In this advertisement, David Eccles, left, appears with partner Charles W. Nibley, a prominent LDS Church leader and businessman. Courtesy Special Collections & Archives, Utah State University David Eccles was the quintessential self-made success. As the second son of a blind wood turner, David's childhood in Glasgow, and then in Paisley, Scotland, consisted of peddling household goods and carrying baggage. When LDS missionaries proposed a "gathering to Zion" in the faraway Rocky Mountains, many converts, including William and Sarah Eccles, decided to emigrate. As their grandson, Marriner Eccles, later put it, "They had nothing to lose but their adobe hut." Settling near Ogden, the family experienced the hard times typical for foreign-sounding newcomers on the western frontier. As a teen, David traveled between Northern Utah and Oregon, working mainly in lumber yards. At one point he entrusted his savings of $400 to his mother, only to see it "frittered away" on a sister's wedding. Perhaps he compensated, years later, by arriving at a daughter's wedding carrying a briefcase heaped with $10,000 in gold - a gift for the bride and groom. "My father [David] was schooled in nothing until he was about 21 years of age," wrote Marriner Eccles. "And even when he ran great enterprises, his chief intellectual aid was his memory. All he used was a pocket notebook in which he made entries on the basis of a system of arithmetic he devised. "The latter accomplishment, however, was not so remarkable as it may seem. It was his way never to sell anything he once bought. So all he really had to learn was addition."