These are a group of African American soldiers who were belatedly awarded the Medal of Honor in 1997, and their inspiring stories.

Staff Sergeant Edward A. Carter, Jr.

Citation: For extraordinary heroism in action on 23 March 1945, near Speyer, Germany.  When the tank on which he was riding received heavy bazooka and small arms fire, Sergeant Carter voluntarily attempted to lead a three-man group across an open field.  Within a short time, two of his men were killed and the third seriously wounded.  Continuing on alone, he was wounded five times and finally forced to take cover.  As eight enemy riflemen attempted to capture him, Sergeant Carter killed six of them and captured the remaining two.  He then crossed the field using as a shield his two prisoners from which he obtained valuable information concerning the disposition of enemy troops.  Staff Sergeant Carter’s extraordinary heroism was an inspiration to the officers and men of the Seventh Army Infantry Company Number I (Provisional) and exemplify the highest traditions of the Armed Forces.

Private First Class Willy F. James, Jr.

Citation: For extraordinary heroism in action on 7 April 1945 near Lippoldsberg, Germany.  As lead scout during a maneuver to secure and expand a vital bridgehead, Private First Class James was the first to draw enemy fire.  He was pinned down for over an hour, during which time he observed enemy positions in detail.  Returning to his platoon, he assisted in working out a new plan of maneuver.  He then led a squad in the assault, accurately designating targets as he advanced, until he was killed by enemy machine gun fire while going to the aid of his fataly wounded platoon leader.  Private First Class James’ fearless, self-assigned actions, coupled with his diligent devotion to duty exemplified the finest traditions of the Armed Forces.

Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers

Citation: For extraordinary heroism in action during the 15-19 November 1944, toward Guebling, France.  Though severely wounded in the leg, Sergeant Rivers refused medical treatment and evacuation, took command of another tank, and advanced with his company in Guebling the next day.  Repeatedly refusing evacuation, Sergeant Rivers continued to direct his tank’s fire at enemy positions through the morning of 19 November 1944.  At dawn, Company A’s tanks began to advance towards Bougaktroff, but were stopped by enemy fire.  Sergeant Rivers, joined by

another tank, opened fire on the enemy tanks, covering Company A as they withdrew.  “In doing so, Sergeant Rivet’s tank was hit, killing him and wounding the crew.  Staff Sergeant Rivers’ fighting spirit and daring leadership were an inspiration to his unit and exemplify the highest traditions of military service.

The mining camp of Frisco was located in Beaver County, Utah, some seventeen miles west of Milford and fifty miles northwest of Beaver, in the San Francisco Mining District.  This district, organized on 12 August 1871, embraced approximately seven square miles on both flanks of the San Francisco Mountains.  It became an important producer of silver and lead beginning in the mid-1870s.

Frisco developed as the post office and commercial center for the district, as well as the terminus of the Utah Southern Railroad extension from Milford.  In 1880 Frisco’s population numbered some 800 people.

The Horn Silver Mining Company, incorporated on 17 February 1879 (the mine had been discovered in 1875), was the main mining enterprise in Frisco.  While there were a large number of other mines in the district, the Horn became the largest producer.  From 1875 to 1910 the mine produced ore having a value of$20,267,078.

With the success of the Horn Silver mine in the mid-1870s, the Frisco Mining and Smelting Company expanded its workings in July 1877 by constructing a smelter that included five beehive charcoal kilns– the only substantial remnants of Frisco’s glory years.  Other mines located in the district included the Blackbird, Cactus, Carbonate, Comet, Imperial, King David, Rattler, and Yellow Jacket.

The ores of the Frisco District contained lead, copper, silver, gold, and zinc, with some arsenic and antimony.  With the coming of the railroad, local smelters and concentrators gave way to those of the Salt Lake Valley.  Milford was on the main line of the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad (later the Union Pacific).

Frisco was an active camp from 1879 to 1929, with most of the activity occurring up to the year 1910.  A 1879-80 directory lists thirty-three businesses and services available, including eight saloons.  Fluctuations occurred as mining activity increased or waned.  In 1900 fourteen establishments and services were listed, and Frisco’s population had declined to approximately 500 people.  By 1903 there were some twenty listings; and in 1912 there were only twelve listings, with a population estimated at 150.  The number increased to sixteen in 1918, as the population rose to 300.  Six listings marked the directory of 1922-23, and the population dropped back to 100.  By 1927-28 there were but two entries, the Horn Silver mine and its manager, who also acted as the postmaster.  The population was still listed at 100.

Frisco remained but a mining camp or village, never attaining the status of an incorporated town.  By 1933 a major part of the district, including Frisco, was controlled and owned by the Tintic Lead Company.  The Great Depression essentially put an end to the area, but some sporadic development work continued into the 1940s and 1950s.  While the camp is now all but gone, the remaining Frisco charcoal kilns were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

See: Philip F. Notarianni, “The Frisco Charcoal Kilns,” Utah Historical Quarterly 50 (Winter1982)

Part2

From the book Saints at War; Korea and Vietnam:

In early spring of 1952 some of our company was assigned to occupy a hill; I think it was called “Warsaw.”  It

was about four to five hundred yards in front of the MLR (main line of resistance).

We had daily and nightly contact with the North Koreans and Chinese which amounted to mostly mortar fire and enemy probes to test our resolve to hold the hill.  Next to that hill was a slightly less elevated hill where there were several reinforced rifle and machine-gun squads.  Forward of the main bunker and trench line was a sniper’s hole.  It was dug on the forward slope about forty to fifty yards.  It was camouflaged with scrub brush, and it was almost impossible to see.  The routine was that an hour or so before sunrise one of our snipers would belly out to that sniper’s foxhole and wait for sunrise.  With his snipe’s rifle, silencer, and high-powered scope, he could observe throughout the day and especially in the early morning the movement of enemy troops in the trench line and bunkers across the shallow valley.  They were his target.

For several weeks he did his job.  Then one day just after dark, which was the usual time for the sniper to crawl back to the safety of the trench line and his buddies-that night he was late.  He never showed up.  They tried to make contact but with no luck.  Finally, under the cover of darkness a fire team of three from his unit crept down to his sniper’s foxhole and found him slumped over his rifle with a single bullet in his head.  An enemy sniper had somehow caught him during a split second of exposure and with just enough time to get off a single shot.  It was a very sad day for all of us.  Everyone placed a special value on these courageous Marine buddies. Unfortunately it did not end there.

A couple of days later his replacement showed up and took his position in that same sniper’s foxhole each morning before sunup.  Three days or so went by and one night after dark he was late and did not return.  The word quickly spread and all of us could not believe that we might lose another one.  It would be too much.  We still felt the deep pain from losing our other friend.  That night the fire team crawled down to his foxhole and found him with a single bullet to his head.  The word spread.  No one would believe it.  But this tragedy and deep loss was even more staggering when we found out that they were brothers!

Even as I write this story that occurred a half century ago, the personal heart-wrenching emotion of that day brings a lump in my throat and tears to my eyes, and I can hardly contain myself.  That was the last time they used that sniper location.

Part 2

The vehicle was later determined to have been stolen on September 20, 1944, from John Day, Oregon, where a bank had been robbed that same day.  The Oregon plates were under the rear seat and the plates on the car had been stolen from a police car in northern Nevada.

Officers from several counties set up roadblocks and patrolled the entire area throughout the night.  Near the scene of the shooting, officers located the suspect’s footprints, which showed a bell in the heel of his shoes.

On the second day of the manhunt, local officers were joined by 13 FBI agents.  During the previous night, a light had been seen west of the highway about one mile north of Leeds.  When investigating the area, shoe tracks with a bell on the heels were located.

On the morning of the third day, a chicken farmer northwest of St. George went to investigate the barking of his dogs.  Seeing a man walking on the road to Enterprise and thinking that it may be someone who had run out of gas, the farmer called to him.  The man immediately took off on the run and went into some brush.  The Sheriff was called and soon discovered the same bell imprint in the footprints.

The search continued without any further sightings.  On September 30, 1944, Deputy Sheriff Carl Caldwell again found tracks with bell heels.  Tracking was very difficult, due to the brush and rock, and was a slow process.  At 1:30 p.m., Deputy Caldwell, along with two FBI agents, approached Quail or Leeds Creek.  This area was covered with a heavy growth of Box Elder and Birch trees, and had several intersecting trails.  As they approached within a few feet of the creek, a man was seen climbing the bank on the opposite side.  The sound of running water had prevented him from hearing the approach of the officers.  The officers called to the man to put up his hands and give up.  Instead, the suspect reached into a shoulder holster, drew a gun and fired twice at the agents.  Instinctively, Deputy Caldwell stepped behind a fallen tree.  The agents fired twice at the suspect.  The suspect jumped back into the stream and began wading downstream, toward the agents.  The suspect had not seen the deputy and was concentrating on firing at the agents.

Deputy Caldwell saw the suspect raise his weapon to fire and immediately returned fire, striking the bank in front of the suspect and showering him with dirt.  When the suspect peered over the bank, he could not locate the deputy.  Not more than ten feet from the suspect, Deputy Caldwell fired, striking the bandit near the temple, killing him instantly.

A search of the body revealed a second loaded revolver in a shoulder holster.  He was wearing a homemade vest with many pockets containing burglar tools, candy bars, fishing line and hooks.  He also had a money belt containing $2,000 in currency.  The money was later confirmed stolen from the bank in John Day, Oregon.  There was no identification on the suspect’s body.

Fingerprints later identified him as Joe Lewis, age 44, New Jersey.  He had escaped from the Texas State Prison in January, where he was serving a fifteen-year sentence.  He had escaped from the Ohio State Prison before being sent to the Texas Prison.

Part 1

On September 26, 1944, Patrolman Loren Squire attempted to stop a vehicle traveling 50 miles per hour through Toquerville.  It was almost 10:00 p.m. and the red spotlight of his patrol car completely illuminated the interior of the speeding vehicle; however, the driver did not slow.  Patrolman Squire then activated the siren and still the driver did not respond.  Pulling alongside the vehicle, Patrolman Squire crowded the vehicle off the oil and onto the gravel shoulder of the road.  The vehicle began to slow, so Patrolman Squires dropped back to approach from behind.  Immediately the driver stepped on the gas and whirled onto a side alley near the old rock building at the south end of Toquerville.  Coming to the end of the road, the vehicle crashed into a fence before it could stop.

Patrolman Squire had already drawn his revolver and took cover across the hood of his vehicle.  The suspect vehicle was still running, but with the lights out.  Patrolman Squire could barely make out the face of the suspect. Patrolman Squire said, “What are you doing there, Bud?”  Almost immediately Loren saw a flash and heard the thud of a bullet next to his head.  Less than 30 feet separated Patrolman Squire from his attacker.  Immediately after the shot, Loren heard the wires on a barbwire fence squeaking as if someone was crawling through them.  Loren ran to the north comer of the rock building, but was unable to see anyone.  Suddenly the hair on the back of his neck began to rise.  Loren did not know exactly where the suspect was hiding.  He would later recall, “For the first time I felt a chill of fright.”  He looked quickly over his shoulder, but could not hear or see anyone.

Within minutes, several town members arrived to see what all the noise was about.  Harvey Theobald, who lived a block west of the scene, had witnessed the chase through town, had heard the crash and then a shot fired.  Right after the shot, he heard someone crashing through the orchard behind his house.  Fearing that someone had shot Patrolman Squire, he ran to his car and started it.  Just as he turned on the lights, a man hit the fence with such force that it tore out the staples on several posts in both directions.  The man flipped head over heels, through the fence and into a ditch of water.  Harvey watched him climb out of the ditch, cross a street, go over another fence, and continue running through another orchard.

Patrolman Squire went to a neighbor’s house and phoned Washington County Sheriff Antone Prince and Utah Highway Patrolman “Blondie” Porter.  A search of the suspect’s vehicle revealed two canvas bags, each packed with canned tuna, crackers, candy bars and a loaded pistol.  There was also a loaded revolver in the glove compartment.  In the back seat was a shoebox with $180 in silver coins.  Evidently, the suspect had broken into a clothing store, because there were several new suits with the tags still on them, extra coats, several pairs of shoes, and fifty pair of socks, as well as other clothing.

Next week: The manhunt continues.

During Bart Anderson’s illness we are re-running some of his earlier columns.  We wish Bart a speedy recovery.

Jaynes L. Newman, or Roy as he was called, was born October 4, 1893, in Holladay, a son of pioneer homesteaders of the area.  On a spring afternoon, April 8, 1929, Roy and his brother were mucking ore from rounds fired the previous day.  There had been a misfire, and Roy said he thought he had better blast that miss before he quit for the day.

Somehow, he got mixed up with the cap in the hole and the charge blew up in his face.  With a cut artery in his hand, face bleeding and sight gone, he staggered with the aid of his brother from the property near the old Maxfield Mine in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

After a year or so of inaction, Roy said he decided to go back to work on the claims.  There were a few months at first when he hired a man to work with him, but gradually he learned to solve the many difficult problems facing the blind, particularly when they live alone.

Roy is a wonder to the mining engineering profession.  As U.S. Mineral Surveyor Andrew R. Shelton, American Fork, relates, “His tunnels have a perfect engineering grade for draining and haulage.  They are so straight you can stand at the face of the tunnel and see the light of the portal.”

Roy explained that he was able to drive such tunnels because “Although both my eyes were destroyed by the blast, a tiny area at the bottom of the left eye, about a half-inch below the pupil, was still intact although the rest was completely covered by scar tissue.  Through this small window, I get a faint sensation of light,” he said.  Thus when he checks the tunnel bore for straightness, he sets up a lighted carbide lamp in the middle of the track about 300 feet from the face.

“I then move up to within 15 feet of the lace and stand up a pick with handle erect in the center of the track.  These two objects thus mark the center of the tunnel,” he related.

Roy then backs up to the face, sights down the tunnel and then moves his body to the right or the left until the light is obscured by the pick handle.  When this happens, he knows his head is in the center of the tunnel.  With this point located it is an easy matter to measure to the right or left to see if the face of the tunnel is on line.

He tells the difference between country rock and ore by weight and formation change by the ease with which the drill sinks into the rock.

Although without sight, Roy performed each task of mining including mucking, tramming, drilling, blasting, sharpening drill steel, laying rails on grade, keeping the tunnel in line and timbering.

Despite his apparent handicaps, Mr. Newman had the basic optimism all miners must possess.  He believed the big bonanza was just ahead.  “I like the challenge that Mother Nature presents the miner who searches for her secrets,” he said.  But, for the last year, terminal cancer forced the miner to quit active mining and finally on April 1, 1974, he died.  He was 80 years of age. 

Utah folklore relates that miners that spend so much love in a tunnel, that their ghosts remains behind after they are dead.  This old mine ran by the blind miner is in an area where avalanches are very common and “that is a way that the ghost keeps people away.”

Frost and snow covered the ground that cold morning near the Telluride School of Electrical Engineering at the mouth of Provo Canyon.  That was normal for February 19,1897, but something else bothered William Slick, a resident student of the school, as he arose from his bed and gazed out the window.  Something was not as it should be.  There was no sound of rushing water from the Provo River.  In fact, there was no Provo River!

Will suspected a snow slide up the canyon had temporarily dammed the stream, and after breakfast he saddled a big black horse and with several others rode up the canyon to investigate.  Some miles up the gorge and just west of where the South Fork joins the main canyon a huge avalanche had tumbled down from the south slope.  At it deepest point, the slide measured fifty feet, and it extended to the canyon walls on the opposite side, damming the Provo River.  It also covered part of what was called Ferguson’s Flat, a fairly extensive meadow like area on the north side of the river.  Slick noticed that the house and store of William W. “Billy” Ferguson were nowhere in sight.

William Ferguson, one of the most colorful characters in the history of the canyon, had made it his home now for about ten years.  Ferguson lived alone in the canyon; his wife and grown children lived in the valley.  He operated a halfway house and store where travelers could take a moment’s rest from their journey, water their horses at the trough filled by the cold spring, and pass a few moments in conversation.  They might decide to extend their stay and order a meal cooked by Billy himself.  There was even an extra bed if it were a late hour and the wayfarer exhausted or the weather too intense to make travel safe or comfortable.

The atmosphere at Ferguson’s Flat was casual with entertainment furnished by Billy and his menagerie.  He kept an assortment of dogs and cats on the ranch in addition to a fleet of pigeons.  One of his dogs, Belle, was quite a dancer.  Billy would play a lively tune on the guitar and say, “Come on now, Belle–let’s see what you can do.”  Belle would prance round and round on her hind feet just as proud as her owner.

Will Slick had taken the river bottom road toward Provo as fast as conditions would permit.  On the way he notified farmers and the Ferguson family of the tragedy.  He continued on into the center of Provo recruiting help as he rode.  He returned to the canyon accompanied by some 500 men.  By the time they reached Ferguson Flat, the workmen from the power plant had already found what was left of the room in which Ferguson had spent his last night.  With the reinforcements adding fresh vigor to the search, Billy was soon found on the shattered remnants of his bed.  A rafter from the roof lay across the right side of his head, and a five-inch pole lay across his chest.  Billy, it seems, had died instantly.  So had his faithful dog Bette whose crushed body was found in the same room.  The search for more bodies was continued, but none were found.

The city of Fillmore is a favorite place to rest on the drive from St. George to Northern Utah.  Until 1851 Mormon settlement in Utah was confined mostly to the western slopes of the Wasatch Mountains.  When Utah became a territory through the Organic Act of 1850 settlement patterns began to change.  Since the new boundaries of the territory enclosed a smaller land area than expansive Mormon hopes had included in the proposed state of Deseret, LDS leaders anticipated settlement of the entire territory.

Planning for the eventual settlement of Utah, the Legislative Assembly decided to locate the territorial capital at the geographic center of Utah.  On October 4, 1851, the remote Fillmore was designated as the site of the territorial seat of government.  On the same day, the Assembly named the surrounding area Millard County and planned to create a capital city called Fillmore.  A committee of four men was appointed to survey and determine the exact location of the city and capital building site.  Orson Pratt was in charge of this survey group.

Anson Call and a company of several families arrived in Fillmore.  The group had been asked by the Mormon Church leaders to settle the area.  During the next year the Fillmore settlers worked to create a city out of a wasteland.  In 1854, three years after the selection of the site, the walls of the capital were finally completed (only one wing).

But construction was further delayed because of a shortage of funds.  Though Congress had awarded the territory $20,000 to begin the project, no further funds were given to continue construction.  After months of hard work and limited supplies, local workmen finally completed the roof on the east wing of the capital in the summer of 1855.  The interior was rushed to completion in preparation for the Utah Territorial Legislature to convene in Fillmore.  On December 10 the fifth annual legislature session was held in the new territorial capital.

This session would be the one-and-only complete session held there.

The legislature convened in Fillmore in December 1856, after organizing, the assembly returned to Salt Lake City to complete its session.  Legislators complained about the lack of housing and adequate facilities in Fillmore.  Realizing that Utah’s population had not centralized as anticipated, the territorial leaders quickly lost interest in Fillmore.  In December 1865 Salt Lake City was officially designated as the capital of the territory of Utah.  Until the completion of the State Capital in 1916, the legislature met in five different buildings in the city.

Meanwhile, the completed the east wing of the Fillmore building took on many different functions.  In 1872 title to the building was passed to Fillmore City.  It was used on different occasions as a jail, school, church meeting house, and office building by local residents of Fillmore.  Today, the site has been converted into a state park and museum of pioneer relics.

Although Fillmore never became the state capital city envisioned by early Mormon leaders; the uncompleted capital is a reminder of an era in which the settlement of Utah was new and its patterns undetermined.

These facts come from the Utah state Historical Society, and this building is a real must, to see, on your next trip north.

While Bart Anderson is ill, we will be re-running some of his prior columns.  Get well soon, Bart!

In July 1940 D.J. Page was a young British soldier stationed in England.  Page was delighted when his long-awaited wedding photographs arrived, but he found that they had been opened by mistake by another young serviceman in Troop A.  The recent bridegroom was in Troop H.

Accompanying the pictures was a very apologetic letter from the man who had inadvertently opened the wedding pictures envelop.  But his action was not surprising, as it turned out, due to the incredible similarities between the two men’s names and serial numbers.  The name of the man who wrote the letter was Page; the other’s was Page.  Page’s army serial number was 1509322; the other Page’s was 1509321.  Neither man had previously known the other.

A few months after the war, D. J. Page was working as a driver with London Transport.  One day he noticed that the tax deduction on his paycheck was far too high, and he went to his superintendent to inquire about the matter.  There Page learned that his salary had been mixed up with that of another London Transport driver, one recently transferred to the same garage, whose name was Page.  The very same man Page encountered earlier.  There was yet another coincidence: Page’s license number was 29222; Page’s was 29223.

Another coincidence story came to light in 1942, when Author Butterworth was in the British army, posted at a camp near Norwich, on the grounds of Taversham Hall.  Butterworth ordered by mail a secondhand book from a London firm, and when the volume arrived two weeks later, he stood in the window of his hut and opened the package.

While removing the wrapping, a picture postcard fell out of the book, placed there, presumably, as a marker by the previous owner.  Picking up the card, Butterworth saw that it was postmarked August 4, 1913, nearly three decades earlier.

Then he turned it over to look at the picture and was flabbergasted.  It showed precisely what he was seeing out his window, a view of Taversham Hall.

During World War II, British army camps, as a security measure, were not identified by name, but rather by a mailing code.  So the bookseller, as a friendly gesture to a serviceman, could not have intentionally inserted the card in the book, for he had no way of knowing to which camp he was sending the package.

In the history of Southern Utah and Southern Nevada, Daniel Bonelli should be listed among the greatest men who made history in the Southlands.  Bonelli, a Swiss emigrant, had joined the Mormon Church in Europe.  He crossed the plains to Utah and suffered the trials of those early Swiss pioneers.  In Brigham Young’s expansion south, Bonelli was an early recruit and leader among the Swiss pioneers to Santa Clara.  He was with Jacob Hamblin at Fort Clara and like Hamblin lost most of his worldly possessions in the great flood of 1862.

Trouble seemed to follow him, for at Beaver Dam, he was washed out again.  Next he went further south on the “Muddy River” (Overton, Nevada) where he started all over again.  

Daniel was an educated man, he spoke several languages, along with being a carpenter-cabinet maker.  It was during the late 1860s that the new State of Nevada put so much tax on the Mormon settler that many of them left the area.  Daniel Bonelli voted to stay on.  At this point in his life, Daniel, became slightly indifferent toward the Mormon Church, saying, “the Church left him.”  He set up a small town called Rioville at the junction of the Virgin River and Colorado River.  With gold being found in Northern Arizona, Bonelli set up a successful ferry across the river, this to accommodate a host of new travelers.

It was Daniel that helped Major Powell on his second trip looking for his lost three men.  These were later found to have been killed by renegade Indians.  The aid to Powell was supposed to have been repaid by naming the Virgin Mountain the Bonelli Mountains.  But that didn’t happen.  Bonelli just got a small peak named after him, and he would often say, “those mountains should have had my name!”

Some say that Bonelli was a little eccentric and all agreed he hated getting old.  One day a young man walked up to him and asked, “Old Man, how far is it to the river crossing?”  Bonelli looked him up and down and said, “three miles and if you call me old man again I’ll throw you all the way to that crossing.”

One of his most particular quirks was in his butter.  Salt was plentiful in that area in pioneer days but Daniel never used salt.  Mrs. Bonelli always made salt-free butter for him, saying “he owned more salt than any man in the southwest and he ought to use just a little.”

Being a good business operator, he often made trips to Pioche for supplies to sell, and it was 1904 that he suffered a stroke during some transactions in Pioche.  A few moths later he passed away.

Today there is little evidence that Daniel Bonelli ever lived in Santa Clara as a founding father, or that Southern was ever touched by this man, only a lone street in Overton bears his name.