Our Family Tree

An article published in the Standard Examiner, February 9, 1930

YEARS GO BY BUT CONSTABLE CUNNINGHAM STAYS ON JOB. Holds record in elective office positions in Ogden region. Found dependable. Was in Utah when Indians had habit of raiding Colonies.

The above was the headlines in the paper. Story by Wells R. M'Bride.

Thomas Cunningham, constable of Ogden precinct, has the distinction of holding the longest tenure of elective office in this locality and perhaps in the State. He was called to the position in 1909 and has been there continuously since. No matter what the political complexion of the varying administration, Mr. Cunningham is among the winners. He is a Democrat, but party lines seem to cut no figure when the people vote for constable. The announcement the morning after election invariably is “Cunningham is elected constable.”

There is reason for this, no doubt, and Mr. Cunningham’s many friends say that it is because of his dependability and application to the duties of the office. He feels that “public office is public trust.”

Mr. Cunningham was born near Glasgow, Scotland, June 8, 1852, and sailed across the ocean on the ship that carried the late David Eccles and his parents. This was in 1863, when he was only eleven years old. He was accompanied by his parents, the family finally settling in Heber City, Utah, where they remained only a short time, moving to West Weber in 1867. The father took up a piece of land in West Weber, but he not being a farmer, soon sold his holdings and moved to Ogden, where he purchased a two-acre parcel of land with a three-room adobe house, on the corner of Twenty-fifth Street and Monroe Avenue, where the Ogden High School now stands.

AS BOY MINER

Mr. Cunningham’s father was a coal mine superintendent in the old country and son worked in the mines before coming to America. He was educated in the grade schools of Scotland, spending but little time in school after he came to this country. In Ogden the elder Cunningham entered into railroad construction work, largely stone work which called for the use of powder, and the boy worked with him much of the time.

The Blackhawk Indian war was on in the south central part of Utah when the present constable lived in Heber City, which was the occasion for quite a thrilling experience for him, a mere boy at the time.

He relates that renegade Indians would come into Heber City, Park City and Kamas territory for the purpose, largely, of stealing cattle and horses. “I was herding cattle on the range,” he said, “and I know that I often wondered whether I would ever get out alive. We had to build a large log stockade in which to keep cattle, horses, and sheep at night to prevent the Indians from stealing them. I would ride the range all day and then had to take my turn watching the stockade at night. It was quite strenuous for a boy. Sometimes the Indians would set up a regular Comanche howl at night and stampede the cattle and horses so that a few times the stock broke down the heavy log structure and ran out into the open. Then the Indians would rush in and drive much of the stock away. We had no pitched battles with the Indians, but we carried guns and were prepared to do some shooting if necessary.

SPLIT LOGS USED

“The stockade was about eight or ten feet high and large enough to hold several hundred head of stock. The timbers used were logs a foot thick split in such way as to make a smooth surface on one side. These would be set upright and, extending between them, would be good sized poles. This made a very strong enclosure through which the Indians could hardly make their way. My hair stood on ends many times when the Indians were making a raid on the stockade, but I lived to become constable of Ogden, just the same.” He added that he visited the little settlement of Kamas when there was nothing but chickens there. The inhabitants had been driven out by the Indians and gone to places of greater safety.

Mr. Cunningham worked on railroad construction in Weber Canyon and at Promontory in the late sixties and said he well remembered the driving of the golden spike which linked the Central and Union Pacific lines east and west. He also did considerable mine prospecting. He was at Cottonwood Canyon when there were only three prospectors’ camps there and in Bingham Canyon and the mining sections of Tooele County he worked long before there was really any ore production. In these districts there have been found and developed some very rich and extensive deposits.

He and his father did blasting work on conglomerate rock projections on the Ogden Canyon road near the mouth of the gorge to make the roadway wider. He climbed to a cliff near where the Billy Wilson sawmill was located, just above the mouth of Ogden Canyon, and wrote his and Berrill Cowington’s names in wagon dope in 1868. Part of the inscription may still be seen on the rock.

EARLY STRUCTURES

“I well remember the crude ways of farming in the early days and the many hardships that had to be endured by the first settlers. I witnessed the digging of trenches on the bench between Twenty-fifth and Twenty-eighth Streets, into which grasshoppers were driven and then burned or buried. Those grasshoppers were awful pests. I have seen Ogden grow from an adobe-home hamlet to a city of fine and modern proportions. Where the old White House hotel stood on the corner of Washington Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street now may be seen the Hotel Bigelow, and where the Old Ogden hotel stood, now stands the First National bank building. The old mud hole has been mulched away and the Broom hotel now finds a home there. Sixty-seven years in Ogden have wrought a great and fascinating transformation.”

Mr. Cunningham married Charlotte Rackham, daughter of John Rackham, in 1875, and had a family of ten children. Mrs. Cunningham died about five years ago.