourselves. MS: Now Morgan City is the county seat for Morgan County? GT: Right. MS: What about law enforcement - was it any problem? GT: Not much. They were lawful living people and very little crime that I ever knew much about, very little robbery or anything like that. Once in a while someone would steal a calf, but the owner probably stole it back. MS: Was there much ranching in the area? GT: There was a lot, yes. Everybody had a few head of cattle. That was the way they survived. A few sheep. Some have grown into bigger industries now, but at that time they were small farms or ranches more or less as a matter of survival. MS: How was the communications system, the mail and the phone systems there? GT: Well they were very fortunate because they were on the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad. That gave them all the communication to the outside world that there was in the country at that time. Likewise, when the Western Union and the telephone came through Weber Canyon it put the route right through Morgan. They were very fortunate in that way. When the highway came through they also came through Weber Canyon to Morgan. The early pioneers couldn't come through Weber Canyon because of the Devils Gate are 5 GT: This is the reason they bypassed Morgan and went east through Immigration Canyon. Otherwise, we might have had the capital of the State of Utah in Ogden. MS: When did they start improving the roads in that area? GT: They began right away. They were working continually and are still doing so. They began working on the roads and the school. MS: When were telephones brought in? GT: Oh - the telephone was there when I was a kid. They were the kind you cranked and you rang one, two or three. I remember that ours was number eleven. Eleven jerks and we answered the phone. They soon improved this. By the time I was ten or twelve years old they had a modern exchange. They were party lines, and they still do have party lines out in the country. MS: Was the farming done with tractors as such, or was it done with horses. GT: Well everything was done with horses when I was a child. This was the only power they had. You must realize in those days there were no automobiles there. Everything was done with the horse and horse-drawn power. All transportation was with horse and buggy. MS: What about social life - was it mostly centered around the church? GT: Yes, it was mostly centered around the church and the school. It was either the school or the church. There wasn't anything other than that. MS: What did this involve - were there dances? GT: Yes, a lot of dances, and we staged a lot of shows. One thing that they did have was a good opera house. Between the church and the schools they kept the entertainment going all the time. It was local material, but it did a good job. It developed a lot of good 6 people and a lot of efficient people because of the opportunity they had to participate. Sometimes it wasn't only opportunity, but it was necessity. MS: Were there sports as such, like basketball etc.? GT: We always had basketball when I went to school. There was also baseball and when I was small they played for money. When they played they played hard. Every little local area had their baseball team and it was quite an attraction. MS: Would they play in the local areas, or would they come into Morgan to play? GT: Both. They had tournaments with each settlement who had a baseball team. Later it got to where the area was competing with Weber County. That was in later years when transportation got easier. MS: Was the family the main unit? GT: Oh yes. The family was the main unit and they stayed pretty close to home. MS: What was the church like in those days? GT: It was like the family - everyone participated and worked closely together. The social organization was the church. MS: Were there many of the good saints who weren't too active at that time, or was it pretty much of a hundred percent activity? GT: There were always the positive and the negative. That is the way people are, but there were always enough people in the middle of the road to keep things rolling along in the right direction. MS: That would have been during the time of President Joseph Fielding Smith? 7 GT: Yes, he and Heber J. Grant. Joseph F. Smith used to come to our place. He was the president of the company my father was working for so when he came for church purposes he would always come around to talk a little business. MS: It must have been interesting talking to that man. What was he like? GT: He was a real character. A large fellow with a long beard. A very distinctive character, very admirable and conservative. He never talked very much. He was a good leader of the people. MS: Did he visit Morgan quite often? GT: Maybe once a year. Some of the authorities I've been told used to like to come to Morgan. Of course in those days they didn't stay in a hotel, but stayed with the families. We entertained the authorities when they came there, which was quite an honor. It was one of the means of communication that kept you in touch with the world. MS: Was there just one single ward? GT: Each one of these little towns had a Ward house. Morgan proper had a North Morgan and a South Morgan Ward house, but Morgan was the stake center. The South Morgan Ward was used as the stake center. MS: Were the members of the church holding positions as bishops and such held in esteem in the political community also? GT: They were the leaders yes. Not necessarily all of them, but in a general line yes. To give you a little idea, when Devil's Slide was built up there was a fellow who applied for a license to open a saloon at Devil's Slide. There were already three in Morgan. The county attorney told him that they didn't have to issue him a license. They didn't either - they refused him. He took it to the courts and won so the county took it to the Supreme Court, 8 and they won. The license was not issued and no more licenses were issued in Morgan. That was the beginning of the local option. It was the first county in the State of Utah to go dry, and in reality the beginning of local option. MS: Did they renew the licenses for the other three? GT: Wo. When their licenses were up they didn't renew them. Thus Morgan was the first in the State of Utah to go dry. Utah was one of the first in the United States to go dry. MS: What was the reaction of the townspeople to this? GT: They accepted it. That is what they asked for and they got it. MS: Were they local people who owned the bars? GT: This particular case was not a local man, but the others were. MS: When was this? GT: I don't really remember the year. MS: Being a small town I guess everyone pretty well knew everyone else. Was there kind of a town drunk? GT: Oh no, they were just human beings. Those who drank drank, and those who didn't didn't. As I said before there was always enough going down the middle of the road to keep the thing in balance. It was always that way. MS: You served in the army during the First World War? GT: Well, I did and I didn't. I was called and went to Camp Kearny and was there for six weeks and was sent home and the armistice was signed a few days later. That's when I left down there. The lieutenant who fixed up my papers said this thing's all over. There is no use keeping you here. So that is as far as I got. I was one of the last ones to leave and one of the first ones back. 9 MS: Are there any members of your immediate family still living in the area? GT: I have a couple of brothers and a sister and another brother's family. That's all there is in the immediate area now. The rest are scattered. MS: Is the family still located in Morgan City or are they pretty well spread out around the country? GT: Well there is a sister in Morgan. Howard is just a little ways out in the canyon there. MS: Who owns the old family home now? Is it still in the family possession? GT: No, Howard my brother did own it but I think he sold it recently, and the old grand-daddy's place, Francis owns that now. That's in the same area. MS: How close has the family stayed to the L.D.S. Church? GT: Like everyone else, they all belonged to the church. Some were more active than others, but they all adhered to the church. MS: Was Morgan a good place to live at that time? GT: It was a good place to live then and is a good place to live now. It is just far enough away from the big industries and riff-raff of the country. They don't get this far out. It is just a good place to live. The appearance you get of it, particularly in the summer time, is that of a beautiful little valley. MS: Do you still own property up there? GT: Yes. MS: In the town proper? GT: Part of it is in the city and part of it is across the line in the county. MS: Is there anything else you would like to say about Morgan? 10 GT: The Indians fought hard to keep Morgan. History says they wanted to keep that valley for their own. MS: When was this? GT: That was back soon after 1858/1859, soon after they came into this country. The Taggarts have been associated with Morgan since the beginning. My Dad used to make caskets, he made a lot of them, since he was a cabinet maker. I've been in and out of Morgan all my life. The highlight of Morgan has always been good schools. They had the tax money when nobody else had any. I believe they were the first district in the State of Utah to combine their schools into one. Morgan County looks nice in the summer because of the water from East Canyon Reservoir and the Weber River. It has been good to people - lots of deer and range land. MS: Did you do a lot of hunting? GT: Yes. In fact my dad and my grandfather had to do a lot of hunting to stay alive. There were lots of deer and rabbits in the winter time. MS: Did you cure your own meat? GT: Oh yes, we always cured our own meat. We would put hams in a barrel and then into a bin of wheat to keep them until next summer. Most everyone had a cow and a few chickens. They lived close to the ground. The ecology now is such that they can't keep them anymore. There are just three or four big dairies there now. They are milking less cows and getting less milk than the whole group did before. That is the big industry now outside of range cattle and sheep. MS: Are many of the old families living there now or are they pretty well dispersed? 11 GT: Pretty well dispersed. Recently when one of the older Rich men passed away, my sister Jess made the statement that there isn't one of the old people left in Morgan any more. I said - "my dearest Jess, you haven't looked in the looking glass lately have you?” That is what has happened. We are the generation that is old now. Very few of the people that I knew are still living there now. MS: Well, I don't want to take up any more of your time. GT: I've got more time them you have. MS: Thank you very much for talking to me. GT: I could go on talking about Morgan for ever and ever. 12