The Williams family of Arbon in the arena, 1958–2025

Between 1958 and 1970 Donald Thayne "Sod" Williams of Arbon, in Power County, Idaho, turned up again and again in the horse-show and rodeo columns of the Utah papers, as a winner, a director and a teacher. His wife Nelda and their sons appear there too, and Williamses of Arbon were still being reported from the arena in 2025.

Sod (1922–2001) and Nelda Ward Williams (1923–2024), a daughter of Elmer and Susan Ward of the Ward family, married in 1942. After the Second World War Sod carried the Arbon mail, on horseback in the hard winter of 1948–49, and the couple ran a cattle ranch at Arbon, where they bred and trained quarter horses, the western stock-horse breed.

Poco Star and the show ring

At the Intermountain Quarter Horse Show at Tremonton, Utah, on May 23 and 24, 1958, the results in the Tremonton Leader, jumbled in the scan, show a horse named Poco Star, listed under D. T. Williams of Arbon, first in the working cow horse class and first in reining.

Nelda rode too: on September 8, 1960, the Leader reported that Nelda Williams of Arbon had won the barrel racing at a rodeo. In January 1961 the Salt Lake Tribune listed D. T. Williams of Arbon among the directors of the Intermountain Quarter Horse Association, which had members in five western states, and reported that the directors had chosen Wilburn Pickett of Salt Lake City as the association's new secretary.

A summer to cowboy

Wilburn G. Pickett, who wrote a livestock column for the Deseret News, was probably that new secretary. On March 7, 1961, he passed along a story from the editor of the Western Livestock Journal. A West Virginia boy, Sam Meads Jr., wanted to spend time on a cattle ranch, and he and his parents wrote to Sod Williams "for the chance to cowboy a little" before the serious part of his life began. Sod and Nelda welcomed him to "their cattle and horse outfit" for the summer. He branded calves, rode, roped and followed the horse-show and rodeo circuit with the family, with the Williams boys, Barry and Brad, as his instructors. The column called Sod a fine trainer of quarter horses.

Two weeks later Pickett wrote that rodeo had been added to the high-school sports of 27 states, Idaho among them, and that the Williamses were "active in promoting the sport wherever and whenever they can." Their teenage son Barry was president of the high-school rodeo club at American Falls, and the column traced the family's interest to "the breeding and training of Quarter Horses on their cattle ranch at Arbon." The column also passed on word from Nelda: rodeo students, she wrote, had to keep their grades up like other athletes, and she had seen moving pictures of the church services held on horseback at the national high-school rodeo finals, during which not a horse moved.

In May 1961 Barry Williams of Arbon, already a district winner, was registered for the Fourth District high-school rodeo at Malad. His obituary in 2021 credited him with helping to organize the first rodeo club at American Falls High School, where he graduated in 1961. He rode on the rodeo team at Utah State University, and in July 1965 the student paper listed him with the team at the national intercollegiate finals in Laramie, Wyoming, as the Rocky Mountain region's student director in the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association.

Teaching the next riders

In March 1964 the Vernal Express announced a free quarter horse clinic at Brigham Young University. Its highlight was to be a discussion of four performance classes, among them western pleasure and reining, under the direction of D. T. "Sod" Williams of Arbon, with the audience invited to put questions to him at a microphone.

On June 16, 1970, about 134 members of the 4-H horse clubs of Franklin, Caribou and Bear Lake counties took part in a clinic at the Franklin County Fairgrounds in Preston, Idaho. The Cache Citizen reported that Sod Williams of Arbon taught senior western reining, in which the rider guides the horse through set patterns. He demonstrated the patterns, explained the proper equipment and helped members with their own horses. A Brad Williams, an advanced horse club member from Power County, gave a demonstration on horse safety; he was probably Sod's younger son.

The next generations

Barry and his wife Valorie, married in 1969, made their life on the family ranch. His obituary says that they, together with his parents, brought some of the first purebred Simmental cattle to southern Idaho, the start of Arbon Valley Simmental, and at the 1985 Utah State Fair the reserve champion Simmental bull belonged to Arbon Valley Simmentals of Arbon, probably the family's herd.

From 1989 to 1992 a Travis Williams of Arbon turns up in the bull-riding results and standings in the Ogden paper. In October 1989, in the first go-round of the World Classic Finals Rodeo at the Golden Spike Arena, he placed second with 74 points and won $521.25. At the 1990 Weber County Fair Rodeo he scored 72, second only to J. C. Sanders on a night when just six of 16 bull riders made qualified rides. In November 1991 he stood third in the preliminary year-end bull-riding standings of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association's Wilderness Circuit, with $6,619.06, which put him among the top fifteen entered for the circuit finals; in 1992 he was eleventh. The papers give only his name and town; Barry's obituary names a son Travis, probably the same man.

On July 11, 2025, East Idaho News reported that Wade Williams, 17, of Arbon Valley had won the Reined Cow Horse championship and the All Around Cowboy title at the Silver State International Rodeo in Winnemucca, Nevada. He had competed since he was eight, "following in the footsteps of his parents," Jason and Dejanet Williams, and he made his championship ride on his older brother Sod's cow horse, Maggie. Barry's obituary names a son Jason and lists among his grandchildren Wade, his brother Grayson and the younger sister the article also names; in 2013 the invitation to Nelda's 90th birthday party gave the place as Jason and De Williams' home. Wade is very probably Sod and Nelda's great-grandson.

On this site: Nelda Williams's own account of the winter of 1948–49 and the Arbon area history.