Utah Pierpont Mystery

Yesterday my grandson asked a question related to an article he had seen while doing his schoolwork. He had seen a reference to Pierpont Avenue in Salt Lake City, UT, and wondered how it related to the Pierpont family. As the historian of the Pierpont Family Association, I was naturally intrigued and thought that this deserved investigation. There were a lot of “rabbit trails” along the way, but in addition to finally answering his question, I also learned about a branch of the Pierpont family that I had not been aware of.

 

Pierpont Avenue

Pierpont Avenue is located in downtown Salt Lake City. It runs east-to-west between 200S and 300S, i.e. 2.5 blocks south of the main east-to-west street, Temple Street. It begins one block west of Main Street (thus only 3.5 blocks from Temple Square, the home of the Morman church). It is currently broken up into six segments with discontinuities caused by railroad lines, a small river, and, most recently, by the construction of both I-15 (which runs N-S) and I-80 (which runs E-W in the small space between 200W and Pierpont Avenue).

This section of I-80 was the last part of I-80 to be built. Although it was part of the original Interstate plan from 1956 which was proposed under the Eisenhower administration, the section near Salt Lake City did not open until 1986 (30 years later).

There are a number of buildings along this route which also carry the Pierpont name: Pierpont Building, Pierpont Place, Pierpont Townhouses, Pierpont by Urbana, and Pierpont Lofts. One of the questions that needed to be addressed was: were the buildings named after the street or was the street named after one of the buildings? Some of the buildings were obviously quite new, i.e., Pierpont Townhouses, but others looked like older buildings that had been remodeled. So, there were a few “rabbit trails” that I might need to follow.

But a more significant question was: is there a significant Pierpont family in Salt Lake City’s history that was being recognized in the naming of both the street and the buildings? I decided to investigate this possible family connection first.

 

The Salt Lake City Pierpont Family

The most significant Pierpont in Salt Lake City in its early years was Thomas Fairclough Pierpont. He had been born in England in 1836, came to the US as a teenager, and married a young lady, Naomi King, from England in 1858. He was nearly 22 and she was 17. They were married in Leeds, Greene County, NY which is just south of Albany. Their first child was born there, but when the Civil War broke out in 1861, the family moved to Canada where they remained until the close of the war. While there they had 3 more children. In late 1865 the family moved to Salt Lake City. He and Naomi went on to have a total of 10 children by 1879, of whom 7 survived to adulthood.

At some time during his life (probably during their time in NY), Thomas became a Morman. As was accepted at that time, Thomas married a second time to Juventa Beck in 1873. She was only 22 and Thomas was 37. He began having children with Juventa, even as he was still having children with Naomi – in one case having two children less than a month apart. The two families lived in separate homes. In addition to his 10 children (7 living) with Naomi, Thomas had 11 children with Juventa (10 living).

The population of Salt Lake City when the Pierpont family arrived in 1865 was only about 11,000, most of whom were Mormans, but by 1900 it was 7 times that. (With the Pierpont family supplying 17 living children and other Morman families similarly expanding, the population could grow quite quickly!)

While Thomas was a stalwart in the LDS church, they were not famous. In the 1900 census, Thomas is listed as a machinist who has not worked for over a year. He died in 1908 – both of his wives being listed on his gravestone.

[Gravestone]

 

His children kept up the same tradition of having large families, but they were not of the best of character. One of his sons, also named Thomas, had moved to Provo, UT when he was only 19 and, in the tradition of his father, had started the Provo Foundry and Machine company 10 years later. But he made the news in 1947 when he went to the home of his daughter-in-law and beat her in front of her four minor children – “intentionally, maliticously, wantonly and wilfully with the unlawful intent and purpose of the defendant of injuring, harassing and humiliating the plaintiff in front of the children.” [typos in original newspaper article]

In exploring the ancestry of Thomas (Sr.), I was able to trace his Pierpont family line in England back to 1565. The family even back then lived in Lancashire. The family name was recorded as Pierpont/Pierpoint/Parpoynt, but never as the more typical English spelling of Pierrepont as were the English ancestors of the New England Pierponts.

It’s 120 miles from the Pierrepont family home near Nottingham to the ancestral town of this Pierpont family near Liverpool – not a trivial distance back in 1575. Thus, I have not been able to make a connection between the two family lines. So, this is now another Pierpont family in the US – the other two being the New England Pierponts (who came to MA around 1640) and the MD/VA Pierpont/Pierpoint family of Henry Pierpoint who came to MD in 1665. So that’s still a great finding.

 

Pierpont Buildings

There remained the possible connection between one of the Pierpont buildings and Pierpont Avenue. Were they the source of the name? In looking for information on each of them, there appeared to be only one potential – the Pierpont Building. But the information I initially located showed the earliest date of 1911, three years after James Pierpont passed away in 1908. So I kept looking. Then, finally, I hit pay dirt! In an ad offering the sale of the building. The offering stated, “… the Oregon Shortline Railroad Company in 1897-98 constructed a building as offices for their operations. Before the first phase of the project was delivered, they decided to move forward on an annex and additional building to the west, both of which would be the new home for Utah’s first public high school – Salt Lake High School.”

With this date and the name of the company which built it, I noted that it was associated with a railroad, and I immediately thought of J. P. [Pierpont] Morgan. Some further checking revealed a newspaper article from Oct. 13, 1897 which listed all the railroads that he controlled, including the 1421 miles of the Oregon Short Line. Thus, I had the source of the name!

 

Learnings

J. Pierpont Morgan controlled the Oregon Short Line. The Oregon Short Line constructed a new company headquarters in 1897 in Salt Lake City and named it the Pierpont Building. Subsequently, the street in front of this building was named Pierpont Avenue. As other buildings were later built on that street (such as the Pierpont Townhouse, the Pierpont Place, etc.) they adopted the name of the street that they were on as part of their name. So, the Pierpont name in Salt Lake City is all from J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), a member of the New England Pierponts and a great*3 grandson of the Rev. James Pierpont.

The Pierpont family who were Mormans and who lived in Salt Lake City, while probably distant relatives of the New England Pierpont family, are a previously undocumented immigrant Pierpont family.

One final note – in the 1900 census, Thomas Fairclough Pierpont, his second wife, Juventa, and nine of their children were living at 127 Second Ave, just a half-dozen blocks from the new Pierpont Building which had been constructed just 2-3 years earlier. But while it bore their name, it was not named for their family, rather it was named for J. Pierpont Morgan who lived across the country in New York City. I wonder what they thought about this “other” Pierpont? And I wonder if their high school aged children attended school in the building which bore their name?