Talk:Archibald Gardner/Archive 1

message: I did some reorganizing, minor editing, and established some headings on this article.  Even though I am aware of this Mormon pioneer, I found the article confusing and some material excessive.  Is some of this material under copyright?  As the primary editor is using a Gardner name, is this a family project?  Wikipedia:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement has an active workforce, guidelines, and style suggestions which might be helpful here.  Best Wishes.  WBardwin 07:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Article organization

message: Here is a summary of the current sources on this page:
Reference                           	Comment                 	QuoteQuotes from reliable sources about Gardner
Gardner's Saw Mill, Millcreek Canyon	Good ref but short      	GARDNER'S SAW MILL Was erected by Robert Gardner and his sons Archibald, Robert and William, on warm springs stream, in Salt Lake City, Oct. 1847 where three boards were sawed. The mill was moved to this site in 1848 producing the first commercial lumber in Utah on the first formal grant of water for industrial use. Later, a flour mill was erected a few rods upstream, these plants giving the name, Millcreek, to the stream and canyon. Gardner's Fort, domicile of the Gardner families, was located a short distance northeast, the Gardners receiving the first permit to leave the pioneer fort.
Pic from byu.edu                    	Picture                 	n/a
rootsweb.com                        	Does not meet WP:RS     	Primary source - letter about Gardner from wife of ancestor see WP:V#Self-published sources (online and paper)
blogspot.com                        	Does not meet WP:RS     	Geneology and references back to Wikipedia
Norway to Utah                      	Does not meet WP:RS     	Blogs are not reliable sources unless published by a well known professional. Includes geneology list of wives and children
History of Richland County          	Probably ok             	
;Self published in 1880 by AA Graham
The next year (1810), Archibald Gardner, Samuel Hill, David Hill and some others came. It is not certainly known whether they came in the fall of 1809, or the spring of 1810, more likely the latter. It is a question whether Samuel Hill or Archibald Gardner was the first settler in Mifflin on the Richland County side of the line, but the preponderance of evidence seems to be in favor of the former. Samuel Hill settled on the northeast quarter of Section 33, now occupied by Solomon Balliett. If he settled there when he first came-and there is no evidence he did not he was the first, or among the first settlers in Mifflin in Richland County. Where Archibald Gardner was during the year 1810 has not been ascertained, but in the following year, he traveled up the Black Fork, and built his cabin three-fourths of a mile north of the present village of Windsor, on the northwest quarter of Section 5. He was the first settler in this part of the township. It has been before stated that Gardner built his cabin on the site of the village, but Dr. William Bushnell, who is good authority on matters of that kind, places it as stated above. 
:...
Joseph Page purchased the land on which Windsor is situated, of Archibald Gardner, who settled here, as before stated, in 1811. ...
Rootsweb.com                        	Does not meet WP:RS     	Self published geneology including pedigree charts
List of names                       	Does not meet WP:RS     	Self published list of peole in a photo
Sprague Geneology                   	could be ok             	Mostly geneology but has this note: "Archibald Gardner had several mills. One is marked in Midvale, Utah and is now a wonderful old shopping mall but the most interesting is the one marking his mill in Afton, Wyoming, home of Rulon Gardner, gold medalist wrestler from our most recent Olympics. He is a descendent of Hezikiah Sprague if I have it right."
Geneology                           	Does not meet WP:RS     	Looks self published, but has references though no author is identified.
West Jordan                         	Good - newspaper article	...After meeting, the carriages being ready, the President and company bade goodbye to Bishop Gardner and the Saints there, and returned to the city, by the road on the west side of the river; a mounted escort accompanying for several miles. An interesting story is attached to this little rock church. In 1859 Archibald Gardner was ordained bishop of West Jordan Ward, then numbering about 600 members, and it was he who planned the sturdy building. After many difficulties because of crude tools, the cornerstone was laid May 15th, 1861. Many men worked for nothing; others were paid with produce. Red sandstone for the walls was hauled by ox, horse and mule teams from a quarry near the Oquirrh Range, and the granite trim came from Little Cottonwood Canyon. When the three-foot-thick walls had been erected and the floor laid, no more funds were available, so work came to a standstill. ---Deseret News, August 14, 1867
Gardner Village                     	Does not meet WP:RS     	Shopping Center promotion with a quick summary
millpictures.com                    	Does not meet WP:RS     	Great Pictures for an External Link but not really a source. External links should provide extra detail, including pictures, for the reader to find additional information about the article subject WP:EL (paraphrased from memory)
Archibald Gardner Journal, 1814-1857	Does not meet WP:RS     	Primary Source - and self published on a blog to boot
HistoryToGo from utah.gov           	Good source             	
;Should probably be referenced as "Bartholomew, Becky. History Blazer, November 1995... 
In the past two decades Salt Lake Valley's West Side has come into its own, with booming population and economic growth. Yet few people know moving "over Jordan" is a valley tradition that began with "Archie" Gardner and his gristmill.
Canadians Archibald and Margaret Livingston Gardner were not the first couple to cross the Jordan River and settle along Bingham Creek. But their arrival changed the future of "West Jordan," which then comprised everything west of the Jordan River, ranging from Point of the Mountain to the Great Salt Lake.
Archie had built his first flour mill at age 17 plus two other mills in Canada before joining the Mormons. Arriving in Utah in 1847, he quickly obtained rights to Warm Springs and attempted to install a mill there. The water volume proved insufficient, so he moved his machinery to Mill Creek and later claimed to have sawed the first lumber in the new Mormon community.
But Mill Creek "dried up" (according to his brother Robert), so in 1849 the Gardner brothers dismantled the mill and carried it across the Jordan River to Bingham Creek, where four or five families had already "moved over" and were attempting to farm despite the Oquirrh Range's shortage of year-round water courses.
The Gardners and their crew immediately set to digging a 2.5-mile millrace for their planned sawmill and gristmill. The channel would be enlarged time and again as an important irrigation canal. They had to construct a low dam at approximately 90th South to raise the river to a level that would feed the canal. The millrace alone cost $5,000, and they financed the entire enterprise themselves.
The Gardners built well. Many years later a grandson helped to tear down one of these pioneer mills with grandfather Archie looking on. The young laborers quickly learned that early-type mills were built not with nails but with mortises and pins that tightened under use until there was "hardly a quiver when running." The demolition crew was stymied until Archie, smiling broadly, instructed them to "start at the key corner where the last brace...was located." Wrote the grandson, "When that was found, all was easy."
Gardner Mill inspired a cluster of small industries, including blacksmith shops, logging and hauling operations, woolen and carding mills, a tannery, several stores, a shoe shop, and later a broom factory. Each employed more settlers, entrenching the Gardner Mill as hub of the west side's first industrial center.
As for Archibald and Robert Gardner, their families grew along with their modest business empire. Archie would eventually boast 11 wives and 48 children and build a total of 35 mills in his lifetime. A descendant wrote that Archie's "real pleasure" was to construct the mills, turning them over to others to operate. On occasion he would almost give a mill away so as to raise capital for yet another. For a time Archie sought to make Spanish Fork his primary home, but this ambition ended when Brigham Young called him to be bishop of the West Jordan Ward.  Archie served as Jordan's chief church and civic leader for more than three decades.
Poor brother Robert, on the other hand, learned that "settling down to any kind of labor in a 'Mormon' life was very uncertain." He was just beginning to enjoy the fruits of the Jordan mill when he was called on a mission to Canada. He returned, rebuilt the Mill Creek mill, and was once again becoming a man of substance when he was asked to colonize Utah's Dixie. He never thought to reject a church calling. Apparently his frontier experience had taught him, with many other Utahns of his generation, to subordinate individual ambition to the community welfare.
Mormons in Canada                   	Good source             	
;Should probably be referenced as "Ursenbach, Maureen and Jenson, Richard L. The Peoples of Utah...
Moore does not identify what distinctive features marked their party, but the comment suggests that Mormon migrations in the Niagara Peninsula were not uncommon, a conclusion borne out by the naming of Archibald Gardner's road from his settlement in Alvinston to the highway, the "Nauvoo Road."
:...
Robert and Neal Gardner, sons of Scottish-born Archibald Gardner who built gristmills first in Ontario and then in Utah, appear as the only members of their family to show Canadian origins, having been born in Alvinston, the Ontario town their father founded.
Alvinston History                   	Does not meet WP:RS     	Self published brief summary of the mill Gardner built in Alvinston (the first one in Alvinston).
Mining Claim Document               	Does not meet WP:RS     	Primary source
Wagon Train members                 	Does not meet WP:RS     	Gardner listed as a "Captain of ten" and family members also listed, more like a primary source
Archibald Gardner mining activities 	WP:RS?                  	Not sure if it is a reliable source or not, but the text is very thin: "In 1863 George B. Ogilvie, Archibald Gardner and some soldiers from Fort Douglas found minerals while retreiving lumber from the canyon. General Patrick Conner assayed it and found the ore rich in gold and silver. Mining began, but due to the steepness of the canyon, and difficulty in mining, these attempts were made uneconomical. Although One claim in 1868 yielded $2,000,000 in gold. By 1869 fewer than 100 miners lived in the canyon."
Notes about Archibald Gardner       	Does not meet WP:RS     	self published genealogy information - duplicates information from other links
Afton Monument                      	Does not meet WP:RS     	primary source - provides text of the monument
Basically there are 5 sources which appear independent. All are summaries of his life and not the type of source one would normally want in developing a good biographical encyclopedic article. 
The basic problem I have to start with is that when the article has more words in it about the subject than the combined number of words from all of the referenced sources; there is a problem. Encyclopedia articles should summarize secondary sources and thus should not be longer than those sources. I count about 1400 words combined from all the text about Gardner in all the OK, Probably OK, and RS? versus over 2000 in the article (not including the external links section). Thus, my assumption is that there must be some original research in the article. --Trödel 19:47, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: I noticed that this was in the :Category: Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance. Recently SmackBot removed it from that category, perhaps because it lacked an 'nn' (non-notable) tag. Since I haven't been active on this page, I did not restore the tag, but it seems like logic would require it to be put back, if the editors here still don't have reliable sources for his notability. EdJohnston 20:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  SmackBot cleared the 'unclear importance' category assignment