Pierce and Ella Hardman, fifty years on an Arbon Valley homestead

For about half a century, Pierce and Ella Hardman, both born in Cache Valley, kept a dry farm in Arbon Valley, Idaho, spending the growing seasons on the homestead and, in later years, the winters in North Logan, Utah. Short newspaper notices follow them from Pierce's trips out from Mendon in 1911 to their obituaries in the 1970s.

Out from Mendon

Pierce Hardman was born in Mendon, Cache County, Utah, on July 18, 1890, a son of Joseph Henry and Susannah Octavia Peirce Hardman. The papers spell his first name, which was also his mother's maiden name, both Pierce and Peirce.

Mendon families were then taking up dry-farm homesteads at the south end of Arbon Valley, and the Mendon news in the Logan Republican followed them. The paper of November 28, 1911, reported that Pierce had come in for the winter from the homesteads at Buist, Idaho, with Ammon and Frank Sorensen. In May 1912 he, Floyd Hardman and Mrs. Laura Hardman went out to their homesteads again. The paper of May 6, 1913, reported that Pierce had been brought home from Buist with spotted fever. By August he was going out once more with a party of Mendon people bound for their Buist homesteads.

The Mendon columns placed him at Buist. In 1915 the American Falls Press carried Pierce's news in its South Arbon column, among the families of Summit, the high, level dry-farm country between Arbon and Buist. His obituaries said simply that he homesteaded in Arbon. The site's valley timeline adds, from census and land records, that he was counted at Summit in 1910 and was granted the title to his homestead, the northeast quarter of Section 20, on October 20, 1919.

On August 12, 1915, the South Arbon column reported that Pierce had come back from two weeks with his "home folks in Mendon, Utah," and named him among the friends Miss Rosie Neal entertained one Sunday evening. The same column gave the season's news:

The frosts have done considerable damage to crops in this section but not nearly so much as last year.

Ella

Ellen LaVon Baugh, known as Ella, was born in Wellsville, Cache County, on August 31, 1899, a daughter of John A. and Ada Ferguson Baugh. By Pierce's obituaries they were married in Logan, and the marriage was later solemnized in the Logan temple. The papers disagree on the year. Ella's 1972 obituaries give February 7, 1918, and the couple's golden-wedding open house in February 1968 fits that year. Pierce's 1975 birthday notice and his 1976 obituaries give 1917.

Pierce also served in World War I, in the U.S. Army "with the medical corps in France," as his obituary put it.

The dry-farm years

The valley news of 1922 shows the couple settled at Arbon. In July Mrs. Pierce Hardman "went to Logan last week on an extended visit." In November the Hardmans spent a Wednesday visiting friends in Malad, and in December the Press reported that "John Carlson, Pierce Hardman and Chas Orison were in Malad, Monday on business matters."

They had four sons and two daughters. In September 1930 Mrs. Pierce Hardman and her daughters Fay and Ada, of Arbon, spent a week in Cache Valley, and in February 1934 the Herald Journal had "Mrs. Ella Hardman of Arbon" visiting her mother, Mrs. Ada Hughes. Until then the papers speak of the family as living at Arbon.

That changed in the fall of 1934, when the family moved into a Cache Valley ward, probably North Logan's, "for the school year." From then on the Logan papers record a yearly round. In May 1936 the North Logan column reported them moving back to Arbon, "where he operates a dry farm during the summer," and in November they came back for the winter.

In October 1939 the Cache American reported that the Hardmans had returned to North Logan from Arbon and that Pierce had bought a home there. On the Sunday before, while they were moving, a truck carrying all their household furniture and bedding had caught fire five miles on the Utah side of the Idaho line, as the paper seems to say, and the load was lost.

The move did not end the family's ties to Arbon. In July 1940 Pierce and Ella were spending a month there, and in May 1944 the Deseret News reported that Elder Pierce Hardman had been set apart as second counselor in the Arbon Ward bishopric.

Later years

In February 1968 the Herald Journal announced an open house at the North Logan cultural hall on February 10 for the Hardmans' golden wedding anniversary.

Ella died in a Logan hospital in June 1972, at 72. Her obituary in the Herald Journal said she "spent 50 years at a homestead with her husband in Arbon," keeping a winter home in North Logan. She had worked in the Logan temple and taught Sunday School, was a visiting teacher in the Relief Society, and was "known throughout the valley for her handiwork." Their daughter Ada, Mrs. Lamont Schenk, had died before her. Her burial was to be in the Logan Cemetery.

On July 20, 1975, the family held an open house at the Hardman home in North Logan for Pierce's 85th birthday. The notice said he had homesteaded in Arbon and "farmed for 57 years," was a charter member of the North Logan Lions Club and a high priest in his ward, and that three of his sons had served in World War II.

Pierce Hardman died at a rest home in Ogden on March 23, 1976, at 85. His obituaries added that he had attended Utah State Agricultural College and had served as a counselor in a ward bishopric and as a Sunday School superintendent. A son, Melvin, had also died before him. He was buried in the Logan City Cemetery.

Where the accounts differ

Besides the year of the marriage, the papers give different dates for Ella's death. The Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune say June 19, 1972; the Herald Journal said on June 20 that she had died early that morning; and Pierce's obituaries say June 14. Pierce's last notices said he had lived in North Logan for twenty years, though the family wintered there from the 1930s and bought a home there in 1939. The site's Jenson history records that Joe and Ann Jenson later lived in "the old Hardman homestead" house at Summit. Which Hardman claim that was is not known.

On this site: Summit, with the Jenson Pass road to Malad; Buist; the Jenson family, the Hardmans' Summit neighbors; and typhoid at Buist in 1913 and 1915.