In the 1890s the sons of Andrew and Sophia Andersen of Mendon, Utah, began farming at the head of Bannock Creek, in what became Arbon Valley. Several of them took up homesteads there, but by 1920 the brothers still living in the valley were Otto, John and Ezra; Magnus had gone back to Mendon about 1911 to care for his parents and died there in 1947. Between 1956 and 1964 the Pocatello paper printed notices of those three brothers' last years, among them a golden wedding and the obituaries of Otto and Ezra. Together they close the story of the Andersen brothers who stayed in the valley.
A golden wedding, 1956
On Sunday, March 4, 1956, the Idaho Sunday Journal announced that Mr. and Mrs. John C. Andersen would mark their golden wedding the next Saturday with an open house in the Ninth LDS Ward at Hawthorne and Quinn, from 3 to 7:30 p.m., followed by a program. The couple asked that no gifts be brought. The notice said that John, born at Mendon on May 22, 1877, was 16 when he and his brothers set out from Mendon to take up homesteads in Arbon. It counted him among the valley's earliest settlers and described his work as dry farming and ranching. Sena Sorenson, his wife, was born at Smithfield, Utah, on August 7, 1883, and they married in the Logan temple in 1906. They had lived in Pocatello since 1946, the year John quit farming. Six of their seven children were living, with 22 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Sena died in April 1959 and John that August, both at Clifton, Idaho.
Otto, 1960
Otto was the eldest son. In 1893 he and John built a log house on his place that the Andersen accounts call the first house in the valley, though other early accounts give that place to David Bowen's cabin. His homestead entry was made in 1901. He kept working his Arbon land until 1949, and in 1951 the Logan Herald Journal still called him Otto Anderson of Arbon, Idaho, when he visited his sister Catherine Gibbons at Mendon with his daughter Clara, Mrs. Roy Grube.
He died on Saturday, November 19, 1960, at 85. The Idaho Sunday Journal printed his obituary the next morning; it is retold below. The papers do not agree on where he died. In the Pocatello paper's version, death came at St. Anthony Hospital during a stay in that city to see kin and friends. The Logan Herald Journal of November 21 says he died at the Twin Falls home of his daughter, Mrs. Lynn Parker. The Logan paper announced his funeral for Tuesday afternoon in the Mendon Ward chapel, and he was buried at Mendon.
The Pocatello paper misprinted his birth year as 1975 and gave his wedding to Retta Hansen as 1901; the family's records give 1902. It had the date of Retta's death right, November 7, 1931, which the Logan paper printed as 1941. Her death and funeral are told in the post on Sophia Andersen of Mendon, the brothers' mother.
Ezra, 1964
Ezra, the youngest of the three, outlived them both. In January 1918 the American Falls Press had already called E. T. Anderson, almost certainly Ezra, "one of the pioneers of Arbon valley," when his 19 stacks of wheat threshed out 2,875 bushels of Turkey Red.
He died at St. Anthony Hospital on the evening of Monday, February 17, 1964; the paper said he had been ill for a long time. The Idaho State Journal gave his age as 80; its funeral notice the next day said 81, which agrees with his birth at Mendon on March 3, 1882. The obituary says he came to the valley with his parents at 12, but the 1900 and 1920 censuses show that Andrew and Sophia kept their home at Mendon. He spent part of his boyhood herding sheep and went on to farm at Arbon for many years. By the obituary's count he sheared sheep for 44 years, work the family page says he, John and Magnus did together at Dairy Creek. He spent the years 1954 to 1958 in the Salmon River country before retiring to Pocatello. The paper remembered him as a keen hunter and fisherman.
He had married Florence Breeze at American Falls on April 12, 1946. She survived him, with his son Harvey Andersen of Arbon, three stepchildren, his brother George L. Andersen of Los Angeles and his sister, Mrs. Anne Pett, of Parma. The paper said one son had died before him. That was probably Nicholas, who drowned at a flooded crossing of Bannock Creek in 1911. The obituary also named something the family page does not mention: he belonged to Portneuf Lodge No. 20 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Bishop Leland B. Dial of the Fourteenth Ward was to officiate at the funeral in Pocatello on Thursday, February 20, and the lodge was to hold its own ritual service. Burial was set for that afternoon in the family plot in the Mendon cemetery.
On this site: Andrew "Otto" Andersen, Ezra Taft Andersen and Eva Arbon, Annie Andersen Pett, George L. Andersen, the Andersen family, and Mendon in winter, Arbon in summer, the years when the brothers still went home to Cache Valley each fall.
The story as reported
Idaho Sunday Journal, November 20, 1960, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Death came Saturday to Otto Andrew Andersen, 85, an early Arbon Valley homesteader, at St. Anthony Hospital in Pocatello. Twin Falls had been his home, but he had come to Pocatello to see kin and friends.
Born at Mendon, Utah, to Andrew and Sophia Larsen Andersen, he took his schooling in the same town. The paper gave his birth date as March 10, 1975, a misprint for 1875. According to the obituary, 1893 was the year he arrived in Arbon Valley and claimed a homestead, and 1949 the year he gave up farming there.
His wife, the former Retta Hansen, had died on November 7, 1931. The paper put their Logan Temple wedding in 1901. The obituary listed him as a Latter-day Saint.
Four daughters survived him: Mrs. Roy Grube of Poplar, Montana; Mrs. Norma Humphreys of Salt Lake City; Mrs. Lynn Parker of Twin Falls; and Mrs. Ivan Hewitt of Pocatello. His son, Harold Andersen, lived in Alameda. Of his brothers, E. T. Andersen lived in Pocatello and George L. Andersen in California, and his sister, Mrs. Annie Pett, lived at Nyssa, Oregon. He had 14 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
No service had yet been scheduled; the Downard Funeral Home was to give the details.
Sources
- Idaho Sunday Journal, November 20, 1960, page 2
- Idaho Sunday Journal, March 4, 1956, page 24
- Idaho State Journal, February 18, 1964, page 2
- Idaho State Journal, February 19, 1964, page 2
- Logan Herald Journal, November 21, 1960, page 6
- Logan Herald Journal, August 11, 1951, page 10
- American Falls Press, January 8, 1918, page 3