Biography

Louis Leggroan grew grapes on a large arbor on his Mill Creek, Utah farm. Sometimes he found grapes cut off the vine and laying on the ground. He could understand the grapes tempted neighborhood boys who stole a few from time to time. Louis didn’t like their thieving, but what irked him even more was their wastefulness. His daughter, Frances, remembered Louis saying, “Now if you want grapes, you come and ask me. I’d gladly give them to you. But you’re not stealing my grapes.” She said he slept at night facing the grape arbor. “Dad would fill his gun full of salt, rock salt…and he’d go out…and he’d say, ‘All right, fellows.’ POW! And they’d get their back ends full of rock salt.” [1]

Louis was the son of Edward (Ned) and Susan Gray Reed Leggroan. His parents arrived in Salt Lake City in 1870 and joined the LDS Church in 1873. [2] Louis was born while the Leggroans lived in the Eighth Ward where his parents took him to church, soon after his birth, to be blessed by J. Brockbank. The family didn’t stay downtown long and moved to farming communities in the southeastern part of the Salt Lake Valley before homesteading east of Idaho Falls in 1890. Louis was likely baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while the Leggroan family lived in Butler or Mill Creek in the 1880s. Later church records consistently list him as a member, but without a baptismal date.

After settling in Idaho, Louis worked on his parents’ sheep ranch as a teenager. None of Ned and Susan’s children enjoyed sheep ranching as much as their father did, so when Louis chose a career, he decided to raise fruit. [3]

In the late 1890s, when Louis returned to Utah as a young man, he must have stayed with one of his relatives in Mill Creek where there was a small black farming community. [4] It was there he courted and married Nettie James, the daughter of Sylvester and Mary Ann Perkins James in 1899. [5] Shortly after their marriage, they tried farming in southeast Idaho. Their two daughters, Thelma and Frances, were born in the Idaho Falls area in 1903 and 1906. Louis and his young family moved back to Mill Creek in 1907 where they cultivated a small farm. [6] Nettie became pregnant with a third child but died suddenly of a heart condition before the baby was born. [7]

Louis soon remarried. He and his second wife, Alice Weaver, adopted a son, Phillip who was born in Boise, Idaho in 1911. Alice had been previously married, so Louis also became step-father to her children. Soon after their marriage, Alice Weaver Leggroan converted to Mormonism and was baptized. All of Louis’s children were also baptized in the Wilford Ward. [8] Annie Clayton, a ward member, remembered the black Mormon women and children coming to church and participating more than the men did. She knew that even if the men did not attend regularly, they made sure their children were baptized. [9]

Louis’s six acre farm was smaller than many of the surrounding farms in Mill Creek. He grew hay and wheat on about three acres and grew fruit trees and a family garden on the other three acres. The family lived on what the farm produced. They had, “black currents, peaches, and grapes.” [10] They grew their own vegetables and always had, “a variety!” As Louis’s daughter Frances recalled, “We had potatoes, peas, and beans and things like that. We had everything we wanted to eat! We didn’t have to go to town. We didn’t even have to go to town for our meat. Because Dad and his half-brother and different ones would slaughter a pig and then we’d divide it.” [11] Everyone in the family worked on the farm and they all helped to bottle the fruit after harvest. Work went quickly with so many helping. [12]

In 1915, Louis was chosen as a representative to attend a progressive farming convention in San Francisco sponsored by the National Negro Farmers and Rural Teachers Association. [13] Several of his Mill Creek relatives were also invited but it is not clear if anyone other than Louis attended.

In the evenings, after the work outside was done, the family read or visited with relatives. George Bankhead, connected to the Leggroans by marriage, played the violin. Family and friends gathered at his house in Murray and danced the Virgina Reel and waltzes. [14]

The Leggroans lived at the upper end of what was a steep hill before the road was graded. In the winter, Louis took his children to school in a horse-drawn sleigh. His daughter Frances remembered children wanted to ride on the sleigh’s runners. Her dad wouldn’t allow it. He told them, “Now get in the sleigh, don’t be on the runners.” One morning on the way to school one of the horses slipped on the icy hill and fell. All the horses had to be unhitched to allow the fallen horse to get up. Frances said her dad knew just how to talk to his horse and gently encourage her to stand up, “‘Now, you take it easy now, all right, come on, stand up.’ And the horse would obey. She’d get up.” [15]

Louis knew his children experienced racial prejudice at school. He was a very protective father and tried to prepare them for the mistreatment they could expect from some of their schoolmates. He instilled within his children a sense of their own worth and taught them to stand up for themselves when they were mistreated. He armed his oldest daughter with an umbrella as a defensive weapon which she carried through high school. [16]

Frances said her parents taught her how she should behave as a young woman. In a 1983 oral history, she talked about the values they imparted to their children: “To be decent. Not immoral like they are now. Living together and all of this other stuff…if the girl made a mistake and got pregnant, she was the one that was ostracized!” Her parents advised her, “No matter what a man does, he’s always Mister! And that told the whole story.” [17] When Frances told her parents that she wanted to marry Monroe Fleming, her father thought she had found someone “worthwhile;” a keeper. From Louis’s point of view, divorce would not be an option. His fatherly advice made that clear, “All right, if you’re going to get married, fine. But if you make your bed hard, turn over more often, but stay there!” [18]

Louis’s grandson and namesake remembers that although he seldom saw his grandfather wearing anything other than a pair of overalls, he was anything but a country bumpkin. He was a bright man who was especially savvy in bartering. If he or his family needed something, he could find a way to make a trade for it. Grandson Louis Duffy knew him as a kind, quiet man and the most wonderful grandfather anyone could imagine. [19]

In 1941, Louis lost his second wife, Alice. He married a third time to Ethel Trigg Austin. She was not LDS. They lived in Mill Creek together until Louis’s death in 1958. His funeral services were held in the Valley View LDS Fourth Ward. He is buried in Elysian Burial Gardens in Millcreek, Utah near all three of his wives. [20]

by Tonya S. Reiter

Primary Sources

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection. Eighth Ward, Part 1, 1909-1941. CR 375 8, box 1862, folder 1, image 77. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection. Milo Ward, Part 1. CR 375 8, box 4224, folder 1, image 15. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection. Ucon Ward. CR 375 8, box 7164, folder 1, images 49 and 50. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection. Wilford Ward. CR 375 8, box 7640, folder 1, image 241. Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Clayton, Annie [Eliza Dexter]. Oral interview by William G. Hartley. Salt Lake City, Utah, 1972. Transcript. OH 1. Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

“Correspondence,” The Elevator (San Francisco, California), June 14, 1873.

Fleming, Frances. Oral Interview by Leslie Kellen, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1983. Transcript. “Interviews with Blacks in Utah.” Ms 0453, box 7, folder 6. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, Salt Lake City.

“Leggroan, Louis.” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Deceased Membership Record, 1941-1988. Microfilm 884213. Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

“Leggroan, Louis Obituary.” Salt Lake Telegram (Salt Lake City, Utah). 26 April 1958, 53.

Leggroan, Louis. United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Salt Lake County, Utah. Washington D. C. National Archives and Records Administration. Microfilm 1,983,910. Family History Library. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

“Leggroan.” Presiding Bishopric stake and mission census, 1914-1935. 11 Dec 1914, 14 Dec 1920, 31 Dec 1925, Aug 1930, 14 May 1935. CR 4 311. Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

“Leggroan.” Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah). 29 April 1958, 41.

Lewis Liggron and Nettie James, 11 Oct 1899, “Western States Marriage Record Index 1809-2011,” Utah, Salt Lake County, volume J, page 40..

United States. 1880 Census. Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Butler.

United States. 1900 Census. Idaho, Bingham, Willow Creek.

United States. 1910 Census. Utah, Salt Lake County, Wilford (Mill Creek).

United States. 1920 Census. Utah, Salt Lake County, Precinct 3.

United States. 1930 Census. Utah, Salt Lake County, Precinct 3.

United States. 1940 Census. Utah, Salt Lake County, Precinct 3.

Utah State Board of Health. Office of Vital Statistics. Leggroan, Louis. Certificate of Death. File No. 58 18 1057. Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Utah State Board of Health. Office of Vital Statistics. Leggroan, Nettie. Certificate of Death. File No. 47 265. Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Secondary Sources

Leggroan, Louis. FindAGrave.com.

Reiter, Tonya. “Life on the Hill: The Black Farming Families of Mill Creek.” Journal of Mormon History 44, no. 4 (October 2018): 68-89.

Documents

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