Not only Mendon: Buist settlers from Box Elder and Spanish Fork

Buist, at the south end of Arbon Valley, in the part that stayed in Oneida County, Idaho, when Power County was created in 1913, is remembered mostly through its Mendon homesteaders. After Brigham Young Mansfield of Samaria located a ranch there in 1898, the Richards brothers of Mendon were ranching there from about 1905, and in 1909 the Richards, Willie and Buist families filed their homesteads together. Newspapers of other Utah towns show families also coming to the south end from Box Elder County and Spanish Fork, some before the Mendon filings and some after.

The papers did not always call the place Buist. Families there were often said to live at Holbrook, the nearest town, a few miles to the southwest; the Buist history notes that the area was at first known as North Holbrook, among other names.

From Brigham City

David Jeppson of Brigham City married Anna Fuller, also of Brigham City, on June 27, 1905. His 1937 obituary in the Box Elder News Journal said the couple moved to Buist after the wedding and came back to Brigham City eight years later, where he went into the fruit and produce business. The obituary used the later name; the Buist post office did not open until 1909.

F. S. Thompson, a former Box Elder County deputy sheriff, moved to Holbrook, Idaho, about 1906; his obituary does not say whether to the town or to the Buist end. When he died in 1926, the Salt Lake Telegram recalled that he had been shot in the abdomen while serving the county some twenty-six years before and had been crippled for the rest of his life. His survivors included a son at Holbrook and a daughter, Mrs. J. E. Richards of Logan.

That daughter was probably the wife of Buist's postmaster. A marriage index records that Pearl Thompson married Eugene Richards at Logan in January 1907. Buist's first postmaster, appointed in 1909, was John E. Richards of the Mendon family; the site's post office story tells how the name Buist replaced Taft on his application. In March 1912 the "Idaho State News" columns of two Idaho papers reported:

Five dollars fine was imposed by Judge Dietrich in the federal court at Pocatello on Mrs. Pearl Richards, postmistress at Buist, Idaho, who pleaded guilty to an indictment charging the making of false postal reports to the government.

The item does not say what the reports were, or why it named her rather than the appointed postmaster. The Buist office closed in 1912 and did not reopen until 1914, under August F. Jeppson, the storekeeper there and another Brigham City man. No paper says whether the case had anything to do with the closing.

From Garland

Garland, in northern Box Elder County, sent the man who first led Buist's Latter-day Saint congregation. Archibald S. Hall, raised at Garland from 1895, married Fanny Evans in December 1910 and moved to Holbrook in 1911. His 1951 obituary said he was superintendent of the Mountain View branch of the Holbrook ward for two years and then its bishop for ten, and that he had served five years as Oneida County road superintendent. The site's church story dates the branch to 1913 and his call as first bishop of the Mount View Ward to January 1915.

His sister Electa and her husband, Willard L. Wood, came up from Garland the same year. At Holbrook, as her obituary put it, she was Relief Society president of the Mount View ward, and the Woods went back to Garland in 1920. At Christmas 1918 the Salt Lake Tribune's Garland column found both families home with their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Hall: "Mr. and Mrs. A. S. Hall and children of Buist, Idaho, and Mr. and Mrs. W. L. Wood and children of Buist." The Halls returned to Garland in the early 1920s.

From Spanish Fork

The Spanish Fork Press followed a third group. On October 2, 1913, it reported that James Warner had come home from Buist after three months looking over dry-farming land. On October 7, 1915, its front page carried three Buist items. Mr. and Mrs. George A. Yates and their son had come down from Buist to visit relatives. Henning Christensen had been brought down from Buist with typhoid fever, though the paper thought the case had been "handled in time." And:

James Warner returned Monday evening from Buist, Idaho, where he has been working on the farm for the past eighteen months and will spend the Winter in Spanish Fork.

Some of them farmed Buist in summer and spent the winter in Spanish Fork. In October 1916 Mr. and Mrs. William E. Wilson returned to Spanish Fork for the winter after a summer on their Buist farm. The next April Wilson came home from three months' work in the mines at Eureka, and the paper said the couple would leave the following week for their dry farm at Buist; in November 1917 Mrs. Wilson came down again for the winter. The Henning Christensens of Buist visited Provo in July 1916, the James S. Warners of Buist visited Spanish Fork that November, and in April 1918 three Spanish Fork Warner couples came home from visiting relatives and friends at Buist and Malad.

Several proved up: they lived on and farmed their claims long enough to receive title. The land-office records list homestead patents in the Buist township to George A. Yates and Henning Christensen in 1917, to James S. Warner in 1918 and to William E. Wilson in 1919. Patents in the same township also went to George R. Warner (1915), Guy L. Wilson (1919) and a James Warner (1921); the papers do not tie these to the Spanish Fork families, nor say whether the James Warner of the 1913 and 1915 items was James S. Warner or a younger man of the same name. On July 1, 1920, the Press reported the marriage of Vera Warner, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James S. Warner of Buist, to Harold Roe of Stone, Idaho, a few miles southwest.

Leaving Buist

Several of these families did not stay long: the Jeppsons, the Woods and the Halls were all back in Utah by the early 1920s. Drought, the farm depression and the influenza thinned Buist after 1920, and by 1930 only fourteen families were left. The Mount View Ward the Halls had helped to lead was discontinued in 1937.

The article as printed

Lincoln County Times, March 21, 1912, page 2, an item in the "Idaho State News" column. Transcribed from the page scan.

Five dollars fine was imposed by Judge Dietrich in the federal court at Pocatello on Mrs. Pearl Richards, postmistress at Buist, Idaho, who pleaded guilty to an indictment charging the making of false postal reports to the government.

On this site: the Buist history; the death of Willie Jeppson, August Jeppson's son, in 1919; and the typhoid years that sent Buist settlers home to Utah.