Sam Gates was an energetic person with many skills. He was 48 years old when he arrived on 2nd St. in 1852, and claimed 40 acres across the road from the Bingham Farm. The location of the Gates’ cabin is today’s intersection of Century Dr and 2nd Street. Sam Gates, Erastus Bingham and Isaac Newton Goodale were previously acquainted in Nauvoo, Illinois, where Sam Gates had established an iron foundry. Now these three men gathered together with their families in this new territory to build another community. Sam was also a farmer and a stone cutter.
At age 48 Sam was old to be starting a new farm and helping with a new community, but he was capable and willing. He and his wife Lydia Downer, had 11 children, 7 of them living. His first business in the 1850s was to establish a molasses mill located on today’s Wall Ave 150 feet north of the 2nd Street intersection. He and his neighbors were growing sugar cane in the 1850s and a mill was needed to grind the cane into molasses. [1]
In 1854 Brigham young made Sam Gates a captain of a company sent back east to assist the oncoming pioneers and help them through the mountains. In 1857 Sam and Lydia consecrated all the temporal possessions to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The church immediately gave him stewardship of his consecrated property. This consecration demonstrated faith in God and a willingness to share assets like the early Christians in the book of Mormon and the New Testament. In this consecration Sam’s 40-acre farm was valued at $300. 147 years later, these 40 acres would become the Fort Bingham subdivision. [2]
In 1858 Sam was married in polygamy to Martha Waite, an 18-year-old lady who had been briefly married and divorced. She lived in another cabin on second Street, and over time they had six children. [3]
In the 1860s Sam ran the toll gate at the mouth of Ogden Canyon; persons were expected to pay a toll for the use of the road to Huntsville. One day while working at the tollgate he hired a homeless Danish boy named Peter Sherner and eventually took Peter home and joined him to the large Gates family. Peter would grow up to be a permanent part of the community. [4]
In the 1860s, the spirit of home builders in Weber County changed to a desire for adobe houses instead of log cabins and for plastered walls instead of log ones. In 1871 at age 67 Sam built an adobe mill next to his house and in a few years expanded the adobe mill into a brick yard located five blocks north of his house. He partnered in this business with his son George and his son-in-law James Gardner. The adobe mill and brick yard were connected by a lane that ran from Sam’s house on 2nd Street northward to the brick kiln on today’s North Street. Although he sold adobes and bricks and his son George constructed many adobe houses on 2nd Street, Sam chose to remain living in his log home until his death in 1877 at age 73. [5]
A fingerprint of Sam Gates is still left on 2nd Street in six old structures that remain standing that are built with adobes or soft bricks from his mill and brickyard. The houses are 386 W. 2nd St, 150 W 2nd rear, 140 W. 2nd St, 122 2nd St, 156 2nd St, and the granary at 317 W. 2nd St.
In 1892, Lydia Gates was still living on 2nd Street in the 1850s log cabin and was photographed in front of her home by photographer Jason Crockwell. The photo was displayed at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 in the Utah Building as a fitting tribute to Utah Pioneers and an honor to Lydia Gates, age 83, who was still living on 2nd Street in her unique pioneer home.
[1] - Autobiography of Mary Elizabeth Hutchens Sherner, transcribed by Dorothy Sherner, Mary Elizabeth-Her Stories, manuscript, 1933, p. 53.
[2] - Lisa J. South and Pam S. Olschewski, Samuel Gates, Jr. and Lydia Downer, manuscript, 2001, p. 9-14.
[3] - Ibid, p. 14.
[4] - Autobiography of Mary Elizabeth Hutchens Sherner, p. 79.
[5] - Milton R. Hunter, Beneath Ben Lomond’s Peak, Quality Press, SLC Utah, copyright 1944, p. 362.