John Clark Thompson was the third child born to Ann Broyhill Clark and John Crow Thompson in the new settlement of Brownsville, later called Ogden, Utah.

John Clark began his own life around 1872. He went to Mt. Pleasant in Sanpete County where his sister, Ellen, and her husband were living and while there, he met his future wife, who lived in nearby Fairview. She was Mary Eliza Sanders, daughter of Mary Irene Clement and John Franklin Sanders. He was twenty-one and she was seventeen when they were married at Fairview, September 4, 1878.

Their first child, Mary Irene Thompson, was born there July 3, 1879. About this time John Clark's father-in-law received a call to help colonize the Tonto Basin in Arizona. John and Mary decided to accompany them and they left for St. George. Waiting for some of the other Sanders family to join them, Mary's father, his second wife, Jane Gibson, and some of Mary Eliza's brothers and half brothers and sisters, decided to stay in St. George for a while, so John and Mary went to Little Colorado area, where his father had been, to look over the possibilities there. They joined the Jesse Ballenger camp, close to Lot Smith's settlement, at what they called "Brigham City," near present day Winslow, Arizona. Here on May 21, 1881 their second child, Ann Eliza Thompson, was born.

After putting a dam on the Little Colorado for irrigation purposes and then constant flash floods came , time after time, the settlement of Brigham was abandoned by order of the Church.

Now the little family decided to go on down farther south in Arizona to the Tonto Basin where the Sanders family was locating. To help supplement the family income, John Clark took a job running a burro train, packing mail and supplies to the settlers. The life of a packer was indeed a hard one in those days. It was a continual battle with the elements, sandstorms, cloudbursts that washed out the trail, temperatures of a hundred or more in the shade and no shade, except an occational mesquite bush that possibly sheltered a rattler. Added to these was the ever-present threats of outlaws and Indians. Not the least of his troubles was being away from his family for weeks at a time. In the ten years they stayed in the Tonto Basin, four more children joined the family- Nancy Ellen Thompson, May 1, 1883; Amanda Elizabeth Thompson, December 15, 1884; Lindsay (Lin) Clark Thompson, June 11, 1887; and John Alma Thompson, July 28, 1889.

One highlight of their time came when they gathered their little brood together and took the 20-day trip back to St. George, Utah to be sealed as a family in the Temple. Annie was almost 5; Nellie, almost 3; and Amanda, 1 month old. This round trip often took as long as six weeks.

In December 1890 President Wilford Woodruff ordered the abandonment of the Tonto Basin settlements. Mary Eliza's father and some of her relatives went down to the Mesa area to settle, but John and Mary decided to come back to Utah. This time they went to Riverdale to visit his father, now 70 years old, and the other family members still living in the area. They rested here for a few months; long enough for Nancy Ellen (Nell) to be baptised by her grandfather and Loretta Thompson, to be born October 21, 1891 in her Grandfather Thompson's home on Riverdale Road on Burch Creek, where he had moved to in 1886.

John Clark's two sisters, Mary Louise Child and Amanda West with their husbands, asked John and Mary to come to Lima, Montana, where a stream, called Little Sheep Creek, flowed through their land, to have John work on improving the land so that his two sisters husbands could continued to be locomotive engineers until they could retire. So with his wife and seven children, Irene, the oldest, almost 13, they arrived in Lima in the spring of 1892.

John filed on one hundred sixty acres, about a mile above West's and Child's homestead's, for his own home. Little Sheep Creek was a typical mountain stream, clear and cool, in sharp contrast to the Little Colorado and Tonto Creek, which in his own words had been "too thick to drink and Too thin to plow." At that time and for many years after it was to furnish his family with excellent trout fishing.

He helped his brothers-in-law with their work, until they could take over themselves, and began work on his own place. His family lived in town until he could get a home built for them. Daughter Irene was her father's "right hand man" at this time. She loved the out-of-doors and the hard work that went with it. Logs and lumber had to be hauled from quite a distance, but it wasn't long until he had quite a large log house built.

The last four of the Thompson Children were born here: Lee Larkin Thompson, June 13, 1893; Wyatt Sanders Thompson, October 29, 1897; Fern Thompson, September 7, 1901; and Joseph Perry Thompson on March 19, 1904. Because the winters were so long and cold, crops did not grow well and also John found that his ranch was right in the middle of an Indian trail between Idaho and Montana. The Lemhi Indians under peacemaker Chief Tendoy used this trail for horse trading and hunting expeditions.

Chief Tendoy and his tribe became very friendly with John (to the embarrassment of Mary) and largely through these Indians he got a good start in horses. Having always been an admirer of good horses and like his father, a horse trader at heart, he eventually accumulated quite a heard. Then, by careful selection and breeding, he developed both a good saddle horses and work horses. It was inevitable that most of his sons grew up to be horsemen.

Despite the great amount of work and worry of farming, John Clark saw that everyone of his children went to school and at least finished grade school. Three of his daughters became school teachers.

John Clark developed sugar diabetes at about age 75. In 1929 they went to live in San Diego where Wyatt was working and Joe was in the Coast Guard. They loved to vidit the beach and watch the waves break on the shore. He became ill and passed away. He is buried in the Wasatch Lawn Cemetery in Salt Lake next to Irene and daughter Amanda. Later these three would be joined by his wife Mary, Lee, Wyatt and Loretta.

We honor these two stalwart souls, pioneers of five communities - Ogden and Fairview, Utah; Little Colorado and Tonto Basin, Arizona; and Lima, Montana.

-by Jerry Perry Thompson

Children not listed below: Nancy Ellen "Nellie" Thompson Sanders, Lindsay Clark Thompson, John Alma Thompson, Joe Perry Thompson