Georgius Y. Cannon on George Q. Cannon

[Georgius Y. Cannon was the youngest and only living child of George Q. Cannon when he visited my Grandmother Cannon's home on May 22, 1975 to talk about his father, George Q. Cannon, who is my great grandfather. I was nearing the end of my senior year of high school and was there. This transcript came from a Word version emailed to me by Bill Barnes, my first cousin, in September 2023. Bill subsequently made some updates which he sent me in pdf form that are not included here.]

On May 22, 1975, Georgius Young Cannon[1] , who was born March 6, 1892 and died March 29, 1987, came to Edwin Q. Cannon and Luella Wareing Cannon’s home at 231 D Street and visited with Luella and a number of her family/descendants (Edwin was Georgius’ half-brother, the son of George Q’s third wife, Eliza Lamercia Tenney, and had passed away in 1971) and reminisced about his life growing up with his father, George Quayle Cannon.  It was recorded by Robert G. Vernon, and transcribed by a Kathy Richardson, of the LDS Church Historian’s office.  Katy Richardson produced a rough typed draft of the recording in March of 1976, but not knowing the family, could not identify who was speaking and asking questions other than Georgius.  Robert Vernon, his then wife Kathryn Barnes Vernon (now Kathryn Barnes Luke) and her sister Mary Alice Barnes reviewed the draft, made appropriate corrections and identified the various speakers/questioners, but no final clean transcription was ever completed.  I was in attendance at this event, and I am now, in September of 2023 completing a final clean transcription based on the original recording (now on compact disk) and the rough draft completed by Kathy Richardson and corrected and clarified by Bob and Kathy Vernon and Mary Alice Barnes in 1976.  Since it is taken from a verbal presentation, and people do not speak in full sentences and paragraphs, and sometimes people speak over the top of others, I have used my judgement on punctuation etc.  I use familiar names to identify speakers throughout the document, with parenthetical clarifications when appropriate.  

 

Here is a list of those whose voices are in the recording of the interview, in the order that they first appear, with their full names and the nature of their relation to Edwin and Luella:

1.    Luella Wareing Cannon - Widow of Edwin Quayle Cannon, in whose home the  interview took place.

2.    Georgius Young Cannon - Main Speaker.  Georgius was the youngest son of George Q. Cannon and Caroline Partridge Young Croxall, and half=brother of Edwin Quayle Cannon.  He was also Brigham Young’s grandson.

3.    Bill Cannon - William Wareing Cannon - youngest son of Edwin Quayle and Luella Wareing Cannon.

4.    Russell Cannon - Son of Edwin Quayle Cannon Jr and Janath Russell Cannon, grandson of Edwin Quayle and Luella Wareing Cannon. 

5.    Janath Cannon - Janath Russell Cannon, wife of Edwin Quayle Cannon Jr., daughter-in-law of Edwin Quayle and Luella Wareing Cannon.

6.    Ted Cannon - Edwin Quayle Cannon Jr., son of Edwin Quayle and Luella Wareing  Cannon.

7.    Mike Cannon  - Son of William Wareing and Margery Sorenson (Marg) Cannon.

8.    Ted Barnes - Edwin Cannon Barnes, Son of Robert Harmont and Mary Alice Cannon  Barnes, grandson of Edwin Quayle and Luella Wareing Cannon.

9.    Marg Cannon - Margery Sorenson Cannon, wife of William Wareing Cannon, Daughter-in-law of Edwin Quayle and Luella Wareing Cannon.

10.   Ned Cannon - Edwin Quayle Cannon III - son of Edwin Quayle Canon Jr. and Janath Russell Cannon, grandson of Edwin Quayle and Luella Wareing Cannon.

11.   Bob Vernon - Robert G. Vernon, at that time the husband of Kathryn Barnes, daughter of Robert Harmont and Mary Alice Cannon Barnes. They were later divorced.

12.   Bill Barnes - William Cannon Barnes - son of Robert Harmont and Mary Alice Cannon Barnes, grandson of Edwin Quayle and Luella Wareing Cannon.
 

13.   Mary Barnes - Mary Alice Cannon Barnes, daughter of Edwin Quayle and Luella Wareing Cannon.

The interview:

Luella Cannon- I’m happy to have you all here tonight.  It’s wonderful and I’m thankful Bill (Cannon) for thinking of this idea.  It shows how much he thinks of Georgius, and we all do.  We’ve had a lot of family gatherings here in our lives and they’ve been pleasant to remember.  And, so we wish you all a lot of happiness and we are happy to have you here.  All right Georgius, I’ll let you start whenever you want.

Georgius - Well I’m thinking about this and what I might say and it occurred to me that my life had been spent in an entire different world than you young people know and all, and I might review some of it.  First all, my father was born in 1827 and my grandfather in 1794. Just think, the distance, the years that have passed in just one or two generations in my life.

Bill Cannon - May I interject another dimension to that Uncle Georgius?

Georgius - beg your pardon?

Bill Cannon - another dimension going the other direction? My grandfather was born in 1827.  Let’s see, I was born in 1925, and we have a son that was born in 1973.

Georgius - Well maybe you’ve outdistanced me, Bill.  How many years between your grandfather and your son?  When was Matthew born?

Bill Cannon - Matthew was born in 1973.  So that’s three generations and it covers 148 years.

Georgius - Well, there are 160 years between my grandfather and my oldest grandson, so I’ve got you beat.  I guess it’s something to brag about, I don’t know.

Luella Cannon - Georgius, I think you ought to sit down, and Bill don’t you want to say something about it?    

Bill Cannon - No, no, you go ahead.

Georgius - I’d rather stand.  I never sat down when I was preaching a sermon.  

Luella Cannon - I think it would be hard to stand up and talk.

Georgius - I might say to Russel, he was nice enough to say nice things when he came in.  Do you know how old I am Russell?

Russell Cannon - Well, apparently it wasn’t . . .

Georgius - I’m 83.

Russell Cannon - I guessed wrong when I came in then.  You can’t be 83.  I thought maybe you were Pop’s nephew or something (Pop was Edwin Q. Cannon - he was called that by some of his grandchildren).

Georgius - Well, I told Bill (Cannon), this was just the other day, I told him something that happened that happened often in California.  This wasn’t asked me once, but several times, people said to me, “Let’s see, Georgius, who was your father? I know George J. in the  Beneficial Life, is he your father?”  I said, “No, he’s not my father.  He’s my nephew.”  But in my lifetime I’ve seen the automobile, the airplane, television, radio; all of these things have come about in my lifetime.  So, you youngsters now enjoy all of these, but these were marvels to us each time that they came about.  

I’ve thought also about the fact that we all look to the Cannon family. But actually, what family do you belong to?  Do you belong to the Russell family, do you belong to the Sorenson  family, do you belong to the Ballentine family, or the Wareing family? You see, your blood is getting kind of diluted just now.  But nonetheless there’s a very strong feeling of kinship in the Cannon family, and it’s a good family.  And I remember Father saying again and again about his children marrying.  He hoped they would marry women or men from good strong families. And I remember when your grandfather and grandmother were married, that John Q. spoke about particularly the families.  Do you remember that Luella?

Luella Cannon - Yes.

Georgius - He talked about your family and about the Ballantine’s and the Wareings and so on, a great matter of concern to Father.  And of course they always said that Father ought to have the finest daughters-in-law, and they were all good strong women.  I must confess I am very fond of some of the granddaughters in law. And I know quite a bit about them.  For instance, Janath. . .

(Sound of a door opening and closing)

Bill Cannon - You remember Mike and Patty (Bill Cannon’s son and daughter-in-law), Uncle Georgius?

Georgius - When I went east to school in 1915 (Georgius studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Janath’s mother was at the New England Conservatory of Music, and I took her out quite a bit, so I know quite a bit about the Rich family.  Then I took Carolyn out some and then after those girls got married I graduated to Avon.  I took Avon out quite a bit so I’m well acquainted with the Rich family, or the girls at least.

Janath Cannon - We might have been more related than we are.

Georgius - Well, I’ll have to tell you an amazing incident, Janath.  I took your mother to one of the fraternity  parties, and we had a Negro waiter who wasn’t very good, and he was passing your mother when he dropped a knife down the back of her dress. And I’ve never forgotten how embarrassed I was over it.  I don’t think your mother was fussed at all.  She took it in stride.  But I have several friends who belong to the Rich family and I must say they are among the loveliest women I know.  I never could understand why the Cannon family was so slow in catching on.  Ted (Cannon) finally did. But, as I said, we lived in an entirely different age.  I don’t think you youngsters have any concept of what it was like to live in a polygamous family.  See, Father had five wives.  Four at one time because he didn’t marry Mother until after his first wife died.  And each family had its house all strung along.  You know where the farm is.  And I’ve often thought, while we were very close as brothers and sisters, we were also very close as neighbors.  It was kind of like living with good compatible neighbors, too.  And your grandfather, Ed, and Collie, for instance, were inseparable companions.  They couldn’t have been closer if they had been, just been friends, let me say.

Bill Cannon - Collie is Laurie Smith’s grandfather.

Georgius - And, of course I suffered because Collie and Wilf were four years older than I was. Claws (Clawson) was seven years older.  Eps and your grandfather were six years older.  So they all played together but they wouldn’t let me play with them. I was too young.  And so I grew up really kind of alone and by myself.  I remember one time I asked them if they wouldn’t please let me play baseball with them.  And they put me out in right field, and the first thing, I got hit in the head with a good swift baseball.  And that of course finished that for me.  But nonetheless I had to do chores.  I was taken off the ______ when I was seven years old.  That was my birthday present.  And, we had those chores.  I always had a pony, so there were many advantages that we had that you city boys don’t know anything about.  We had the river where we used to swim and I tagged along, and I really am kind of surprised the things that I heard these adolescent boys talk about.  I’m surprised that I survived morally, but I did.  And, of course, they didn’t  pay any attention to me.  I was just there.  I just, they didn’t know I was all ears.  But your ancestress, Eliza Tenney, of course I remember all of Father’s wives very, very well, and their characteristics.  And one thing that always impressed me about her was her extreme cleanliness.  Her place was just spotless, always, and this impressed me very much.  And of course, your grandfather Ed was her baby.  He was born, I guess Ed’s mother must have been in her 40s wasn’t she, when Ed was born?  Because he was sixteen years younger than William, and she was married seven years before William was born.  But she was quite concerned about Ed, and of course we played on the farm and we had lots of room.  And I remember her calling “Eddie, Eddie,” and your grandpa  would say, “What? - (spoken very softly)”  And he would never answer so she could hear him.  She always had him wear a reefer until quite late in the spring; and the minute he was away from the house he would take the reefer off and deposit it somewhere where he could pick it up.  He had a cow named Duchess and his mother was very particular about the amount of milk, so if the pail wasn’t quite up to the mark that Ed had on the pail for the amount of milk that he should have, water was added to the milk so his mother would never complain about not having enough milk.  One thing I remember about him:  he was frightened to death of snakes.  One time he was driving a little cart with one horse and he stopped in front of the schoolhouse and one of the boys held a snake up in front of him like this and he just simply fell backwards on the cart and, is that true still?

Mike Cannon - I think that’s a Cannon trait.

Georgius - But he was an awfully good companion.  He and Collie in particular, as I say, were such good friends; and Collie tells that he and Ed kind of planned a life of sin.  They didn’t get anywhere.  They just planned it, Collie said, until Luella got hold of Ed and unscrambled Ed’s brains.  All the kids were human beings.  It was great fun! As I say, we had a swimming pool, this river; this swimming pool was the river. We had the pond where we skated in the winter, and the winters were different then.   We had ice all winter on our pond.  We don’t have that anymore.  They had it, ’til now the way this weather is acting up now.  

I remember Ed had a favorite horse called Spy; and one time I was in the barn with my older brother Claws, and I petted one of our horses, and I said, “This horse is a good old bastard, isn’t it?”  He said, “Where on earth did you learn that?”  I said, “Well, that’s what Ed calls Spy.”   I hope I’m not destroying any illusions about your grandfather, because he was a perfectly wonderful person, and when he come home from his mission, I had grown from, I don’t know, thirteen maybe to sixteen, something like that.  And the first time I saw him, he didn’t pay any attention to me and finally, I was with Collie, and finally he turned to me and he said, “Who are you anyway?”  And so I said, “Georgius.”  After a while, they were living on South Temple then. And he said, “You know, you need a shave,” so he took me in and he gave me my first shave.  And, well, life was very different of course with all the boys and all the brothers and sisters.  

John Q., who was the oldest, was 35 when I was born, and so these were men.  They were people I looked up to.  And, I might say this about the family.  I thought about this many times. When I was six years old and was old enough to comprehend, Frank J. was Senator for Utah.   John Q. was a Brigadier General in the Utah Militia in the Spanish American War.  Abram, who had just died, had been an Apostle, and Father, of course, was very prominent in the Church.  He was in the First Presidency and very prominent in politics.  And so this was my introduction to life.  I thought I was quite amused at what some of the daughter-in-law said about ‘the royal family’.  It was natural that I should, I guess.  And this also was very hard on me because I was so full of faults, and could see so little progress and promise in me, and to be born into that kind of a situation, I thought, well, I suffered terribly from it. It took me years and years and years to overcome my feeling of inferiority about it.

I might tell you a story I told Bill (Cannon) just today, if he won’t mind if I tell it again, about your grandfather’s brother Read, who died when he was, I think, he must have been in his 30s.  He was the middle.  William was the oldest and your grandfather’s - Read was in the middle.  And Read was very deliberate. And one time Father had arranged with Read to get up the next morning and take him into town, drive him into town.  Of course, that was the way we had to get to town.  The only transportation we had was horses and buggies.  And Read didn’t show.  And Father finally, after waiting and growing impatient, walked around and stood outside the window and said, “Read, Read, I want you to take me to town.  You’re supposed to be here.”  And Read said, “All right Pa, I’ll be there.”  Father waited and waited and waited another three quarters of an hour.  No Read.  So he went down quite indignant and he said, “Read, I told you to get up and get down here.  I have to get to town.  I said, you hurry up and get down here.”  and Read said, “Well, I’m hurrying Pa, but damn it all, can’t you wait a minute?”  

Father was of course very imperious and he ruled his family with an iron hand.  I remember, I was telling Ted (Cannon) when they had us here before my brother John Q. died. I wanted a drink of water and went to the kitchen, and your grandfather joined me and we were chatting there, and I said, “You know, Ed, I think it’s a wonderful thing for me that Father died when he did” and Ed looked at me with the strangest look, and he said, “I’ve thought that many times.” And I think that this was illustrated by a remark that my wife made not too long after we were married.  She said, “Did it ever occur to you that when your father was alive, all the boys were failures, and the minute he died, they were all successes?”  You see, he so dominated all the lives of everyone, but he was a marvelous man just the same and greatly loved by all of us.  He was just wonderful.  And the thing that I felt against him most of my life is that I lied to him twice and he didn’t punish me.  And I’ve never forgiven him for that.  He should have punished me. And maybe the greater punishment was to remember.  I had it still on my conscience.

I don’t know what to tell you about Polygamy.  The family I know lived together in great harmony. My mother, of course, had been married before she married father.  She was a girl of sixteen when father courted her.  He was a man of forty and I’ve said many times, “In any other community, a man of forty courting a girl of sixteen, a man who already had four wives, is certainly scandalous.”  But Mother - apparently he said to her then, “You’re mine, and I’ll get you yet.”  She married Mark Croxall.  But about sixteen years later, she divorced Mark Croxall and of course Father knew it because he was in the First Presidency and she had to get a church divorce.  So he married Mother and adopted her five children and the family was quite excited about it.  First of all, Mother was a daughter of Brigham Young and she was young, they were afraid - she was quite a bit younger than the other wives.  They were afraid that she would kind of lord it over them, but she didn’t.  And, both Aunt Martha, Father’s fourth wife, and Aunt Sarah Jane, Father’s second wife, told me, I guess I was maybe in my 30s when they died.  They were well into their eighties, and they told me in almost identical words.  They said, “Georgius, if your mother had been our own sister, we couldn’t have loved her more.”  Well, I think this was a bit true, and I think it shows what existed, what could exist, in the polygamous families.  We just loved all of Father’s other wives.  

I think they were lonely women.  They were marooned down at the farm.  If anyone wanted to see them, they had to drive down.  And I don’t remember that they had any particular social life.  I can remember Aunt Eliza’s sister, Aunt Jane Simon visiting her, and some of the Looses And I remember some of Aunt Martha’s relatives.  But relatively, they had little social life, and after all if you’ve got four wives, you can’t very well say to one of them, “Come on, let’s go to the movie tonight.”  It’s a difficult situation.  Of course there weren’t movies, but if they had any social life, I think they took all their wives mostly.  One of the strange things about Mother’s marriage into the family was that there was considerable jealousy on the part of the Cannon brothers and sisters when Father adopted Mother’s five children.  But it turned out to be kind of ironical, because Mother’s oldest daughter married your Uncle William and her second daughter married Willard - my brother Willard.  Mother had a foster daughter, a niece of hers who lived here, and she married Abram.  So they joined the family legitimately as well as by adoption.  And it turned out all right, very successful.  

I might tell you this:  This is an interesting bit of history, to me at least.  Father’s first wife had died before Father married Mother.  She had been dead some years.  So that under the law, a man had to have a legal wife.  You see, the women married in polygamy were not married legally.  They were married according to the Church, but not according to the law.  When Aunt Elizabeth died, Father had no legal wife, and didn’t have for some years. And Frank J.’s mother, Aunt Sarah Jane, who was the second wife, should have become the legal wife.  But Frank J. said to his mother one time, “Mother, you are getting old, and Father is getting old, and he needs someone to take care of him.  I say you ought to tell Father to make Aunt Carlie - that was my mother - his legal wife, and Aunt Sarah Jane told Father, and Father made Mother his legal wife.  Mother could travel with him and take care of him and look after him because of course she was twenty-four years younger.  So she was, when he was an old man.  When he died he was 74 and Mother was only 50.  So she did all of his entertaining. And an interesting thing about entertaining, of which I am very conscious today:  Father, of course, had been in Congress.  He had many visitors from the East.  Men like Senator Elkins of West Virginia and others, and Mother would entertain with dinner, Mother and Father.  Father always served wine at those dinners.  Always!  And that today, of course, in the Mormon family is not done, is taboo.  But Father felt that it was not his business to tell men what they should do or what they shouldn’t do. These men were used to wine and they had wine for their dinners.  And of course Father didn’t have wine, but the others had.  And it was very interesting:  I travelled with Father great deal and though I was only nine when he died, I had been east with him to New York and Boston and Washington.  I went to the Hawaiian Island with him for the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Hawaiian Mission, and I went to California when he died. And of course Father told me many things.  But it was very interesting when we were in the East.  In Washington, we went to the White House and visited with President McKinley, and President McKinley took the white carnation out of his buttonhole and gave it to me.  And there was some amusing incidents.  Of course, I had no idea, but what if, I thought everybody in the world were a Mormon.  It never occurred to me that they weren’t, until Father’s friends who we met.  I remember Mr. and Mrs. Meyer, he was health drug manufacturer for St. Louis, joined us in Chicago on our way to New York.  Well, I went and called them Brother and Sister Meyer and Father said I shouldn’t do that.  And Mr. Meyer objected strenuously. He said, “You go ahead and call me Brother Meyer”.”  He said, “I like it!”  And so when we were in Washington, I had learned to read.  My sister Anne, who was just older than I, used to make me hear her spelling and I didn’t know what the words were, and so she would tell me what the words were and then I would hear them for their spelling.  So I learned to read before I went to school and so that by the time I was seven or eight I was very proficient at reading.  And at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, I asked mother if I could go down, there was a room full of typewriters, as I wanted to write a     letter.  So I went down and I was pecking away at the typewriter and two or three young fellows came in, and of course I don’t know if I had turned eight or not.  If I had, I had just turned eight.  It kind of surprised them, I guess, just to see a little fellow peck at the typewriter.  And so they asked me, “What are you doing?”  And I said, “I am writing a letter to my nephew.”  I was writing a letter to Tenney.  “Do you know who Tenney is?”  They said, “Well how old is your nephew?”  I said, “___. I have lots of nephews that are lots older than I am.”  So first thing they started pumping me, and of course, first thing they had the whole story out of me: about Father, my background, and everything else.  And after this was all over, they took me to the drugstore and bought me an ice cream soda.  I was telling Mother about it when I went upstairs, about how nice they     were to me and how they had bought me an ice cream soda and how wonderful they had treated me.  Mother said, “I guess they had a reason.”

Father used to have family meetings and about once a month he would summon the family, and he would instruct them and ask about our good and bad habits.  And, of course, nobody confessed to any bad habits.  I remember the block teachers one time coming to Mother’s house.  Father insisted that they question us.  They took each one of us in turn and asked us if were a good boy, and if we did anything wrong.  And, of course, who is going to confess if they did anything wrong?  Nobody is going to confess that.  And Father was quite stern, though, in may ways.  Of course this was the spirit, the era, the patriarchal era.  This  wasn’t only among the polygamists.  It was all through the Victorian world.  And I remember once Frank J’s son Q and Eps ran away, and Father was quite upset about it.  And so he summoned the family and he whipped the two boys in front of the family, and I think the family were very much upset over that and never forgot it.  I think we all felt that it was cruel and too great a punishment.  But this was part of Father’s sternness, despite that he was, as I say, he was a marvelous person, a marvelous father.  I couldn’t have asked for anyone better.  I dressed and undressed every morning and night in his bedroom, watched him shave. I traveled with him and he talked to me and told me many things about the early days and about his experiences.  

As I say, I went to the Hawaiian Islands for the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the Hawaiian Islands and saw the reverence with which he was greeted. When he was there before, he was called “the White God.”  _______ age six.  He said that after Father came home from his mission, he married.  And, by the way, while he was on his mission, he corresponded, not with Aunt Elizabeth, but with Aunt Elizabeth’s parents.  And he came home and married Aunt Elizabeth - after their courtship, I guess.  But he had known her as a little girl.  But he had translated the Book of Mormon into Hawaiian when he was on his mission.  So Brigham Young sent him to San Francisco to publish it, to print it.  Father was a printer by trade, and to publish the little magazine called the Western Standard.  And he took Uncle David with him and Uncle David said, “Georgius, I want to tell you about that.”  He said, “We were so poor that your father went to work many a morning with nothing to eat for breakfast, and leaving nothing in the house for     his wife and baby.   But he said, “Your father was determined that he had been called to do that work and he was going to do it, cost what it would.”  And he said one time - and I have forgotten whether the man looked Father up or whether Father ran onto him actually out on the street, but this wealthy planter who had known Father from the islands who admired him greatly saw Father on the street and inquired about the situation and found out how poor Father was and gave him $3,000 in cash.  And Uncle David said, “Your Father looked at that money good and hard and finally sent every penny of it to Salt Lake.”  He figured the Church itself needed it more than he did.  And Uncle David said, “I sat in Brigham Young’s office and heard Brigham Young tell your father, “That money saved the Church.”  They had reached the point where they could not go on.  They had had their council and decided they would have to give up and go back, and that money came.  And I said many times, this is the kind of thing to put this thing over.  This is the fortitude and the courage and the character that made this thing succeed.  And I think that’s, to me that has always been a wonderful story. It’s a wonderful index to Father’s character, I think, because I don’t think there was ever a man in the Church who loved Mormonism like Father did.  I don’t think there was ever anyone who preached it like Father did when Father went to the Hawaiian Islands.  He was just pure flame.  He converted so many people and had such success with them and was so humble about it all.  And as I say, they called him the “White God” when we were there - that trip - I remember when they greeted Father, Father had carnation leis up to here.  He could hardly see. And one of the things they had was a convocation in the theater where he talked to keep up the conference really.  He talked to them in Hawaiian.  And the Queen!  It was just after the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands - so the Queen was the ex-queen, but she was there sitting in one of the boxes and later on she asked Father to come and visit her.  And she fell on her knees in front of Father and asked Father to bless her.  So he, among the Hawaiian people, had real stature.  They have never forgotten him, I understand.

Bill Cannon - May I ask you a question Uncle Georgius?

Georgius - Yes.

Bill Cannon - Queen Liliuokalani wrote the Hawaiian song, “Aloha Oe.”  And we were told, I’ve never been able to verify this, I don’t know whether you may know.  But we were told that this was written during the time that you were there and it was written in Grandfather’s honor. Is there any truth to that?

Georgius - I don’t think so.  They were singing it.  That was one of their favorite songs. They sang it a lot.  But I’m sure I would have known that. They sang it just as one of their normal songs.  I don’t think, you know a lot of traditions build up, Bill, that have no real foundation. No, they didn’t seem to sing it in his favor.  When we used to get together in a group of the _______, and so on, the girl sang that just as they would any other song.  I think that’s a misunderstanding.

Well, I think the family has always remained cohesive even after Father died and     Mother died within two years, so that we moved away from the farm when I was twelve.  But they used  to have family meetings and we used to see each other on the street.  I used to see Hugh J., John Q., and as I say, was thirty-five years older and I used to see John Q. occasionally and Hugh J. occasionally.  But the question always was, are you a good boy?  And as I said before, I always was.  There was a great love in the family.  I can’t describe how I felt about my older brothers and sisters.  Well, I’ve said, to me one of the most wonderful things that I can think of in life is to have been one of twenty-two such men.  To have been a brother of those men. They were terrific.  They had their failings, they made mistakes, but they had one quality that I was very conscious of.  If they made a mistake, they can pick themselves up and get back in and do good, so I think that without exception, every one of those men died with the full respect, and honored by all of their fellowmen.  Now if you want to ask any questions, I don’t know what else to tell you.

Luella Cannon - Your father must have made a great many friends in Washington too, didn’t he, with some very outstanding men?

Georgius - Yes, he did, and I might say that. . .

Luella Cannon - At that time the people were down on the Mormons and all and I think it’s amazing.  I don’t know the whole story of how he got to Washington, but I know from what I’ve heard, that people were very interested in him and they tried to get him alone to just learn more and more and more.  I’ve heard of some wonderful things that. . .

Georgius - Well, I think that’s true.  I remember hearing one man told of one of Father’s congressional friends.  See, Father was territorial delegate for years and then he was the Church’s representative in working on the anti-polygamy bill and trying to solve this situation. And then Father was introduced once by one of the congressmen, and the congressman said to the person to whom he was introducing Father, “Mr. Cannon has four wives and I want to tell you a man as good as he is ought to have forty!”

And I ran into an interesting account down in California.  We did a house  for a very wealthy Jew (Mr. and Mrs. Urban Hirsh), the office I was in when I first went down to California.  And their son told me this - either the son told me or the father did, I don’t remember which.  But this boy had gone to McAdoo, who was at that time Secretary of the Treasury for Woodrow Wilson[2]  and had asked Mr. McAdoo to help him and give him some information about a thesis that he was writing.  And Mr. McAdoo told the boy, he said, “I’m willing to do anything I can for you.” Because, he said, “When I was young, I had this experience.”  He said, “I was supposed to write an article about the Mormons and I made inquiry and was told that the person to see was George Q. Cannon, who was then in Washington.”  He said, “I went to George Q. Cannon, and he spent several hours with me explaining fully about Mormons and about the Mormons and so on,” and he said, “I vowed then that if any young fellow ever asked me for any information, I would help.”And the client said to     me, “Was George Q. Cannon related to you?”  I said, “Yes, he was my father.” And I thought this was an interesting sidelight.

Ted Barnes - Would you tell us maybe something about Frank J.’s disenchantment with the Church?  What motivated him?
 
Georgius - Yes, I meant to tell you this anecdote.  Frank J., of course, turned against the Church and for political reasons, maybe other reasons, and was excommunicated in 1904. I was in school in Boston, 1915 to 1918 and somewhere along in 1916, the missionaries told me this.  They said that they were holding  a church street meeting down in Scollay  Square and were talking about the Mormons and being heckled severely. They were getting the worst of it. They said an older man with beautiful white flowing hair pushed his way through the crowd up to them and said, “Will you let me speak?”  And they said they never heard such a defense of the Book of Mormon.  And it was Frank J. Cannon.  He had been out of the Church twelve years.

Ted Barnes - What motivated him to turn away, do you know?

Georgius - Oh, political, and I think Frank was never as good as he should’ve been, and I think that that had to do with it.  Father tried to save him.  Father used him a great deal, and then all of a sudden, Frank wrote the Manifesto, but I don’t know if he did or not.  When Malmquist was writing this book, A Hundred Years of the Tribune’s History[3], he talked to me several times and he told me that he felt sure that Frank J. wrote Tom Kearns’ finest speeches.  And of course, he was gifted.  He had a silver tongue and very gifted.  But unstable, rather unstable.  As I say, he could be on this side, or this side, just as he could defend the Book of Mormon or he could fight against it.  But I think the main reason was political.  He became disaffected politically.  

Luella Cannon - When he died, I heard that his death was announced in Berlin - Berlin, Germany.

Georgius - You mean Father’s?

Luella Cannon - Yes.

Georgius - Oh yes.  Father’s death was announced all over. Lewis was in the East at school at the time, and he said that. . .

Luella Cannon - He attracted a lot of attention.

Georgius - The newspapers then listed the great Americans who had died that year and Father was among them.

Mike Cannon - Georgius, what was it like, and perhaps you were too young, or maybe this was right at the critical period in your life when you were young and he was still alive. What was it like after the Manifesto and after the jail sentences and so on?

Georgius - Well, of course, as I said, Mother was Father’s legal wife so Father lived at our house.  Our house was a monogamous house to all intents and purposes.  Of course I knew fully the situation.  I understood these other wives and the other brothers and sisters, but Father had agreed with the Manifesto that they would live with one wife only and Father lived to that allotment and didn’t fall a bit, as far as I know.  Father was imperious, as I’ve said two or three times.  And I might tell this because I think this is a marked characteristic of Father.  When William, your Grandfather’s brother, was married, he married Mother’s oldest daughter, Ada.  And of course, the temple in Salt Lake City wasn’t finished, and they had to go to Manti to be married, and I was six weeks old.  Father insisted on Mother taking me on that trip and I nearly died.  I contracted pneumonia and I think I caused much more interest than the wedding party did.  But I survived anyway. And my mother-in-law told me that her mother, who was a good friend of Aunt Elizabeth’s - she used to say, “If Brother Cannon would just leave Sister Cannon and the children home instead of dragging them across the plains every time he goes, the children would have lived, because out of eleven children, only six survived.”  But this was Father.  I still remember Mother saying, “Oh, if he just would leave me home.”  Not Father.  He wanted Mother to go and Mother went. Very, very powerful that way.  And I guess this relates back to the story that Aunt Mary Alice, Father’s oldest sister, the child next to him told me - she said Father, as a boy, was very stubborn, and one day he came in from school and threw his cap on the floor and his mother told him to pick it up and he wouldn’t.  And she took him by the nape of the neck and bent him down and made him pick up his cap.  But he shut his eyes so he couldn’t see himself conquered.  He won one argument.  He said he wasn’t going to go to school and his mother said, “Oh yes.”  And he said, “If you send me to school, I’m going to tell Papa about the money you have stashed away in the sugar bowl.”  He stayed home that day. He didn’t go to school.  And I remember after I was married a group of us belonged to a card club.  My brother Wilf belonged and his wife and George M. Cannon Jr. belonged and his wife.  And we were sitting at the table talking and I said to the three girls-in-law, “If you had to characterize your husband and say what his outstanding characteristic is, what would you say?” And in unison and with one voice, “Stubbornness.”  So I guess this is a good Cannon characteristic.

Luella Cannon - How old was Ed when your father died?


Georgius - Ed was about 15.  Ed is six years older than I am.

Luella Cannon - When your father died, I was going to the Lowell School and I was about, I guess, eleven or twelve, and they dismissed the whole school and let them go down to South Temple to watch this large funeral, the largest to be held in Salt Lake, the largest that ever was held in Salt Lake.  I remember we went down to South Temple and they used to have chains between the posts and I sat on those chains and watched that big funeral.  And the carriages were, oh, beautiful.  I’ve never seen anything like them - sort of like baskets painted black.  And all the leaders of the Church were in what they call these long coats (Georgius interjects ‘frock coats’) and little caps and they were dressed, I’m telling you, it was the biggest, longest thing, and that was about the first I ever knew of Cannon.

Georgius - Well you’ve gotten well acquainted with them.

Luella Cannon - So I am very proud of the name, and I’m very proud of that wonderful husband of mine.  

Georgius - You should be.

Luella Cannon - I’m thankful that  Bill (Cannon) has been chosen, and as much as he was chosen for a mission again, chosen for Hawaii (at this time Bill and Marg had received the call to preside over the Hawaiian Mission, and did so from July 1, 1975 until June 30, 1978), because I have been over there three times and I went to the services and they sang songs about George Q. Cannon and we went to the leper island (Molokai) on one trip.  I guess you’ve been to the leper island haven’t you?  

Georgius - Yes.

Luella Cannon - One part of the island is up high and you look down on the lepers.  The son of a woman with whom  we stayed met us with this taxi at the plane and we stayed at her home and it was the loveliest, cleanest, most, well, wonderfully kept place. And she was a very fine-looking woman.  Her name was Emma Koloma, just a typical beautiful Hawaiian.  And her floors were polished, just shining.  It was lovely. The next morning after we slept, I said, “How did you sleep last night?  I hope we didn’t disturb you.”  She said, “I didn’t sleep one wink.”  She said, “I cried for joy to think that a son of George Q. Cannon was in my home.”  And that woman wrote to me for some years.  She had daughter living in California.  I think it’s just amazing the way they almost worshipped your father.  And the Queen, he baptized the Queen, didn’t he?

Georgius - I don’t know.  I think she probably was baptized, Father didn’t.  Father blessed her though.  That I know.

Bill Cannon - He didn’t baptize her, but she was baptized and he blessed her.

Luella Cannon - She knelt at his feet. They sing songs about - I don’t know how they say his name.  I have forgotten.

Georgius and Bill Cannon - Georgi Pukuniahi

Luella Cannon - And so I think he must have been a very remarkable person and I’m glad I married a Cannon.  

Georgius - I am too, Luella

Luella Cannon - I’m glad I know you.  

Georgius - That is interesting to me because over the years Father kind of dropped out of sight as far as the Church was concerned, but the last few years they revived his memory and his teachings again, and I used to come to Salt Lake when I’d come up from California. And the name George Q. Cannon didn’t seem to mean anything.  But now everybody knows his name.  I was in the Post Office the other day mailing some packages.  The fellow looked at my name and he said, “Are you related to George Q. Cannon?”  I said, “Yes, I’m his son.” They all know.  Everybody, it seems to me, in the Church knows about him now, and I’m glad. I think they needed to revive their interest in him.  And how many of you have read Father’s “First Mission?”  I think those of you who haven’t had ought to read it.  I think that’s a remarkable book.  Ted, you have a question?

Luella Cannon - I think he must have had a great mind and qualities, well, qualities that are unusual in anybody.  A very brilliant man, and he must have had great personality (Georgius interjects ‘He did’) and he must have been so outstanding to think that a member of our Church in high place should be, well, called to go to Washington in the position     he had.  I think it’s amazing that he ever did it.

Georgius - He had a great many friends there.  Of course the girls in the family, Winnifred and Alice used to say, “You would never know that these boys had a mother, because you never hear anything about the mothers. It’s just the father that you hear about.”  Which was true.

Mike Cannon - I guess one of the most special things to me as I was growing up and now even more so perhaps is the account of Great-Grandfather while he was in the islands and the encounter he had with his companion about not preaching to the natives, and then finally he had the experience where he said he talked with the Savior.  Did he ever elucidate that?

Georgius - Yes, he told me that.  He told me that when we were traveling on the train. And I think we were on the island of Maui.  He stopped at some rather unpopulated place and he said to Mother, “This is the place,” and I’ve always thought that that’s what he meant.  Nothing was said more than that.  I’ve always thought that that’s what he meant.

Marg Cannon - Did he mention seeing the Savior or did he just talk with him?

Georgius - Wait a minute, who’s asking?

Marg Cannon - Marg.  Did he mention seeing the Savior at the same time, or did he just talk with him? He saw him as well as talked with him?

Georgius - Umm hmm (affirmative).

Marg - That wasn’t clear in his journal, and we’ve often. . . you know, we didn’t know.

Georgius - He told me, he said, “I have seen and talked to him,” I was going to tell you something in connection with that.

Mike Cannon - Did he explain what the Savior told him?  He didn’t explain the substance of the conversation?

Georgius - Well, I surmised.  You see, when they got to the island of Maui he and his partner separated, and he went around the island on one side and his partner went the other.  And he tells how alone he felt.  He couldn’t speak; he was hungry.  He was on his own and he came to this stream, this river or creek, and he was so discouraged. he decided to bathe anyway and put on fresh clothing which he did and he said afterwards he prayed there and I think that was probably where this happened because he always said he had the promise that he would have this great success.  And of course, as he went on, the people met him and he did have this tremendous success.  I don’t know whether this is saying more than should be said, but I’ve always felt that Father, more than any other man, established the strength of the Church.  I don’t think any man ever preached with the testimony that Father had or was devoted to the Church like Father was, or gave it the thought and the effort and so on that Father did.  That may be overstating the case, or may be simply that I am his son that think that. But after I came home from my mission I read the Journal of Discourses through, completely through, but I thought Father gave far and away the strongest sermons.  His and Brigham Young’s were the best sermons.  Brigham Young’s were very practical.  Father’s were too, for that matter, but there was a spirit in Father’s that I missed in all the other sermons.  Of course, Father was in Nauvoo.  You see, Father was a boy of sixteen in Nauvoo when Joseph Smith was killed.  So he knew Joseph Smith.

Ned Cannon - Did he talk to you much about the Prophet Joseph Smith?

Georgius - No, no, not that I remember particularly.  What he told me about, what I remember were more the hardships of what it cost them in the way of effort. And so on.  You see, Father at seventeen, was left the head of the family of seven children.  They were orphaned.  Aunt Mary Alice was sixteen and Charles Lambert wanted to marry her, and she told him she would marry him if he would help get the children across the plains.  And, of course, John Taylor’s first wife was Father’s Aunt Leonora Cannon, and they helped out to get the children across.  But Father came in ’47.  The other children didn’t come for two years.  So Aunt Mary Alice said that when they did arrive, Father had been thoughtful and had left a garden all planted for them so that they had their supplies for the winter.  And was very thoughtful that way.  And I know that his brothers and sisters just adored him and looked up to him.  I think he was truly a great man. One of the hardest things that I have had to battle is to disassociate myself, I hope you understand this, from Father, because I want to live my own life.  I want to be known for my own self. And this has been a hard thing to do, to disassociate myself enough so that people know me for myself.  They know, of course, that I am George Q. Cannon’s son. But I want them to know me for myself.  And I think this is what your father, Ted, meant that night we talked about it.

Bob Vernon - You say there was not any jealousy among the wives in the family?

Georgius - Well there must have been.  Originally, when Mother came into the family, I suppose there was.  But they had a common purpose. They were all being persecuted.  

Bob Vernon - They were all like one big happy family, pretty much?

Georgius - I think so.  I don’t remember any conflict of any kind.  

Bob Vernon - About one wife being jealous, that maybe your father favored one over the other or something?  He was pretty impartial.

Georgius - No, I think Father was just.  And Joseph J. tells me this incident:  After Father married Aunt Martha - I don’t know how long after - Aunt Martha was uptown and had bought a lot of groceries and things at ZCMI and had them sent down to Mrs. George Q. Cannon.  So they delivered them to Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Elizabeth wouldn’t part with them.  She said, “I am Mrs. George Q. Cannon.”  And so there were things like that, I guess.  I don’t think Father expected to live that closely together - four families - without some conflicts, but certainly in my day, there were none, nor did I hear anything other than the jealousy when Mother married Father because she was so young and because they were afraid she would - being Brigham Young’s daughter - she would try and act superior and so on.  Of course she didn’t, as I told you.  They told me how much they loved her.

Bill Barnes - Margaret Clayton told me that story about the groceries the other night when I was speaking with her. But one other story she told me was, she said she remembered - I guess it was Collie - that George Q. had had a family meeting and asked if there were any questions, and he raised his hand and said, “I have one question.  Why don’t you come to our house anymore?  Why do you always live down there, and why don’t you ever come and stay with my mother anymore?  Don’t you love us?”  And the next morning, he received a message that he was supposed to go and speak with his father.  And in her words, he said that no walk in his life had ever seemed as long as that walk down to talk to his father.  

Georgius - Well, I think the story is a little different.  As Collie tells it, Father called the older boys together and questioned them about their morals, and of course Collie was only about five or six, and didn’t know what morals were.  But after the other boys talked, Collie said he burst into tears, and when Father questioned him, Collie in a sob said, “Well, my mother doesn’t have a sideboard.”  And Father quieted him and the next     morning, Father sent for Collie to come down to talk to him. And that was about the longest walk he ever took in his life, because he didn’t know what Father was going to say to him.  Well, of course, what Father did was to talk to him and explain to him that they were all short of things that they would like to have and so on.  But think of a more amusing story about Collie.  Uncle Angus had a son, had a grandson (actually twin grandsons) named Jack and Chick, and they were about Collie’s age and looked very much like Collie.  And one day Collie was on the street - on Main Street - and he saw Father and Uncle Angus coming, and he said he tried to hide because Uncle Angus was a kisser.  Whenever Uncle Angus saw them, he always kissed them.  And Collie said he didn’t want that, and so he tried to elude their notice.  But Uncle Angus noticed him and caught him and Father looked at Collie and said to Uncle Angus, “Jack or Chick?” and Uncle Angus never got over that, and Collie spoke right up and said, “Papa, I’m Martha’s boy.”  And Uncle Angus never let Father forget that, that Father didn’t know his own child.

Bill Cannon - You wrote a paper years ago, as I remember, called, “I am my own grandpa,” or something like that.  Didn’t you?

Georgius - No. This was about Mother’s foster daughter.  You see, Mark Croxall’s first wife was Mother’s sister, and she died about the time that Mother married Mark Croxall and had two children.  Mame, who was about five years old, and Ada, Mother’s first child, and a son and after Mother married Father, I told you that her foster daughter married Abram and that’s the cousin of mine, Mame.  And then after Abram died, Mame married again.  Well, I will tell you the relationship I said about her. She was related to me in these ways.  She was my sister’s sister, but not my sister.  She was my foster sister.  She was my sister-in-law, she was my cousin-in-law, the wife of my aunt’s husband. So you get these mix-ups a lot.

Luella Cannon - I noticed this in the Cannon family.  From the time I went in, Maud Reiter (sp?) married about the same time I was.  And from then on, in all the gatherings, I noticed the enthusiastic spirit.  They were high-minded  and they were smart and wonderful people, and they aimed high in life and they loved each other.  They were a happy people.  They loved to get together, and I think they just kept it up through the years.  And I have been thrilled to be a member of the Cannon family.  I think they have been a very unusual and wonderful people and very highly thought of.  So I’m grateful to Ed Cannon. It’s all Henry Moyle’s fault.

Georgius - Well, I think we always had a good time together.  I don’t think the Cannons are particularly witty, but they have an awfully good sense of humor, and they have enjoyed each other, and they enjoy a good story, and there’s always a lot of laughter.  John Q. always had nice things to tell about the family, and so did the others.

Mike Cannon - How did you relate to the older boys in the family, your older brothers? They weren’t brothers to you. They weren’t fathers to you.

Georgius - No, no.  They were brothers.

Mike Cannon - Were they?

Georgius - Yes.  very strongly.

Luella Cannon - They were really brothers though.

Georgius - Yes, they were.  They didn’t pay much attention to me.  I have often thought that aside from Mother’s children, my other brothers never seemed to be concerned about me particularly, except when they would see me they would say, “Are you a good boy?”, and of course I always was, I said.  But I think there was a very strong feeling.  I just adored John Q. and Sylvester and all the rest of them - very, very fond of them.  I don’t know how they felt about me.  Of course I was looking up to them.  But I always had a strong feeling, a strong fraternal feeling, for them - very proud of them.  They were always very warm and were fine men.  They were excellent men.

Ned Cannon - Did your father ever show any favoritism, obvious favoritism to any of his sons?

Georgius - Oh, I think I was his favorite.  Oh, I don’t know.  Father - I think the older boys were jealous because when I was eight years old, Father bought me a pony, and something that - the other boys had their horses.  And my brother Claws not long ago told me, he was quite indignant over the way I was treated, and Wilf thought I was spoiled.  I didn’t think so, I still don’t think so. I still don’t think so.

Janath Cannon - Did you get to go on more trips with your father than the other, did you go on more trips with him than the other boys?

Georgius - It’s funny.  Your voices sound as though they came from the same place. What was that Janath?

Janath Cannon - Did you go on more trips with your father than the other boys?

Georgius - Yes.

Janath - Was that one source of favoritism?

Georgius - Yes, I don’t know.  Wilf thought that I had more clothes than the rest of them had, and I think that they - well certainly, Father, at age 65 had a pretty good idea that I would be the last.  And, until I was three years old I had golden curls down to here, and I wore Lord Fauntleroy lace collars and bow ties, and so on. And I think Father made a little more of me than he did - of course, he was living at our house by this time, you see.

end of disc one

Ned Cannon - Did your father ever have talks with the boys about the facts of life?  I mean, in detail?

Georgius - I don’t know.  They certainly knew.  And I was talking about Collie not long ago, last year at the Cannon reunion.  I got my sex education from Collie, and it was a darn good one.  Strangely enough, it always had a moral tone.  I’m quite surprised when I think back how moral our brothers were.  I think there were some dangers.  When John Q. and Frank and Abram were eighteen and twenty, three of Father’s wives were pregnant, and I’ve said, “I don’t think Father had any idea what that meant to those boys - to see three women pregnant from their father the same time.”  Quite apart from the religious sanction.  I think this must have had a powerful effect on those boys. I don’t see how it could have been otherwise.  But I’ve thought about it many times.  I have never known anyone in my career that I thought were more moral than my brothers were.  And of course, they knew the facts of life.  We couldn’t help it.  We were right there on the farm, we were breeding cows and breeding horses, and so on.  I think that’s the way boys should be reared.  If I may be explicit and frank, I think we grew up thinking that such was absolutely normal.  There was never anything hidden about it, and I thought it was a very sane, clean outlook.  And I think the boys have shown that in their lives.

Mike Cannon - Just another curious little sidelight.  How many of the brothers ended up, and sisters ended up with beautiful white flowing hair?  And how many brothers were there? Twenty-two?  And how many sisters?

Georgius - Well you see two of my brothers were Mother’s children, not Father’s.  And there were, let’s see, there were twenty-one of us who were Cannons.

Mike Cannon - Twenty-one boys?

Georgius - Mmm Hmm (affirmative).  Frank had this beautiful mane of white hair.  I don’t know.  I never thought about it.  

Bill Barnes - Did any of them go really bald?

Georgius - Oh yes, well, not really bald.  Father of course was very sparse.  He had a little hair as you can see from the picture there, but I think aside from Frank, I don’t know.  I think Joe, William kept his hair.  Your grandfather kept his.  I would say that Joe and Bish, and Angus, maybe Hugh?  Aunt Martha’s family was the one that always was quite bald.  Willard was fairly bald.  Brig was fairly bald.  I think Rad and Eps probably kept a modicum.  My brother Claws is quite a bit balder than I am.

Mike Cannon - All the Cannons have beautiful white hair, and I was curious though, and my brother has mentioned this several times about the number of boys there are in the family.  They’re predominant.  There are many more boys, it seems like, than girls.  Did you ever remark about that to each other?

Georgius - Father only had seven daughters.

Mike Cannon - Only seven daughters.  Twenty-one boys.

Georgius - Yes, he had thirty-three children all told.  But do you know what the name Cannon means? The original name was Cannanan, meaning white hair.  That’s what the name meant.

Luella Cannon - Ed was the darkest one of them all wasn’t he?

Georgius - Well, Wilf had black hair, but Wilf’s turned white.  Father had black hair at 39 and at 40 Father’s hair was white. It just turned up suddenly.

Marg Cannon - Georgius, how do you spell that name?  This is Marg again.

Georgius - C a n n a n a n.  The real spelling of Cannon, Cannan.  That’s the way it was spelled in the Isle of Man.  But that was changed.  I don’t know, Grandmother and Grandfather Cannon, when they signed their marriage certificate, signed it ‘on’. But the Cannons in the Island spell it Cannan.  All of our relatives.

Bob Vernon - When you said that the reason why Frank became disaffected from the Church was for political reasons, did you mean by that, that he felt that the Church intervened too much in politics, or that the Church and State or. . .

Georgius - Well, of course, one of his books was “The Serpent on the Hearth,”[4]  which was on Brigham Young’s Mormon empire.  

Bob Vernon - Oh yeah.

Georgius - I can’t tell you the history of it.  It had to do with Frank’s election to the Senate, and he changed parties and I don’t know, he felt that the Church was preventing his realizing his political aspirations.  And I think he even blamed Father, because I understand that one time in the Salt Lake Theater, when Frank was talking, Father was so incensed that Father got up and reached down to get his rubbers. He was going to leave and Frank started picking on him and denouncing him.  Frank didn’t have very good judgement.  Some of the other boys didn’t have very good judgement, I guess.  

Luella Cannon - Frank J. was the most notorious in many ways of all the boys.  He was well-known all over the country, and he was so popular that I think it went to his head, don’t you?

Georgius - He was fascinating, but I always thought we was very shallow.

Luella Cannon - He was the handsomest.  He was the most unusual looking man.  Ed visited him in Philadelphia one time, and he showed his great love to Ed.  He did love his family, but he said to Ed, he wrote down, he said, “Ed, I hope you get the right idea of your brother,” and gave him a book, and I have that book.  I have regarded it very carefully because it had some wonderful things in and I think that down deep in his heart he just felt the greatest things but he was so popular (Georgius interjects: ‘Well he was volatile, very unstable’) and called upon everywhere in different groups, notably religious, to speak.  And his appearance!  He is an unusual appearing man.  His hair wavy and his piercing eyes.  He had eyes like his mother, don’t you think?  Aunt Sarah Jane?

Georgius - Well, I always felt about Frank that Frank was unstable, and, I felt, rather shallow.  He was brilliant but I thought he was rather shallow.  He came to see me when I was at school. He was in Boston and called me.  I went down to the hotel and visited him.  You see, when Father died, John Q. and Frank and I were with Father at the time in Monterrey, and I got well acquainted with Frank and John Q. then.  They were just wonderful, but Anne was with us, too.  They were just wonderful to Anne and me.  And I can think of nothing except. . .

Luella Cannon - I think he honored his father very highly.  I have a statement in one of his books, as he was going out to see his father when he was in (Georgius interjects ‘At the penitentiary’) Salt Lake, he said as they approached in the dark and he was with this man who was a body guard (Georgius interjects: ‘Charlie Wilcken probably’) yes, and he said, “As I approached that place thinking of my father, I knew I was about to meet the greatest man that ever lived in my mind.”

Georgius - I think Frank felt that.

Luella Cannon - Yes, he said that.  And how he admired and loved his father and appreciated him.  Well, he made some great statements and it’s a thrill to really read the things he has written.  I prize those writings very much.

Mike Cannon - When did Frank die?

Georgius - Well, I don’t know.  He visited me in 1916, and after we were married - I was married in 1921 - I guess the next summer he was here.  They had a family party out here.

Luella Cannon - I don’t remember the year.  I know he broke ground …

Georgius - So I think it was ’22 or ’23.

Mary Barnes - Oh, I remember him very well.

Luella Cannon - Do you remember the year?
       
Mary Barnes - I don’t remember the year, but I remember him very well.

Luella Cannon - Oh, you were at that funeral.

Mary Barnes - Yes, and I remember seeing him and talking-to him on the street down on 3rd South between Main and State one day.  I was big enough to be downtown alone.

Bob Vernon - It was about 1923 or so[5].

Georgius - I would think somewhere in there.

Luella Cannon - Looking into his eyes was an experience. Those eyes of his, oh dear, he was a very unusual man.  

Janath Cannon - How long did you live in the house, Carlie’s house, there on the corner?  How long did you stay there after. . .

Georgius - I was born in that. . .

Janath Cannon - After your father died, did you go back to that house?

Georgius - Oh yes, we were there for three years after Father died. One year after Mother died.  See, Mother died two years after Father.  I was twelve when we moved away.  And. . .

Ted Cannon - With whom did you live after your mother died?



Georgius - With Carol.  My sister Carol and my brother Willard were married.

Russell Cannon - Do you remember when your father died?  How did it happen?

Georgius - Well, of course.  He had Bright’s disease and he went to California in March (1901).  We left the 8th of March, the morning of the 9th of March, I guess, and he died about the 13th of April (actually April 12) in Monterrey.  He went down to California to see if it would benefit his health.  I think he knew then he was going to die.

Mike Cannon - Were you with him when he died?

Georgius - I wasn’t in the room, but I was in the house.  And before he died he called Frank and John Q. and me into his room and I don’t remember much of this but I have     seen accounts since.  See, I had just turned nine.  He blessed each one of us, and I guess the next morning, Mother told us he was dead.  I might tell you girls a very interesting thing that Collie tells.  When they dedicated the Salt Lake Theater, they had a big ball.  I don’t suppose any of you remember the Salt Lake Theater when it was still usable.  They had a floor that they could put over the seats and make a dance floor and they had planned that.  And so Father went east and bought silk for all of his wives for a dress for the occasion and gave the material to the dressmaker.  Father’s wives went to the dressmaker and were measured for the dress and fitted and so on, and when they got to the ball, all four women were dressed exactly alike. The same material and exactly the same style.  And some the gentiles said, “Wasn’t it quaint of President Cannon to dress his wives alike for this ball.”  I don’t think the wives thought so.

Luella Cannon - I think the Cannon family, as I have known them, have just been outstanding. Their intelligence, their broadmindedness, well, they lived on a high plane of mentality and everything, I think.  I admire them.

Georgius - I might tell you what my daughter said.  She has never lived here.  She has lived in California all of her life and isn’t acquainted with the family.  But when I took the Cannon Treasury down to her and gave her the book, I said to her, “You know, it seems kind of egotistical to me to write a book about yourself.” And she said, “Well I understand the Cannons have plenty of it.”

Janath Cannon - Incidentally, that story of Collins, about his taking the long walk and sassing George Q. Cannon, is in that Cannon Treasury in his own words.  I think you would enjoy reading it.

Georgius - What was this, Janath?

Bill Barnes - That story about Collie.

Janath Cannon - That story you were telling about Collie, the longest walk of his life, is in the Cannon Treasury in his own words.  

Georgius - Oh, is that so?

Janath Cannon - And it’s one of the things in there that’s very choice.

Georgius - Of course they have got a lot of things in there.  Some of the things that I have told.  Well, I don’t think of anything else particularly.  If you have any more questions, ask them.

Group - Very fascinating.  We sure appreciate it, Uncle Georgius.  

Group – Clapping.  

Luella Cannon - You do have a lot of friends.

Georgius - I might say to you young fellows, that Abram was married when he was nineteen and had two wives when he was twenty-one, and had three wives when he was twenty-six.  See what you are missing?

Bob Vernon - So go thou and do likewise, huh?

Luella - If you have any more questions of Uncle Georgius, ask him.

Bob Vernon - That was extremely fascinating, Georgius.  I really enjoyed that.  That’s really good to hear something about.

Georgius - I’ve known Kathy, of course, but I haven’t known to whom she was married.

Bob Vernon - Yes, well, I’m her husband.  This was extremely fascinating. You know, you think of George Q. Cannon and polygamy and all those things as having happened way back, long ago, and the only way you can find out about them is to read the history books.  There are very few people that are alive that have a concept of that.  Just like our grandchildren and great-grandchildren probably won’t have any concept of what we are like except that we have a lot television videotape, I guess, stored away in all the network studios to be rerun in future generations, to show them more what we were like. But -

Georgius - That’s what my older grandson - I talked to him when he was about twenty years old: There is the same difference in age between you and me , as there was between my father and me.  He said, “Oh, I’d hate to have an old man for a father.”

Bob Vernon - Oh boy.  Well, you have maintained a very sharp memory about things that have happened so long ago.  My goodness, things that happened when your father died when you were nine years old, that was seventy-four years ago, and     yet you seem to remember it so vividly and the details.  

Georgius - I can remember one of two things before I was three.

Bob Vernon - Is that right?

Georgius - Bill (Barnes) today was showing a picture of the staircase[6]. I thought after, it was kind of a personal thing to tell, but immediately I remembered being carried up the staircase on a pillow.  I think I must have been only two years old.  But I hurt and I wondered why I couldn’t walk, and I found after, I had been circumcised.  

Bob Vernon - Oh my gosh, You’re kidding.

Georgius - I remember that vividly.  Taking that turn in the stairway, and my brother Claws was carrying me.
    
Bob Vernon - Who was, your mother?    

Georgius - My brother, Claws.

Bob Vernon - Your brother, oh.  How old was he at that time?

Georgius - Probably nine or ten.

Bob Vernon - Is that right?  My gosh, how old were you?  Two years old?

Georgius - I don’t think I could be more than two.  

Bob Vernon -     Two.  Good grief.  To remember back that far is amazing.  Well, they didn’t perform that operation at birth like they do now.  They waited until you were . . .

Georgius - No, Father summoned the family and they operated on everyone.  Some of the older boys told . . .

Bob Vernon - So the older boys got it at that time?

Bill Cannon - What was that?

Georgius - Well, I was telling Bill (Barnes). . .
    
Bob Vernon - Circumcision rites of the Cannon family.  

Georgius - Looking at the picture of the house, he brought back so many memories, things I hadn’t thought about.  One of them, when I saw pictures of the staircase I said, “Bill (Barnes), I remember vividly being carried up that staircase on a pillow.  I hurt and I couldn’t walk and I remember wondering why.  It was because I had been circumcised.

Bob Vernon - I think we ought to convene everybody again and have him tell that one.

Bill Cannon - That’s rich!

Bob Vernon - Those were the good old days, huh?

Bill Cannon - Tell me, how many grandchildren do you have?

Georgius - Three.

Bill Cannon - You have three. And the youngest is how old?

Georgius - Ten.  When I told Doug, when he was about 9 years old, I said, “Doug, it’s the same difference in age between you and me, as there was between my father and me, he said, “Ooh, I’d hate to have an old man for a father.”

Bob Vernon - Well, that’s fascinating.

Georgius - It’s a saga that will never be repeated.

Bob Vernon - You bet!  That is really something.  Did your father have any demonstrable, you know, affection for his wives, or was it kind of a platonic sort of thing, the extra wives?  It was just one big happy family, I guess, huh? Because I heard that some of the brethren that married numerous , numerous wives - really, you know, there wasn’t any romantic feeling between them or anything.

Georgius - I think Father was very just to all of his wives.  I think he was very fond of them. I hate to tell you this when your grandmother was one of the wives, but there has never been any question about the fact that Mother was Father’s favorite wife.  He wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t. . .

Bob Vernon - Which number was. . .

Georgius - She was number five.

Bob Vernon - Number five?  Was she the young one?  If she was the young one - sixteen?

Georgius - He had wanted to marry her years before, and he said, “You’re mine and I will get you yet.”  I’ve always felt . . .

Bob Vernon - Cannon stubbornness coming out again.

Georgius - …doing away with polygamy.

Bob Vernon -You mean marrying younger women?

Georgius - Well, when you marry a woman and suddenly you discover you are very close to her and you love the other women, but this is a close relationship.  And I can’t help but feel that feeling crept in in some of these other women during their lives.

Bob Vernon - Yes, these young hussies.

Georgius - As long as those me were virile, they fought for polygamy but when they got old. . .

Bob Vernon - That’s interesting.

Georgius - That’s just my own observation.

Bob Vernon - Well, I think that’s interesting.  It’s very interesting.

Bill Cannon - It makes it choice.

Bob Vernon - Yeah, I could definitely see if a guy in his 40’s all of a sudden, you know, decides to marry someone sixteen, the other wives might have at least tinge of questioning about     it.

Georgius - She said, “I wouldn’t marry an old man like you.”

Bob Vernon - Is that what she said?

Georgius - That’s what she said and so she married Mark Croxall, and sixteen years later she married Father.

Bob Vernon - Oh, and she was thirty-two then.  

Georgius - She was thirty-two.

Bob Vernon - Oh, after she divorced him, that first husband, I see.  Well, did she do it because of duty to the principle or because she loved your father or is there any way of knowing that?

Georgius - No, my sister Ada, William’s wife, told me that she thought that when Mother married Father, see Mother was a widow and she had five children and she was     alone and definitely troubled.  Her life was pretty well over, I guess, but Ada said she married Father because she felt that Father would take good care of her and her children.  Of course, it developed into  the most tremendous love affair that I’ve ever known.

Bob Vernon - What was that?

Georgius - I said it developed into the most tremendous love affair I have ever known.  I was living with it constantly.  I can’t imagine two people I’ve ever been around who were so in love.

Bob Vernon - Is that right?

Georgius - Her death was two years after Father died.  I’m sure she had a broken heart. She missed Father so much.

Bob Vernon - Even though she was twenty-four years younger, she died two years after he died?

Georgius - Yes.

Bob Vernon - That’s interesting.

Ted Cannon - Could I get you to come a start the refreshments?

Bob Vernon - Okay.

Bill Cannon - This has been a choice evening.

Group - Jumbled conversation. . .

Luella Cannon - (speaking to Bill Cannon) Is that the best you can do?
 
Bill Cannon - This is the best I can do,  I would much rather sit here than anyplace.

Ted Cannon - Okay, Uncle Georgius, You have something else you could tell us, I understand?

Bob Vernon - Don’t break your neck, we’d better trade places.

Georgius - This is very minor, but it occurred to me that this might be of some slight interest to you.  Aunt Mary Alice told me that the original George Cannon when he was a youngster, probably early adolescence, was so jealous of his younger brother Hugh, his mother made so much fuss over Hugh, because Hugh was such a handsome boy, that George Cannon left the farm and went up to the North part of the island, which was ten or fifteen miles away and stayed for three years.  And this reminds me of an incident that happened in Pasadena about thirty-five years ago.  I was invited out to dinner and one of the guests was a man who had lived in Salt Lake, and had worked for the Tribune, and he said to me, “I have never seen so many handsome men in my life as there are in the Cannon family.” He knew Father’s sons and he knew Uncle Angus’ sons, and I’m reminded of that when I see all of you young fellows here.  It still persists.  I’m glad it does, and     I’m glad that you’re still producing good-looking boys and men.  But I want to go on and tell about Grandfather. This great-grandfather of mine, and your great-great-great-grandfather.  After the first world war they talked a good deal from the Tabernacle about law and order and I finally said, “They’re not talking to me when they talk about law and order.  They’re talking to the wrong person, because my great grandfather was a pirate and a free-booter and a slave trader and I think quite a ruffian because he was killed in a mutiny on his own vessel. And you don’t kill a man unless there is something wrong with him, unless he had     been pretty cruel or something like that.  And besides, he was a slave trader” and I shouldn’t even breathe this, but I’m going to anyway.  I said, “If his morals were the morals of the other slave traders, I’m sure Father had some black aunts and uncles.”  And I said, “He began the story.”  My Mother’s ancestors fought in the Revolution that was against the king and against law and order.  Brigham Young was supposed to be one of the worst renegades of the century and he was my grandfather.  My father sat in the penitentiary for violating the law, the Edmunds act, and so on.  And I said, “When they sent me on a mission, they sent me to Germany with explicit instructions not to register and I was there for two and a half years in open violation of the law and with the full sanction of the Church.”  I said, “Now they talk to me about law and order.”  And I think this is in our heritage. I think this resistance is part of the Cannon nature and I said about Father, “Father was in violent opposition the law when he was espousing polygamy and so on.  I think we all have that, and I wanted to make this comment about these two things.

Bob Vernon - We believe in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law, right?

Georgius - If it doesn’t conflict with our ideals.

Bob Vernon - If it doesn’t conflict with our ideals, right.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]  Georgius was a prominent Architect, based for most of his professional life in Pasedena, California.  While he did design a number of commercial projects, he specialized in private homes.

[2]  William Gibbs McAdoo (1863-1941)Secretary of the Treasury from March6, 1913-December 15, 1918 under his father-in-law, Woodrow Wilson.

[3]  Actually titled ‘The First 100 Years: A History of the Salt Lake Tribune (1871-1971)’ by O. N. Malmquist.

[4]  I can’t find any record of a book by Frank J. Cannon with this title.  I believe Georgius must be talking about the book: “Brigham Young and His Mormon Empire”, authored by Frank J. Cannon and George L. Knapp, published by the Fleming H. Revell Company in 1913.  

[5]  Frank J. Cannon actually died on July 25, 1933, in Denver, Colorado.

[6]  The staircase referred to is in the home Georgius was born in.  The home was George Q. Cannon’s wife Carlie’s (Carolyn Partridge Young Cannon) home on the Cannon farm, and sits today on the southwest corner of California Avenue and 10th West in Salt Lake City.  Bill Barnes took a ‘History of Utah Architecture’ class during Spring Quarter of 1975 at the University of Utah.  As a project for that class he did a historical survey and documentation of that house, including a full photographic survey, both interior and exterior.  Those are the photographs Georgius refers to here and elsewhere in his comments.