Biography

On June 3,1879 Thomas George Tanner was born as the first child of Thomas F. and Ellen Susannah Hathaway Tanner. The Tanner couple lived in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. Ellen, a Latter-day Saint convert, had arrived in the valley with her mother and brothers from Pennsylvania. Thomas, her husband, came from Missouri and worked as a whitewasher in the city. He was Black and non-Mormon, while Ellen was white and had fled from a plural marriage to a much older man.[1] At the time of Ellen and Thomas’s union, around 1877, interracial marriages were scarce in the Mormon community, but they went on to have three more children and eventually left Salt Lake to farm in Fremont County, Idaho.

Like other babies born to Latter-day Saint couples, Thomas George received a name and a blessing from an elder of the Church, but Thomas’s blessing was delayed until he was nearly three years old. He was blessed in the Salt Lake Third Ward on March 2, 1882, along with his baby brother, William Leroy Tanner. John Y. Smith bestowed the blessing.[2]

Two years later, Ellen Tanner gave birth to a girl, Susannah Lucretia. The family then moved to the Salt Lake Second Ward, but it was not long before they gave up life in the city for farming. Soon after the birth of their second daughter, Daphene, the Tanners relocated to eastern Idaho. Ellen’s brother and their families had settled into the community first named Falls River, in Fremont County. It was renamed Chester. Soon after their move, the family lost their youngest daughter, Daphene, who was still an infant.[3] Despite that sad event, the Tanner family prospered in Idaho and eventually owned over 144 acres.[4]

While living in Chester, Thomas was baptized on June 6,1889 at the age of ten. Thomas Brown of the Chester Ward performed the ordinance. John Watson confirmed him as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the same day.[5]

By the time Thomas was twenty-one, he had moved north to Yearianville in Limhi County, Idaho where he worked as a laborer but only stayed there for a short time.[6] On September 13, 1905, Thomas married a Black milliner from Missouri. Her name was Pauline Anna Johnson. She was thirty-one at the time of their marriage, while Thomas was twenty-six. The marriage license and certificate indicate they both lived in Havre, Chouteau County, Montana where a justice of the peace married them.[7]

The couple soon settled in Fremont County, Idaho where Thomas’s family lived. Sadly, their marriage was short-lived. Pauline died before their second wedding anniversary of what was called consumption, but is now known as pulmonary tuberculosis.[8] After her untimely death on August 19, 1907, she was buried in Fremont in the Wilford Cemetery.[9]

On October 20, 1909, Thomas remarried in Idaho Falls, Idaho. His second wife was eighteen-year-old Mary Susan Leggroan.[10] Mary was the youngest daughter of Edward (Ned) Leggroan and Susan Gray Reid Leggroan who were early Black settlers in Utah Territory and Latter-day Saints.[11] Mary, like her husband, Thomas, had been baptized into the Church as a child after she and her family moved to rural Idaho.[12] After their marriage, Thomas and Mary lived in Fremont County where Thomas worked as a general laborer.[13]

The Tanners had three children together, Geneva (1911), Helena (1913), and Harold George (1915). Geneva and Harold survived to adulthood, but Helena only lived for a few hours. She was born with a heart valve defect that prevented full oxygenation of her blood.[14]

Mary gave birth to the couple’s first two children in Idaho Falls, Idaho, but by the time Harold was born, the family had moved northeast to Tetonia, Idaho. When Thomas registered for the draft in 1918, he told the registrar that he was self-employed as a farmer and had a “pool business.”[15] By 1920, he had given up farming to manage a pool hall full time.[16]

At some time in the 1920s, the Tanners moved to Nevada where they lived for several years. While living, first, in Elko, Nevada, Thomas joined the Elko Masonic Lodge.[17] It is possible that by 1928 the family had relocated to Reno, Nevada.[18]

After living for a few years in Nevada, the Tanners took up residence in Tacoma, Washington.[19] Thomas worked there as a janitor in the county hospital. Mary did not work outside the home. Geneva, their daughter, was married, but was counted in Thomas’s household. She was also enumerated in Idaho, in her husband, Charles William’s, household. She worked as a maid in a department store in Tacoma and her brother, fourteen-year-old Harold, was a delivery boy for a clothing store. Both may have contributed to the Tanner family income.[20]

On November 29, 1937, Thomas was arrested in Seattle, Washington for violation of the Harrison Narcotics Act. He went to trial that December and was convicted of selling and holding heroin without a proper license. He was sentenced to spend two years in federal prison. He was incarcerated in the McNeil Island Penitentiary, which sits in Puget Sound and was the first federal penitentiary in the western United States.[21]

Thomas was released from prison in 1939. He stayed in Seattle and rented a home there where he reported being widowed to the U.S. Census taker in 1930.[22] Mary, however, was still alive, but living in another state. She gave her marital status as divorced and had relocated to San Francisco, California, where she worked as a seamstress for the Works Progress Administration, a federal New Deal program.[23]

Thomas registered for the World War II draft in 1942 and reported that he was unemployed at the time.[24] Although his former wife and his daughter, Geneva, had left Seattle, Thomas’s son, Harold returned to Seattle after serving in World War II. Harold’s wife gave birth to a son in 1943 and Harold was close enough to Thomas to put a joke about his father in the birth announcement.[25]

In 1950, Thomas still reported being unemployed to the census taker.[26] He continued to live in Seattle until his death from uremia on April 19,1959. Both his obituary and his death certificate state that he worked as a gardener, so he may have started that profession a few years before he died.[27] He is buried in the Greenwood Cemetery in Renton, Washington.[28]

After his baptism as a young boy, there is no evidence that Thomas participated in Latter-day Saint worship. None of his children were blessed or baptized and his obituary does not mention a religious affiliation. His funeral was not conducted by a Latter-day Saint ecclesiastical leader, nor was it held in a Church meetinghouse.

By Tonya S. Reiter

[1] Both Ellen and her mother were sealed to Isaiah Campbell in 1872.

[2] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Salt Lake Third Ward, microfilm 26,844, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[3]Daphene Tanner, FindaGrave.com.

[4] Idaho, County Court (Fremont County), Deeds, 1880-1928, general index, 1891-1973, Deed record 5-8, 1908-1917, Deed 425, microfilm 8,578,042, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[5] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Chester Ward (Idaho), microfilm 7426, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[6] United States, 1900 Census, Idaho, Limhi, Yearianville Precinct. He and a twenty-seven-year-old woman working as a domestic servant are the only two Black residents in the precinct.

[7] Montana, County Marriages, 1865-1987, Thomas G. Tanner to Pauline Anna Johnson, 13 September 1905; “City and State,” The River Press(Fort Benton, Montana) 13 September 1905, 5.

[8] Idaho, Southeast Counties Obituaries, 1864-2007, Entry for Pauline A. Tanner, 1907.

[9] Pauline Anna Johnson Tanner, Findagrave.com.

[10] Idaho, Marriages, 1878-1898, 1903-1942, Entry for Thomas G. Tanner, 1909.

[11] The formerly enslaved Leggroans came to Utah Territory in 1870 with Ned’s sister, Amanda Leggroan Chambers and her husband, Samuel Davidson Chambers as non-Mormons, but converted a few years after their arrival.

[12] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Milo Ward, Part 1, CR 375 8, box 4224, folder 1, image 14, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[13] United States, 1910 Census, Idaho, Fremont County, Upland Precinct.

[14] Idaho, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death, File No. 6266, Registered No. 83, Infant Tanner/Helena Tanner, Idaho State Archives, Boise, Idaho.

[15] United States, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 Thomas George Tanner, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC ; United States, 1920 Census, Idaho, Teton County, Tetonia.

[16] United States, 1920 Census, Idaho, Teton County, Tetonia.

[17] “Deaths, Funerals, Tanner,” Seattle Times (Seattle, Washington), 23 April 1959, 53. Mary’s father died in 1926 and his obituary lists Mary’s residence as “Elco [sic], Nevada.” See, “Ned Leggroan,” Times Register (Idaho Falls, Idaho), 2 February 1926, 2.

[18] Mary’s mother died in 1928 and her obituary lists Mary’s residence as “Reno, Nev.” See: “Mary S. Leggroan Dies After Short Illness,” The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah), 12 December 1928, 14.

[19] The Tanners arrived in Tacoma by 1929. See, Tacoma, Washington City Directory, 1929, Tanner, Thos G (Mary), p.763.

[20] United States, 1930 Census, Washington, Pierce County, Tacoma; United States, 1930 Census, Idaho, Nez Pierce, Taplin.

[21] Washington, State Corrections and Jail Records, 1877-1970, U.S. Penitentiary McNeil Island, Photos and Records of Prisoners Received, 1887-1939.

[22] United States, 1940 Census, Washington, King County, Seattle.

[23] United States, 1940 Census, California, San Francisco County, San Francisco.

[24] United States, World War II Draft Registration Card, 1942, Thomas George Tanner, 26 April 1942, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

[25] “Social Notes,” The Northwest Enterprise (Seattle, Washington), 15 September 1943, 2.

[26] United States, 1950 Census, Washington, King County, Seattle.

[27] Washington State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death, file no. 7325, Thomas George Tanner, Washington State Department of Health, Tumwater, Washington.

[28] Thomas George Tanner, Findagrave.com; “Deaths, Funerals, Tanner,” Seattle Times (Seattle, Washington), 23 April 1959, 53.

Documents

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