Mark Barclay Gardner
From NeilDocs
I was born November 12, 1908, at 135 East 4th South, Spanish Fork, Utah, in a house built by my father in 1998 and 1999. It was built while my parents lived in the home of my Uncle Neil L. Gardner at 103 E 4th South. He was on a mission at the time. Father was also born in a house built by his father some 100 yards to the east.
My father was Brigham Evenson Gardner. He was born June 7, 1872, the son of Neil Gardner and Regina Evensen. Neil was the son or Archibald Gardner, whose history and ancestry is given in The Life of Archibald Gardner, Pioneer of 1847, written by my Aunt Delila Gardner Hughes. Neil was born June 24, 1841, at Brooke Township, Kent County, Canada. Regina Evensen was born Sep 4, 1845, at Risor, Brasber, Norway. She was the daughter of Henrik Evensen and Tarjer Serine Torjusen.
My mother was Margaret Roxburgh Barclay. She was born Jan 11, 1876, at Plantation Govan, Lanark, Scotland, which is near Glasgow. She was the daughter of Michael Barclay and Margaret Finlay. Her father, my maternal grandfather, was born Aug 29, 1839, at Leslie, Fifeshire, Scotland, the son of David Barclay and Jean Graham. Grandfather Barclay died the same day I was born, on November 12, 1908, at the home of my parents where he lived the last 8 years of his life. He never saw me, as he didn’t believe in going into the room of a newly delivered woman, but died just after he had gone to telephone the news in to the local paper.
My maternal grandmother was born in November, 1845, at Glasgow, Scotland, and died Jan 3 , 1883, following the birth of my Aunt Janie, her fifth child. She was the daughter of Robert Finlay and Margaret Roxburgh. The ancestry of my maternal line has been traced back several generations for which temple work has been done. Many of these records are in my Book of Remembrance.
My early years, to age 21, were spent in and about Spanish Fork as the son of a farmer, my father owning three farms, one a small 10 acre plot just inside the city limits at the south of town on the highway. Another was a 40 acre farm on the east bench, about 3 miles up the Midland Trail Highway and to the south. In 1919 my father sold this property to William Grotegut and purchased the north 50 acres of the William Harwood tract in the south field.
The late spring and summer of 1926 after my graduation from high school was spent at my Uncle Michael’s at Blackfoot, Idaho. He had an 80 acre farm one mile north of town, and a 350 acre tract about 6 miles west of the Snake River near Mooreland, Idaho. It was here I spent most of the summer, irrigating one field after another in continual rotation. Uncle Michael also rented 160 acres on the Indian reservation south of Blackfoot about one third of the way to Fort Hall.
While there I saw an Indian skin a young lamb which had died to eat. He did it by standing on parts of it, pushing it in the dirt in the process. The Indians were very dirty, often living in tents or makeshift dwellings which they would move when they became intolerable to them. Later at the 350 acre Barclay Acres tract, I saw an Indian squaw and her daughter gleaning wheat from the threshing area. To clean the wheat, they used the age-old method of letting the wind blow the dirt and chaff from the wheat as it sifted through their upraised hands. Only trouble was, they faced into the wind instead of crosswise to it.
Letter to Geneal Gardner about Her Father Archie's and Mark's Childhood
Letter to His Parents, Brig and Maggie Gardner
