The Logan Temple fire and an Arbon wedding, December 1917

In the first week of December 1917, Eddie Davis and May Mathews of Arbon came down to Cache Valley, Utah, to be married in the Logan Temple. On the day they arrived the temple caught fire, and two days later they were married in Salt Lake City instead. The South Cache Courier, published at Hyrum, a few miles south of Logan, reported both the fire and the wedding on its front page that Friday, December 7.

Arbon had been in Oneida County, Idaho, until 1913 and was by then in Power County. Eddie was the eldest child of Ed and Esther Davis; his mother was a daughter of George Arbon, for whom the valley is named. Born on December 27, 1892, he was nearly twenty-five. May was the eldest child of William H. and Sarah Iverson Mathews, who had taken up a homestead at the Summit end of the valley about 1909 or 1910. She was born at Riverside, Idaho, on December 22, 1898, and was about two weeks short of nineteen. Her father's people were from Hyrum, where his widowed mother still lived.

The fire

The Courier's front-page report told how Hyrum people were amazed on Tuesday, December 4, when word came by telephone that the Logan Temple was on fire and that its interior was in danger of being entirely destroyed. The paper went on:

However, later reports were somewhat of a hopeful nature, and while the damage done is very great, yet part of the building with all the records was saved.

On Wednesday morning the temple authorities and the stake presidency met with an electrician and the architect, Karl C. Schaub, and sent President Joseph F. Smith and his counselors in Salt Lake City a report, which the Courier printed. The fire had started under a cabinet beneath the main stairway, where the insulation on an electric wire had broken down and formed an arc. The janitor had left about 5:30, when all was well, and the fire broke out about 7:45. A small quantity of furniture polish kept in the room fed the flames, which ran up the stairway to the C floor. There the walls, ceilings, carpets and furnishings were ruined, with the inner sealing room, the art windows and the paintings, and the main stairway was damaged beyond repair. The records were safe. After the report, the paper added that Schaub estimated about $100,000 to restore the building, not counting paintings, furnishings and carpets. The Courier's account ends:

We are informed that work of reconstruction of the interior of the building will be commenced at once, but that it will take at least six months before ordinance work can be resumed.

The wedding

Elsewhere on the same page, among the local news, was the wedding. The scanned text of the item is jumbled and part of the bride's name is lost, but it names "Mr. Edward Davis and Miss Rose" Mathews of Arbon, Idaho, who had come "down last Tuesday to get married in the Logan Temple." It continues:

They were considerably disappointed on Wednesday morning to learn that the temple had been destroyed by fire, and consequently the couple were obliged to take the train for Salt Lake City, where they were married in the temple there on Thursday, returning to Hyrum Friday.

That Thursday was December 6, 1917. The item says that "Mrs. Hannah Mathews" of Hyrum went with them, and as far as its scrambled text can be read it calls the bride her granddaughter. May's grandmother in Hyrum was the widow of Henry Mathews; her obituaries in 1932 name her Marie Stein Mathews (Maria in one of them) and list her son William at Arbon. She was probably the woman who went along, though the paper, or its scanned text, gives her another first name.

Everything in the item fits Eddie and May, and their golden-wedding notice of 1967 and Eddie's obituary of 1969 give the same day and the same temple.

Where the accounts differ

The family history on this site says that Eddie and May married on December 4, 1917, in Logan, and were later solemnized in the Salt Lake Temple on December 22. The Hyrum paper, written that same week, tells it differently, and so do the couple's own anniversary notice and Eddie's obituary: one wedding, on Thursday, December 6, in the Salt Lake Temple. December 4 was the Tuesday they came down to Cache Valley, the day of the fire. None of the records read for this post mentions a ceremony on December 22.

The years that followed

The couple made their home at Arbon. By March 1918 the Arbon column of the American Falls Press was writing of "Mr. and Mrs. Eddie Davis," and that October it reported Eddie "wearing a smile that won't rub off" over a new baby. The column called the child a boy; the family history gives their first child as a daughter, Lois, born in 1918. Eddie proved up his own homestead in 1919, and the family history tells of their farm, their four daughters and May's close calls on the valley's roads and creek crossings.

May came back to Salt Lake City in April 1939, when the Salt Lake Telegram noticed Mrs. Eddie Davis of Arbon at the church's general conference. She had brought her eight-month-old baby, Sheri Lee, so that she could attend every session.

In November 1967 the Logan Herald Journal announced that Mr. and Mrs. Eddie Davis, by then of Pocatello, would mark their golden wedding with an open house at the Pocatello stake house on Saturday, December 2. The notice said Eddie had lived in Arbon for 71 years and farmed there for 47, and was now retired and a high priest in a Pocatello ward. May had been president of both the Primary and the Relief Society in Arbon Ward and belonged to the Desert Rose Camp of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers. They had four children, three of them living, with ten grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, and they asked that there be no gifts.

Eddie died in Pocatello on April 28, 1969, and May in December 1993.

The article as printed

South Cache Courier, December 7, 1917, page 1. Transcribed from the page scan.

The Logan Temple Fire
The people of Hyrum were certainly amazed Tuesday evening when they received word over the telephone that the Logan Temple was on fire, and that the entire structure, as far as the interior was concerned was in danger of being entirely destroyed. However, later reports were somewhat of a hopeful nature, and while the damage done is very great, yet part of the building with all the records was saved. The loss is estimated at one hundred thousand dollars.
The building had just recently been thoroughly renovated [illegible] parts of it remodled, at a cost of about $50,000, and to think that such an accident should befall this sacred edifice, is somewhat incomprehensible.
At a meeting held Wednesday morning by the Temple authorities and Stake Presidency, at which Electrician Maughan and Architect Schaub were also present, the following official report was formulated and forwarded to the First Presidency:
President Joseph F. Smith and Counselors, 47 East South Temple St. Salt Lake City.
Dear Brethren;
After a thorough inspection of the interior of the Temple, in connection with my assistants, also the City Electrician, Architect Karl C. Schaub and President [illegible], we came to the following conclusion: That the fire commenced immediately under the cabinet located under the main stairway, it showing that there was a breaking down of the insulation around the wire that was encased in the lead cable and formed an arc which started the fire, melting the lead cable. The janitor left the building about 5:30 p. m., turning off the current from the [illegible] at that time all was well. The fire broke out about 7:45 in the room where the cabinet is located; in this room was kept a small quantity of furniture polish that had inflammable material in its composition and the flames spread rapidly up the stairway to the C floor where most of the damage is located the walls, ceilings, carpets and decorations, and all furnishings are total ruin; also the inner sealing room; the main stairway is damaged beyond repair, the art windows; art paintings, are totally spoiled and many of the doors and casings and window casings are badly damaged. Most of the other rooms are badly smoked. All of the records are safe.
[illegible]
Karl C. Schaub, the architect, estimates that it will cost approximately $100,000.00 to put the building in its original condition, not including art paintings or furnishings, carpets, etc.
We are informed that work of reconstruction of the interior of the building will be commenced at once, but that it will take at least six months before ordinance work can be resumed.

On this site: Eddie Arbon Davis and Rosa May Mathews and Edward Henry Davis and Esther Rebecca Arbon by Melinda Campbell, and the Summit area, where the Mathews family homesteaded.