At semiannual general conference 150 years ago — the same conference from which Brigham Young sent a rescue party after the imperiled Willie and Martin handcart companies — the Salt Lake Twentieth Ward was sliced off from the Eighteenth Ward and created on a sagebrush-covered hill on the city's north slope.
On Oct. 7, its members met for a birthday party complete with balloons, a cake contest, and a long look back at a ward whose history interweaves with Church history.
This was the first new ward to be created in the area after the 1847 formation of the Salt Lake Stake with its original 19 wards. Twentieth Ward boundaries were simply from "A" Street east, and from South Temple Street north. But the new ward with its 18 families had not been in existence for a year when its future seemed imminently imperiled. Word was received July 24, 1857, of the approaching Johnston's Army, soon followed by Brigham Young's orders to "utterly lay waste this land" to prevent their enemies from again taking over their property.
About the first of April the following year, Vilate Romney, wife of the later Bishop George Romney, sand-scoured her floors white and scrubbed the three boxes that served as chairs. Then wood was stacked in the middle of the floor as for a bonfire.
"If our dear little house must become a burnt offering, I'm determined it will be a pleasing sacrifice as beautiful in the sight of God as it is and always has been to me," she told her husband (Twentieth Ward History, p. 5-7, compiled by Ruth J. Martin). A short time later near Point of the Mountain, in a cave away from pouring rain, she gave birth to a son. Such was life in the new Twentieth Ward.
But with the peaceful settlement of the issue, the Romneys returned to their home the following March, never to be driven out again, and the ward began to flourish.
The new ward first met in Brigham Young's schoolhouse. Later a 60-foot tall meetinghouse and its associated buildings occupied an entire block. It was replaced by the Twentieth Ward's present non-typical meetinghouse completed in 1924. This building was designed by ward member and architect Lewis Telle Cannon. With a classical elegance, its gilded wood and stained glass windows accent a chapel of an earlier day.
Today the ward is comprised of older couples who have been in the same homes for generations and new families in apartments who come and go annually, said Bishop William H. Robbins, serving his second term. Long-serving bishops do well in this ward, he noted. John Sharp, the first bishop who with his brothers Adam and Joseph built the first homes in the area, served 30 years from 1856 to 1886; Vilate Romney's husband, George, served 25 years from 1887 to 1912, and Bishop C. Clarence Neslen served 25 years from 1913 to 1938. During this period, he also served as mayor of Salt Lake City. Offered a cup of coffee at a banquet, he is reported to have said, "The mayor says yes, but the bishop says no."
During its 150 years, the ward has had its share of prominent sons and daughters. Among them are Karl G. Maeser, a resident during the formative years of Brigham Young academy, now BYU; J. Reuben Clarke Jr., a diplomat-turned General Authority who served in the First Presidency for 28 years; others members of the Quorum of the Twelve Elders James E. Talmage, Mark E. Petersen, Bruce R. McConkie and George Teasdale; and General Authorities Elders Levi Edgar Young, Antoine R. Ivins and Patriarch Eldred G. Smith.
Artists who have been ward members will be familiar to museum visitors, including Alfred Lambourne, George Martin Ottinger, Jack Sears, Mary Teasdale, Lee Greene Richards, Grant Romney Clawson and Ed J. Fraughton, to name some. Another ward son was Charles R. Savage, pioneer photographer. When his store burned in 1874, another ward member, John Foster Bennett, who had collected hundreds of early photos by Savage, George Edward Anderson and Charles W. Carter, was able to replace many of them. These copied photos are now in the possession of his grandson, Richard K. Winters. Unpacking his turn-of-the-century Bausch & Lomb projector, called a Delineascope, Brother Bennett showed some of the photos at the birthday party, emphasizing that the history of the Twentieth Ward is also the history of the Salt Lake Valley.
E-mail to: jhart@desnews.com
