Biography of William Bowker Preston: 2nd Mayor of Logan
Dates in Office: 1870-1882
Number of terms: 3
Age when elected: 40
William B. Preston was born November 24, 1830 in Franklin County, Virginia to Christopher Preston and Martha Mitchell Clayton. He married Harriett Ann Thatcher and Birthe Marie Andersen and had ten children. He died 2 August 1908 in Salt Lake City, Utah and was buried in Logan, Utah.[1]
William Preston spent his first nineteen years on his father's farm and became familiar with all of the work incident to the development of the place and care of the stock. It is said that if the boy stood in need of an ax handle, his father pointed him to the hickory growth and to the work bench and told him to make one; if he needed to know the dimensions of a tract of land, he was given a chain or a rope and told to survey it; if he needed a pair of shoes he was sent to the shoe shop to make them and thus he learned to develop his talents and to use his time wisely and well. It was a discipline in sturdy independence as well as schooling in economy and thrift. It was just the training he could make use of in after years.
His educational opportunities between the ages of six and eighteen years were limited to attendance at the district schools during the winter, and later he spent an entire year in school under a teacher from the north. Nor was his religious training neglected, for on each Sunday morning he would walk with his father and brothers to the Methodist church, a mile distant form home and throughout his entire life he remained a regular attendant at church services on Sunday.
He left home and became a salesman in a store and afterward a bookkeeper. He spent two years in a mercantile establishment in Lynchburg, Virginia. His desire to see something of the world led him in 1852 to a determination to go to California. He sailed from New York in August landing at Aspinwall. He crossed the Isthmus of Panama on a donkey and then proceeded by steamer to San Francisco. He went to Yolo County, twenty-five miles west of Sacramento, where he settled on a farm of three hundred and twenty acres, which he stocked with cattle, hogs and poultry. During the next four years his attention was given to the further development and improvement of that place.
His nearest neighbors were a family of Mormons, and his investigation into their religious belief led to his becoming a convert to the faith. Soon after his baptism he was ordained an elder and sent to preach the gospel in the northern part of California in May 1857. His work there, however, covered but a brief period, for the United States Army under General Albert Sidney Johnston was advancing on Utah and the authorities at Salt lake called in all the people to the shelter of the Rocky mountains.
The Thatcher family also traveled to Salt Lake City. On February 24, 1858, William married the only daughter of the family, Harriet Ann Thatcher. They moved southward to Payson, and while there he was called upon for a somewhat hazardous mission as a member of a company of twenty-three young men who were sent by President Young to Platte Bridge to bring on the goods and merchandise which had been cached there. After his return, he built a house in Payson, making the adobes and shingles with his own hands.
In consequence of the Utah War, the people of the state were short of clothing and merchandise, and Mr. Preston, in company with his brothers-in-law, Joseph W. and Aaron B. Thatcher, went to California in the winter of 1858-9 and brought in two wagonloads of goods for his father-in-law. As he could not obtain sufficient land for his business needs at Payson, he and his brothers-in-law, John B. and Aaron D. Thatcher, accompanied by Mr. Preston's wife left Payson in August 1859 and journeyed into Cache Valley, coming eventually to the present site of Logan.
They found several families in camp with a few wagons, preparing to build, but no house had then been erected. Mr. Preston and his brothers-in-law drove north across the Logan River, and William said, "This is good enough for me." The men pitched their tents, took off their wagon beds and became the founders of the city of Logan.They worked day and night to build their houses and establish their homes and in November 1859, Orson Hyde and Ezra T. Benson came into Cache Valley to organize the settlements which had been located under the direction of Peter Maughan, it was necessary to select a bishop for Logan. William B. Preston was chosen and entered upon his new duties with the greatest zeal and earnestness. Bishop Preston made the plans for laying out and digging the Logan and Hyde Park canal, and in the spring of 1860 he assisted the government surveyor, Jesse W. Fox, in laying out the city of Logan.
The year 1860 brought many new settlers into the district and Bishop Preston's time was largely spent in apportioning the land and selecting homes for the newcomers. The labors of Bishop Preston were of a most varied and important nature.It was also deemed a necessity to organize a militia company, which was required to be always ready to defend themselves and property from the Indians.
In November 1862, Mr. Preston was chosen to represent Cache County in the Lower House of the Utah legislature. In the spring of 1863, when President Young called for five hundred ox teams to go tot he Missouri River to bring the poor across the plains, Bishop Preston was appointed captain of the fifty teams, constituting the quota of Cache Valley. In 1864 he made another trip to Missouri to aid the emigrants, being appointed to take charge of the teams from Cache, Box Elder and Weber Counties. With his return he was again elected to the legislature.
In the latter part of 1865 Mr. Preston was called to a mission in Europe and had charge of the company of missionaries as far as New York. He had not seen his parents for thirteen years and he went to Virginia to visit them. When he arrived in Liverpool he was appointed to preside over the Newcastle and Durham conferences and then was appointed to the business department of the Liverpool office having charge of the correspondence and general business of the European mission, including that of the emigration. His mission of three and a half years concluded, he left Liverpool in company of a colony of six hundred and fifty converts and arrived in Salt Lake City in September 1868.
With his return, Mr. Preston became one of the contractors in the building of the Union Pacific Railroad and afterward resumed his labors as bishop of Logan. At the next election he was once more chosen to represent his district in the general assembly of Utah. On March 7, 1870 he was elected mayor of Logan and filled the office for twelve years giving to the city a businesslike and progressive administration in which he brought about various needed reforms and improvements.
Soon after his return from Europe he was appointed a trustee and one of the directors of the Brigham Young College at Logan, and later he became chairman of its executive committee. In 1871 a local company was formed to build sixty miles of railroad and Mr. Preston was chosen vice president and superintendent of construction, devoting the greater part of his time during the succeeding three years to the building of the Utah Northern Railway which was completed in May 1874.
On May 21, 1877, the Cache Stake of Zion was reorganized and William B. Preston was made first counselor to the president, Moses Thatcher, his brother-in-law, whom he succeeded in 1879 as the president when Mr. Thatcher was called to be an apostle. Mr. Preston continued to act as president of the Cache Stake of Zion until April 6, 1884, when he was chosen at the general conference to be the presiding bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the death of Bishop Preston, Utah lost one of the most honored and prominent of her pioneer settlers - one whose capability constantly broadened and expanded, his powers being utilized for the tangible expression of the high ideals which governed his life.[2]
[1] Family Group Record, (Family Search Ancestral File v4.19)
[2] Warrum Noble, ed., Utah Since Statehood: Historical and Biographical (Chicago : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1919) 2:150
