16 Aug 1873 – 27 May 1963
Grandson of Philip Cardon and Martha Marie Tourn
Son of Jean Paul Cardon and Magdalene Beus
Autobiography
I was born August 16, 1873, in Logan Utah. in an old house about midway on the north side of first north and first west. It was just about where Blair’s garage stood. Doctors were not available in those days. so Sister Burgess, a midwife of Hyde Park, Utah assisted. The fee was two bushels of wheat. I was the second son of the family; the oldest boy. James. got some lye and died in infancy.
I attended school in Logan in a one-room log house that stood on the west side of the road, midway between First and Second North.
I attended another school about midway between Center and First West Streets on the south aide of the road, and another school which stood on the north side of the street on Second North between Main Street and First West about one third of the way down. When I was fourteen years old, my father decided that I had had enough education and took me out of school and I went to work on the railroad in Washington and Oregon.
I remember when I was in Washington a big fire burned 38 blocks in the business district. We usually worked until the latter part of November. Then we would come home and I would be permitted to go to school again until time to go to work in the spring. I never lived much with my mother, but spent most of my time with father and aunty.
In 1893, when Cox’s army rampaged the country, I ran away from home. My brother Moses and I were plowing and we broke the plow. We didn’t dare face father, so we left home. I worked a year or so in Pocatello, then I went to Omaha. From there, I went up into the Dakotas and worked around Fargo.
Early the next year I landed in Butte, Montana and worked in a coal yard. That was the year a big explosion occurred. A carload of giant powder exploded, and the building we were in was blown to pieces. From Butte, I went to Pocatello, then to Piedmont, Wyoming, where I worked on a cattle ranch. After that, I worked on a bridge gang between Pocatello and Butte, where we repaired bridges.
In 1902, I returned to the farm in Benson and worked for father again. After some of the farms were cultivated, a bridge was built over Logan and Bear River. About 1905, Louis and Joseph had rented the old W. B. Preston place on Bear River and Louis wanted me to work with them.
In 1909 I was called on a mission to the Western States, with headquarters at Denver, Colorado.
I was married Apn1 8, 1909. and I left for my mission on April 13, 1909. President John L.
Herrick was the president of the mission. I was in Denver three or four months when I was transferred to Omaha. where I worked for about a year. I was then sent to the Dakotas, where I was made president of the branch. We worked around Leeds and Dead Wood. There were eight elders there, and we spent the winter in Hot Springs.
The next year my wife planned to come out, so I was permitted to finish my mission in Omaha, where we could both work. When my wife got there, President Herrick said he was sorry he hadn’t had her come out sooner. My mission lasted 32 months. We arrived home in November of 1911 and went to live in the home of the W. B. Preston farm. We didn’t stay there long; Louis and Joe wanted to go down to Rush Valley to homestead. I went and Mother (his wife) stayed home with her folks. She didn’t favor the Rush Valley proposition.
In the spring, I bought eighty acres of dry farm across Logan River, that had belonged to Johnny. After two years of farming this I became discouraged and sold out to William Baugh and went up to Idaho to look for a farm. I bought a big dry farm up at Canyon Creek, Idaho. I moved mother up there in September, and she left in November. She said it was no place to raise a family. Farmers had been living there for 2S years and were still Living in one-room dirt-roofed log houses and there were no schools, so mother couldn’t see any future there. I sold this farm and went back to Benson where my father-in-law sold us some land. Fifty acres of it was bottom land, and the Utah Power and Light bought all the river bottom land, so that took most of our acreage. Then we bought forty acres of the old W. B. Preston farm for $300 per acre. In 1918 we rented our farm to the Japs and that year we had 900 ton of beets at $10 a ton. The Japs received one third of it.
Later we bought some pasture land near Logan; but, when the city decided to build an airport
they confiscated our pasture, so we had to find another. We bought out in the Logan Highland
Pasture. In 1949 we bought the Silas Ricks place as a cost of $14,000.
We have sent two sons on missions; two sons-in·law have gone on missions, and on my
eighty-first birthday, all the family was present. which consists of six children. six in-laws and 27
grandchildren. Every Christmas we have strived to have all the family come home.
–Hyrum Michael Cardon