Son of John Tanner & Elizabeth Beswick

Married Mary Jane Mount, 22 May 1856, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah

Married Ann Crosby, 19 May 1866, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah


Myron Tanner, son of John Tanner and Elizabeth Beswick, was born June 7, 1826 in Bolton, Warren County, New York. Myron was baptized into the Latter-day Saint Church at an early age. On Christmas Day, 1834, the family left for Kirtland, Ohio to join with the Saints in that place. Myron enlisted in the Mormon Battalion in Company "D." On the march he became ill with chills and fever, then contracted the mumps. After this seige of illness he suffered much from an abscess in his head. During the march the men were forced to carry 16 pounds of equipment and when he could not keep up any longer with his comrades, his load was put on a wagon and later he was put in the wagon on the tops of barrels. This so injured his back that he suffered for years and was never able to do manual labor. Myron was sent with the sick detachment to Pueblo and was one of the Battalion boys who came into Salt Lake Valley on the 29th of July, 1847.

In August of that year he was sent back to the Missouri River to help immigrants coming into the Valley. In 1850 he went to work in the gold mines of California. In the year 1856, Myron married Mary Jane Mount and was sent to help in the settlement of Payson. In 1860 he moved to Provo where he married Ann Crosby in 1866. He was Bishop of the Third Ward for twenty-seven years. Mr. Tanner died
January 11, 1903. — Oralie Wilkinson

Treasures of Pioneer History, Vol. 4, p. 518


Myron Tanner, born in Bolton, New York, came to Salt Lake in 1847. Later he bought the Kelton Mill and home in the northwest part of Prove and moved his family there. It was a small molasses mill and was run by the Keltons for only a short time. Myron built onto it, remodeled and improved
it and added machinery necessary for grist milling. The mill was run by water power which he secured by changing the course of a ditch and running it down Sixth West street. The mill was located just west of Sixth West and between Third and Fourth north street. This new venture proved to be a very successful one. He soon made himself familiar with the milling business, bought two new farms, and kept teams moving almost constantly for years hauling flour from Provo to Salt Lake City.

Abraham O. Smoot called on Myron and expressed a desire he put his mill into the new organization. "The factory needs the mill," he told him. It already had one, but it was President Smoot's intention to make Myron Tanner superintendent of both his own mill and the one owned by the woolen factory. The proposition was not very acceptable. Myron Tanner had business ideas that were somewhat peculiar, and he preferred to keep his own mill, which was bringing him in a large income. The desirability of the new movement was urged upon him and had become so strongly associated with the religious spirit of the
time, that it seemed almost like religious indifference to withstand the very general counsel to act in an organized manner through the medium of business corporations.

As a result, President Brigham Young decided that if Myron Tanner would exchange one-half of his mill for stock in the Provo Woolen Mills that would be satisfactory, and that he should have the privilege of managing his own mill. This proved, in a measure, a financial disaster. What, however, was as great, was the unwillingness of the new corporation to permit improvements that the progress of the milling industry absolutely demanded, and after many years of such dissatisfaction he finally sold out his share of the gristmill. During this time the mill had earned thousands of dollars for the factory, but the factory brought comparatively nothing to Myron Tanner. The old gristmill was finally sold to a Mr. Nestler who operated Provo's first and only brewery. — Marion Tanner

Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol. 14, p. 480

* Mormon Battalion members