15 Move to Brigham City

Elder Lorenzo Snow oversaw the Church in Brigham City and headed the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association, usually called “the co-op.” Snow and Andrew happened to meet and talk while waiting in Ogden for a train. Afterward, Elder Snow said he had been waiting two years for the right man to travel for the co-op and that Andrew was the man. He offered to pay $100 a month for the first year if Andrew would come to Brigham City.¹⁸⁴ On February 22, 1890, Andrew terminated his representation of Hyde and Griffen and arranged to move to Brigham City to become a traveling salesman for the co-op. On March 14 he came alone to Brigham City, where he lived in the home of Elder Snow’s plural wife Minnie until Andrew could arrange housing for Ollie and the two children, Clare and Gordon.

On Monday, March 17, 1890, in his new job, Andrew set off with his sample cases for Cache Valley. A. E. Snow, the co-op superintendent, accompanied him to Mendon, Wellsville, Hyrum, Paradise, and Logan to help him get started. Andrew then continued on his own to Millville, Hyde Park, Smithfield, Preston, Swan Lake, Oxford, Clifton, and Battle Creek, and then took the train to Salt Lake City. The next day he moved his family to Brigham City. When he reported to the co-op management the results of his first trip, they expressed satisfaction.¹⁸⁵

His next trip took him westward, more or less along the Utah–Idaho border. From April 7 to 27, 1890, he went to Bear River City, Snowville, Clear Creek, Almo, Elba Settlement, Albion, Oakley, and Curlew, then back to Albion (where one of his horses died and had to be replaced), Snowville, Bear River City, and home to Brigham City three weeks later. He traveled all this way by wagon.

Moving to Brigham City meant a lot of change. Andrew resigned his Salt Lake district school board position¹⁸⁶ and his ward callings, but his responsibility for the Indian Territory Mission moved with him. Ollie mourned leaving Salt Lake City, where she had lived her whole life, and regretted having to rent out her nice new home. In Brigham City they rented only part of a house.¹⁸⁷

On May 14, Andrew left for Cache Valley again, visiting many of the same stores but adding others to his itinerary. This three-week trip included visits to Mantua, Wellsville, Mendon, Hyrum, Paradise, Millville, Logan, Smithfield, Richmond, Franklin, Preston, Mink Creek, Preston, Fairview, Weston, Clifton, Swan Lake, Oxford, Richmond, Fairfield, Lewiston, Logan, and Mantua.

In June, Andrew made a western trip: Bear River City, Blind Springs, Snowville, Cassia Creek, Elba, Albion, Oakley (where something startled the horses and they tipped over the wagon). This time he went all the way to Grouse Creek, in the far northwest corner of Utah, where his brother Sam ranched. Andrew then returned to Oakley, Almo, Clear Creek, Snowville, and home on June 30.

The next time Andrew visited Grouse Creek, no one was at home on his brother’s ranch. Andrew let himself into their house and fixed himself dinner before they returned home. Just a few days after Andrew returned from this trip, on September 16, 1890, Ollie bore their second son, Delbert Gheen Kimball. A few hours after the midwife left, the baby started bleeding frighteningly from the umbilicus. Andrew raced by wagon to recall the midwife. She found that the ligature tying the umbilical cord had come loose, but she managed to stop the bleeding.

Andrew managed the co-op store when A. E. Snow was away. Before the end of the year, Andrew had made eight trips for the co-op, three to Cache Valley (where Logan was the principal city) and five trips to the west, varying his route among the scattered, mostly Mormon farming settlements along the south-central border area of Idaho. He counted that he had been away from home 126 days, or 34 percent of the time.¹⁸⁸

At October general conference, Church President Wilford Woodruff issued the “Manifesto,” which declared an end to the practice of plural marriage by the Latter-day Saints. At the time of the Manifesto, Andrew was in Brigham City and his journal surprisingly makes no mention of the landmark event.

Illustrating his typical commitment to his community, in 1891 Andrew ran and won a seat on the Brigham City seven-man city council on the People’s Ticket. He wrote in his journal on March 2 that not everyone approved: “The 4th warders were angry with me. . . . They scratched my name and lied against me to considerable extent saying I was not in favor of the working class and I [had] said some words against them which was a lie.”