In the summer of 1916 two of Arbon's pioneer families were joined by a wedding at Mendon, Utah, and the couple planned a wedding dance back home at Central hall. Before the year was out, a second marriage joined them again.
Arbon, in the valley then often called Bannock Valley, had been in Oneida County, Idaho, until 1913 and was now in Power County. Many of its settlers came from Cache Valley in northern Utah, among them the Andersen family of Mendon. By the family's account, Andrew Andersen helped his sons onto homesteads in the valley from the early 1890s, while he and his wife Sophia kept their home and farm in Mendon. Henry Waldemar Andersen, called Walt, was their youngest child, born at Mendon in 1894. The papers spelled the name Anderson. In March 1915 the Mendon column of the Logan Republican noted Waldemar Anderson, almost certainly Walt, coming in to Mendon "from his farm in Bannock valley."
The wedding at the reunion
On July 1, 1916, the Logan Republican's list of marriage licences included Waldemar Anderson and Wealthy Gibbons, "both of Arbon, Idaho." The family history on this site gives the wedding day as June 29, 1916. Wealthy was the daughter of John Gibbons, an Arbon homesteader.
The news reached the American Falls Press through its Arbon correspondent. The column of July 20 reported:
Miss Wealthy Gibbons and Mr. Walt Anderson were united in marriage a few days ago at Mendon, Utah. Miss Gibbons is the daughter of John Gibbons and is one of the most admirable young ladies of this community. Mr. Anderson is a brother to the Anderson boys here. The marriage took place in the presence of the immediate friends and relatives of both parties at the Anderson reunion being held at Mendon, Utah.
"The Anderson boys here" were Walt's older brothers, among them Otto, John and Ezra, who had homesteaded at Arbon. The column then looked ahead: "An enjoyable time was anticipated at Central hall Tuesday evening in honor of the bride and groom who gave their wedding dance that evening." Central hall stood by Arbon's Central school, and the valley held many of its dances there (see the first dance hall). The column does not say which Tuesday it was or describe the evening, and no later report of it has been found.
The bride's family
John Gibbons was one of the valley's early settlers. In November 1917 the Press's farm writer described D. P. Ripley's ranch, three and a half miles southeast of the Arbon post office, which took in John A. Gibbons's original homestead. For some years the Ripleys had lived in "the four-room cabin erected by John A. Gibbons." Two weeks later the same writer profiled T. B. Evans, who had lived at Arbon since 1899, and set down what the valley was like when he came:
When he first came here the entire valley was practically open range and the settlers were few in number and lived long distances apart. The Anderson brothers, Ward brothers, D. J. Bowen, John Gibbons, J. R. Bailey, E. H. Davis, Thomas Davis, and George and J. N. Arbon all lived south of the tract on which Mr. Evans located.
Like the Andersens, the Gibbonses still had family in Utah. When John's brother, Thomas Francis Gibbons, died in Ogden on June 14, 1916, two weeks before the wedding, the Ogden Daily Standard listed "John Gibbons, Arbon, Idaho," among the brothers and sisters who survived him.
A second wedding
Six months after the wedding, the two families were joined a second time. On December 24, 1916, the marriage licences printed in the Salt Lake Herald-Republican included John A. Gibbons of Arbon and Catherine S. Anderson of Mendon. The bridegroom was Wealthy's father. The bride was Walt's sister Catherine Sophia Andersen, the eldest of Andrew and Sophia's children. She had been widowed in 1905, and in 1907 she had taken up a homestead at Arbon in her own name. The surname on the licence was probably her married name from 1911, when she had married Frank Anderson of Hyrum. The sources read for this post do not say how that marriage ended. With her new marriage, Walt's sister became Wealthy's stepmother as well as her sister-in-law. Catherine was a trained nurse. Under the name Catherine Gibbons she wrote the life sketch of her father that this site prints.
After the weddings
According to the family history, Walt and Wealthy's first child, a daughter, was born in May 1917. In June of that year Walt finished proving up on his homestead, that is, he made final proof that he had lived on and farmed the land, the step that earned him title to it. The Press still placed Wealthy at Arbon more than two years after the wedding. In November 1918 her brother Lawrence Gibbons, "formerly of Arbon, but now residing near Albion," spent a weekend as "the guest of his sister and sister-in-law, Mrs. Walter Anderson and Miss Louie Leavitt." In September 1919 the Press reported that he had come again, with his wife and baby, the week before.
The couple did not stay. By 1920 Walt was farming at Arco, Idaho, and the family says he sold his Arbon land to his brothers. He later went to Oregon, where he died at a sawmill in October 1923. His death is told in the Stories, which explain that the family's account gives the year as 1922.
Sophia's home remained the family's gathering place. In August 1936 the Logan Herald Journal reported another Anderson reunion at the home of Sophia Anderson, then 87. John's and Otto's families came from Arbon, and Mrs. Catherine Gibbons, then "matron of the hospital in Pocatello," was there too.
On this site: the Andersen family, with Catherine's and Walt's own entries, and Henry Waldemar Andersen by Melinda Campbell.
Sources
- Logan Republican, March 18, 1915, page 4
- Ogden Daily Standard, June 14, 1916, page 6
- Logan Republican, July 1, 1916, page 8
- American Falls Press, July 20, 1916, page 1
- Salt Lake Herald-Republican, December 24, 1916, page 18
- American Falls Press, November 30, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, December 14, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, November 26, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, September 5, 1919, page 2
- Logan Herald Journal, August 6, 1936, page 9