Two men who had been leaders in Arbon Valley, southwest of Pocatello, in its homestead years died in Pocatello within eight months of each other in 1972 and 1973. Joseph N. "Joe" Arbon, the valley's first Latter-day Saint bishop, died on September 23, 1972. William Allard, the first man from the valley found in the Idaho Legislature, died on May 6, 1973. They had been born ten weeks apart in 1875.
In their prime
Joe Arbon came into what was then called Bannock Valley with his father, George, in the early 1890s. His family's account tells of those first winters. William Allard, born and married in Iowa, came later. On April 13, 1909, he made a homestead entry on a quarter section in township 10 south, range 33 east. In June 1913 the American Falls Press printed his notice that he would make final proof on July 23 before the U.S. commissioner at American Falls, with four witnesses, all of Arbon. To prove up, a homesteader showed, with witnesses, that he had lived on and farmed the claim for the required years; Allard's patent was signed on March 7, 1914.
Arbon was in Oneida County until 1913, when it became part of the new Power County. Allard sat in the Idaho House for Power County in the 1915 session and again in 1919–20, as told in the first legislator from the valley.
In March 1917 the American Falls Press printed a long review of the valley's settlement by Mrs. E. A. Logan. It counted J. N. Arbon among the first pioneers still living there, with D. J. Bowen, J. R. Bailey, E. H. Davis, L. B. Evans and "the Anderson boys." Of his farm it said:
Bishop Arbon has a fine place in splendid shape and is one of the leading farmers of the valley.
The review still called him Bishop, though by the church's records his first term in the office had ended in 1914. He was called again in 1925, oversaw the building of the ward's 1928 meetinghouse and served into the 1930s; the dates are set out in the first bishop.
The same review noted that William Allard had been elected to the lower house of the legislature two years before, and added:
He made an excellent member and is very highly esteemed as a citizen.
September 1972
Joe Arbon died at his home in Pocatello on Saturday, September 23, 1972, two days before his 97th birthday. The Salt Lake Tribune and the Provo Daily Herald printed his obituary on September 26; the Provo paper noted that he was the father of Mrs. Delta Harmon of Provo. Both gave his birth at Snowville, Utah, on September 25, 1875, to George and Sarah Nicholas Arbon, and his marriage to Elizabeth Davis in the Salt Lake Temple on November 23, 1898. She died in January 1957, and in February 1958 he married Arvilla Hughes McKay. He left his widow; his sons, Joseph G. and Dr. Harold D. Arbon; his daughter, Delta; a foster daughter, Ora Darling; and stepchildren.
The obituaries made two claims about his place in the valley. Both papers counted his among the first five families in the valley, and both said he had been bishop of the Arbon Ward for 26 years. The first has some support: James R. Bailey's family account on this site also counts the Arbons among "the first five families," with the Baileys and the Andersens. Which five is not settled, though, and the 1917 review had named a longer list of original pioneers. The second does not: the church records behind the first-bishop story document fewer than 26 years in the office.
The funeral was held in Pocatello on Tuesday, September 26, and he was buried in Pocatello's Mountain View Cemetery.
Nine days later the Cache Citizen carried a short note. Ada Bailey wrote the paper's news column from Clifton, in Franklin County, Idaho, and on October 5 she reported that she and her daughter, Mrs. Dorothy Owen, had gone to Pocatello on the Tuesday for the funeral of "Bishop Joe Arbon, who was Mrs. Bailey's bishop when they lived in Arbon." Ada, a daughter of John C. Andersen, grew up in the valley, married Charles Kerr Bailey in 1928 and lived at Arbon until 1940, when they moved to Clifton, as the Andersen family history records; Joe Arbon was bishop for at least part of those years. Thirty-two years after she left, she still called him by that title.
May 1973
William Allard died of natural causes in a Pocatello hospital on Sunday, May 6, 1973, at 97. His obituary in the Deseret News of May 8 gave his birth on December 5, 1875, in Dallas County, Iowa, to Nathaniel and Emma Wilhelm Allard, and his marriage to Matilda Dundore at Perry, Iowa, on September 15, 1897. She died in 1951, and on August 12 that year he married Lettie Rice. He was a member of Central Christian Church in Pocatello; the notice set his funeral there for Tuesday afternoon and his burial, like Joe Arbon's, in Mountain View Cemetery.
The notice described him in two short lines: "Pioneer Arbon Valley farmer. Power County legislator 2 terms." The two terms agree with the state's record of his service in 1915 and 1919–20. He left his widow, a son, Charles, and two daughters, Margaret (Mrs. Gardner) and Eleanor. The scanned text garbles Eleanor's married name, which other records give as Nuckols. From 1951, by the family's account, she and her husband, J. D. Nuckols, farmed the Allard homestead on the Knox Canyon Road, and their son Dan later wrote in Remembering Arbon that he grew up there from 1951 through 1973, the year his grandfather died. The family asked that gifts go to the Idaho Youth Ranch.
On this site: Melinda Campbell's Joseph Nicholas Arbon tells Joe Arbon's life in full. The Stories pages follow William Allard to the legislature, to a night rescue on the Pauline road in 1919, to the founding of the Arbon Valley Grange in 1933 and to the old Allard homestead house, which burned in 1981.