Early Days and an “April’s Fool Day” in Smithfield

The Mormon settlement of Wellsville established in 1856, then known as Maugham’s Fort, was the first permanent white settlement in Cache Valley. On May 6, 1859 John P. Wright, led a group of approximately thirty families from Fort Maughan, looking for a promising location to establish a new settlement. During the summer months, they traveled to Summit Creek, in present-day Smithfield.
“The first families to actually settle on Summit Creek and build homes were those of Robert and John Thornley who arrived on October 10. 1859. By the winter of 1859-60 approximately ten families called Summit Creek home, living in wagon boxes, dug outs and crude cabins with only cloth, quilts, or animal hides to cover the doors. They barely subsisted on a food supply so meager it had to be rationed. When Robert Thornley tried to obtain more food from the (Mormon) tithing office at Maughan’s Fort he found the only available food was red beets. Thus for some weeks his wife Annie fed her family boiled, baked and fried beets all the while praying for an early spring.”
An Indian scare caused the members of this new community to construct rough log cabins situated in fort fashion, which were roofed with willows covered by sand or dirt. This became known as “The Old Fort.” In 1859 the church sent apostles Orson Hyde and E.T. Benson to Cache Valley to organize the settlement, and in the November 30 edition of the Deseret News they reported, “The settlement of Summit Creek, six miles north of Logan we named Smithfield (in honor of the first bishop, John G. Smith.)”
Working together the men dug irrigation ditches and canals, cut and hauled logs from the nearby mountains and sometimes gathered sagebrush, which was used for fuel. Young women and girls gathered Sego Lily bulbs, using a sharp stick to recover them from the ground. These bulbs were then stewed in milk and eaten with cornmeal bread. The women gathered nettles which were boiled for greens.
A series of incidents with Indians stressed the need for the white settlers to always be prepared for Indian raids. John Sant was called by the LDS bishop as town bugler, charging him with the responsibility of blowing the bugle whenever danger lurked and the men would gather at the meetinghouse.
On April 1, 1861 the community heard the bugle and quickly congregated. When they were all assembled, the bishop was as mystified as everyone else, as to the nature of the trouble. Then someone said, “April Fool.” When asked who had ordered the blowing of the bugle, Sant replied, “John Story.” A number of men rushed toward Story, intending to throw him in the creek, so he jumped in before they reached him and the April Fool’s Day prank came to an end.
Source: Selected from a collection of newspaper clippings and other articles compiled in “Smithfield Health Days,” a scrapbook assembled by Dorene Hendricks Skidmore.