Archives West Finding Aid

By Virginia C. Parker

John Wilford Carlson (1891-1977) was the first of twins born May 11, 1891, in Logan, Utah, to John Augustus Carlson and Anna Lundstrom Carlson. His twin was named Carl Hyrum Carlson. They were the third and fourth of the ten children in the Carlson family.

When the twins were born, the Carlsons were living in a log house at 3rd South and 5th East. It stood facing a pasture in the bend of Logan River. There the Carlsons kept milk cows and maintained a pasture and garden which sustained the family. When the twins were four years old, they became ill with scarlet fever. John W. was left with a partial deafness which affected his life very much.

His position as the eldest son in a Mormon family became somewhat diminished in favor of the younger more outgoing and unimpaired brother. They would remain separated by one year in school due to the difficulty John W. had learning to read. But overcoming his handicap and compensating for it, caused John to develop the personality and scholarly traits which motivated him in his later life. It also permitted him a privacy for thoughtful and undistracted study.

From early childhood, John W. preferred the out-of-doors. He enjoyed working in the hayfields. He became an enthusiastic mountaineer, spending much of his free time hiking and exploring in the nearby mountains. He became an enthusiastic athlete. He became a good basketball player and swimmer. Though John W. was slight in stature, he developed great physical endurance which made possible the many years he would work in the open field and sunlight. He enjoyed excellent health throughout his long life. His only major illness was suffered in Sweden during the War. He had influenza in 1918 from which he recovered unimpaired.

The family moved to Smithfield in 1894. There John W.'s father took over the blacksmith shop which stood at the corner of Main and Center. John W. lived in Smithfield until he finished grammar school. The family lived at 1st North and 3rd East on a large corner lot. The family kept milk cows which were led to pasture in the fields outlying Smithfield each day.

In 1907, John W. was promoted from the sixth to the eighth grade so that he and Carl received their diplomas from Smithfield Grammar School together. They then enrolled in the Brigham Young College (BYC) in Logan. By 1910, several of the children were boarding in Logan so that they could attend the College. The blacksmith shop in Smithfield was sold and the family moved to Logan. There they built a large home at 1st South and 4th East. The center of the block was a large pasture shared by the families. The Logan River runs through this land and John W. eventually bought his property from his father and built his own home there.

At the BYC, the twins followed different paths. Carl studied business and eventually became the manager of a branch of the furniture store in Preston, Idaho. John pursued a course of study in manual arts and became a skilled carpenter. He received his degree from the BYC in 1911. He worked at his trade and for the Lundstrom Furniture Company until 1916 when he accepted a call to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Sweden. There he worked mostly in Vinaker and Norrkoping where members of the family still lived. While there, he was caught by the blockade which the British placed across the North Sea to prevent German ships and submarines from gaining access to the Atlantic. Mail service was scanty, the result being that John was cut off from assistance from his family. He survived the War in Sweden primarily through the charity of the "Saints" in the Mission and cousins still living in Vinaker. John served alone in the Mission during much of this time. In order to pass the long dark winter nights, John turned to the study of Swedish literature and history. He was very proficient in the language and he began to experiment with translations of Swedish poetry into English. While on a visit to the University of Lund, he became most interested in the poet Esais Tegner, who like his family, had come from Sodermanland. John was enchanted with Tegner's Fritiof Saga, a story of Viking Sweden. He began translations which he would return to in the last years of his life. It was during that same trip to Lund that John made the decision to continue his own formal education when he returned to Utah. There in the library was a manuscript inscription which John has remembered and quoted on many occasions:

True wisdom is like a diamond, a crystal drop of heavenly light. And the purer, the greater its worth; and the more the light of day shines forth.

Address to the Graduates, Esais Tegner Lund University, Sweden, 1820. Translated by John W. Carlson.

John said that it was this small statement that inspired him to seek wisdom, but the first step would be the acquisition of knowledge and he determined at that moment that he wanted to return to school.

The war over, he was finally permitted to leave Sweden and he was honorably discharged from the Mission April 3, 1919. He returned to Logan in May of that year. He spent the summer working in hayfield with his boyhood friend, E. Leroy Hanson, who had been a medic in the Army during the war. They both decided to go on to school. Hanson went to the University of Kentucky to study Medicine. John sought the support of his parents, and in September 1919, enrolled at the Utah State Agricultural College.

He developed an interest in forage crops very early. During his undergraduate years he worked part-time under the direction of Professor B.L. Richards. He received his B.S. degree from U.S.A.C. in June 1922.

After his return from his mission, John became active in the Logan Seventh Ward M.I.A. He met and courted Ina Elvina Sorensen. They were married June 22, 1922. They made their first home in an apartment on the third floor of the Plant Industry Building on the U.S.A.C. campus. John began his graduate studies and continued his work in agricultural research. He spent the year 1922 - 1923 in post graduate study. In September 1923, he accepted a position as teacher at Syracuse High School. He went to Roosevelt High School in 1924 - 1925 to teach agriculture, manual arts, and mathematics. He returned to Logan and the Agricultural Experiment Station each summer.

His graduate studies led to an interest in field and forage crops, especially alfalfa. In the summer of 1924, John participated in a field survey of the Uintah Basin which led to the establishment of the Uintah Basin Alfalfa Seed Experimental Farm by the State of Utah. When it was established on July 1, 1925, John was appointed Superintendent. The site chosen was forty acres just east of the Uintah River along the north side of U.S. Highway 40 at Fort Duchesne. The farm was leased from F.O. Lundberg who in turn leased it from John Quip. Because the land needed to experiment on was Native American Indian land, it had priority water rights and it also had soils suitable for the purpose of alfalfa seed research. The story of the farm has been told in the Annual Reports of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station. John W. Carlson also kept a diary during this period (excerpts of his diary and research during this period were published as Parker, Virginia C., Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 46 No. 4, Fall 1978). During the first year of the farm, John also served as a field inspector for the Utah State Department of Agriculture, his purpose was to identify noxious weeds in order that they be exterminated. He returned to Logan during the winter months to do laboratory work and organize the data collected during the summer. Having completed his graduate studies, John wrote his thesis about the alfalfa plant based on studies done at Fort Duchesne. He was granted his M.S. degree in Agronomy by U.S.A.C. in June 1927.

By 1923, Utah's position as the primary producer of alfalfa seed for the nation was threatened by increasing failure to produce seed from the native plants grown in virgin soils like the Uintah Basin. The first years at the farm were devoted to the study of soils, climate, noxious weeds, and harmful insects. When John W. Carlson made the observation and association of lygus bug injury to the alfalfa plant as the primary cause of seed theory until it could be thoroughly investigated.

In 1935, the Experimental Farm was closed without solving the problem of growing alfalfa seed successfully. However, John having developed his theory of lygus bug injury to the alfalfa plant left the Uintah Basin experiments determined to continue the investigation of the problems. After closing the farm, he took leave from the Agricultural Experiment Station and in 1936, went to the University of Wisconsin to work toward his Ph.D. degree. The degree was granted in 1938. His dissertation, "Lygus Damage to Alfalfa in Relation to Seed Production" was also published in the Journal of Agricultural Research, v. 61, no. 11, December 1, 1940, pp. 791 - 815. It defines his theories and conclusions. As a result of his work at the University of Wisconsin, John was appointed as an Associate Agronomist with the United States Department of Agriculture on July 1, 1937. He returned to Utah to engage in research on the production of alfalfa seed.

The first indications of success came in the 1940's when DDT became available to control the harmful insects; but it also damaged the bees necessary to fertilize the blossoms. The expected seed yields did not materialize so the search for a solution continued. John continued this seed investigation until his retirement in 1962. At that time he was an Agronomist in the Legume Seed Research Laboratory at Logan, Utah.

During the years 1925 - 1962 John W. Carlson published many articles and monographs based on his research. He participated in many conferences and his work was known and recognized for its value in many countries of the world. Among the honors he earned were his election to Phi Kappa Phi, and as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In the priesthood of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he attained the rank of High Priest.

Besides his scientific work, John W. Carlson was always active in his church. He held many offices during the years in the Uintah Basin. In Logan he worked in the Sunday School, teaching the Gospel Doctrine Class in the Seventh Ward from 1941 to 1962. He continued his study and reading of poetry and inspirational literature. He read widely in the works of natural history. He was greatly influenced by such romantics as Henry W. Longfellow, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Olive Schreiner. He read Charles Darwin and Erwin Schroedinger. He read the journals of John Wesley Powell, and the naturalists and historians of the West such as Joseph Wood Drutch, Wallace Stegner, Loren Eisely, Joel Ricks, George Ellsworth and others. He had an abiding interest in Utah history. He was an active member of the Utah State Historical Society and served as Treasurer for the Cache Valley Chapter. He was enthusiastic about the Jensen Historic Farm and the Man and His Bread Museum and many of the tools used by him and his father have been given to these museums.

After his retirement in 1962, John continued his seed experiments on the eleven acres of land which he owns in Petersboro. He worked with Brooks Roundy of Petersboro, who had actually cared for the land during the years it had been leased to the Agricultural Experiment Station. After several years he was finally able to put into field trial the theories he had developed on his tiny experimental plots. The success of this work is told in an oral interview made by John Stewart of the Utah State University Voice Library in November 1972 just after the harvest of 6,000 pounds of seed grown on the ten acres. In that interview John W. Carlson says, "After forty years of effort, I only learned this very year, the whole story. There are more than lygus bugs that damage the alfalfa plant and impairs its seed production." He continues to discuss the problem but is aware of the aging process diminishing his own ability to investigate further. He does suggest problems that others should investigate, but he is content that his own methods would double the present seed yields in Utah if applied according to the methods developed at Petersboro in the summer of 1972. The story was also published in the Herald Journal, Friday, December 22, 1972, p. 13, in an article written by Ray E. Burtenshaw, U.S.U. Farm Agent. Alfalfa seed is still being grown on those acres, in rotation with barley. In the past several years, Robert G. Hammond, Assoc. Professor of Mathematics at U.S.U., has become interested in this work because he has kindly driven John W. Carlson to Petersboro each Saturday, since John has no longer been able to drive himself, so that he could supervise the sweeping for lygus count and consult about cultivation of the field.

In 1964, John W. Carlson accompanied his daughter Lorraine on a return visit to Sweden. There were few cousins left, but the trip and the visit to his "homeland" was a great pleasure to him and inspired him to take up his belated studies of Swedish literature upon his return.

John W. Carlson was proud of his own family. He was a good father. He was ambitious for his children and insisted that each of them seek a formal education. He and his wife, Ina, maintained a home where culture, music, books, and art were important. He encouraged seriousness of purpose, high achievement and dedication to duty-traits at which he himself excelled. Though his wife, Ina, suffered many years with crippling rheumatoid arthritis, they both enjoyed their home and family. They entertained colleagues and friends with unstinting generosity and hospitality. They built a new home for themselves after their children were grown. They cared for the land which had been acquired by John's father. They husbanded it well, building up the soil, channeling the river, growing prime vegetables, flowers, and valuable shade trees.

John and Ina had four children, Virginia, John L., Lorraine, and Nancy.

Virginia (author of this essay) was born the 28 November 1923. She graduated from Logan High School in 1941. She enrolled at U.S.A.C., but transferred to Stanford in 1943 when she was awarded a Henry R. Newell Scholarship. She received her B.A. from Stanford in 1945. Upon graduation she went to work at the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Virginia married Lewis L. Parker, of Sacramento, California, in August 1946. Together they returned to school at the University of California, Berkeley. Virginia earned a Bachelor of Library Science degree in 1948. She went to work as librarian for the California Historical Society in San Francisco while her husband continued his studies in medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his M.D. degree in 1951. They lived in Balboa, Canal Zone and several cities in California while Doctor Parker worked in various hospitals and served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. They were in Salt Lake City from 1958 to 1964 while Doctor Parker did a Presidency in Orthopedic Surgery. During that time, Virginia was a Catalog Librarian at the University of Utah. Doctor Parker now practices in Oroville, California. They have four children Ben, Jeff, Lee and Julie.

John Leroy (some of his papers are contained in this collection) was born June 17, 1926, at Fort Duchesne, Utah. Leroy graduated from Logan High School in 1943. He enrolled at U.S.A.C. and completed five quarters before he enlisted in the U.S. Navy just after his seventeenth birthday. He was stationed at Farragut N.T.S., Treasure Island N.T.S. and was being transferred to Great Lakes N.T.S. for training as a radio technician when he became ill with rheumatic fever. He died at Great Lakes Naval Hospital on July 9, 1945. He was buried at Logan. Losing their only son, who was an extremely gifted boy with great potential, was a tragic loss to both John and Ina.

After John's retirement, he and Ina continued to care for their garden and home. Both remained active in church and civic activities. John continued his alfalfa seed research on his own land and worked as consultant to Cache Valley farmers he had known during his working years. They traveled to Salt Lake City and to California to visit their children and grandchildren. John went to Sweden, Ina declined accompanying him because of the limitations imposed by her chronic disease. They enjoyed nearly ten years of quiet leisurely living after John's retirement.

In June 1972, John and Ina were honored at a reception on the occasion of their Golden Wedding Anniversary. In July Ina underwent surgery. She did not recover. She died on July 18, 1972. John W. Carlson died in Logan August 9, 1977.