FRANKLIN KNOWLTON NEBEKER
Franklin Knowlton Nebeker has been a member of the Utah bar since 1895
and of the Salt Lake bar since 1909, being at the present time a member
of the firm of Howat, Marshall, Macmillan & Nebeker. His father,
the late Ira Nebeker, was a prominent pioneer builder of Utah. His
mother was formerly Miss Delia Lane, a member of a well known and
highly respected pioneer family.
After receiving a local college training Franklin K. matriculated at
Cornell University in the College of Law, from which institution he was
graduated in the class of '95. While at Cornell he was prominent in
student body activities, especially in debating and oratory. In 1894 he
was selected by the president of the university to represent Cornell at
the celebration of Washington's birthday by the public schools of
Chicago, under the auspices of the Union League Club. On returning to
his native state he entered the law practice and was successively
elected county attorney of Cache county for two terms and district
attorney of the first judicial district for one term, during which time
besides prosecuting successfully a large number of criminal cases, he
pursued and broke up an organized gang of horse thieves. He later
organized the firm of Nebeker, Hart & Nebeker. His younger brother,
Horace G. (since deceased) was the junior member of this firm.
In August, 1909, Mr. Nebeker became assistant general attorney of the
Oregon Short Line Railroad Company, which position he occupied until
January, 1912, when he was invited into the firm of Howat &
Macmillan. Later the firm of Howat, Macmillan & Nebeker was joined
by Judge John A. Marshall.
In the fall of 1917 Mr. Nebeker was requested by the attorney general
of the United States to institute criminal proceedings against the
leaders of the I. W. W. For that purpose he went to Chicago and after
several months of investigation caused over one hundred leaders of the
organization to be indicted. The trial, commonly known as the Haywood
trial, began on the 1st day of April, 1918, and lasted until the 17th
day W August of the same year, and resulted in the conviction of
practically all defendants proceeded against. This trial is said to be,
in many respects, the greatest and most important criminal case in the
history of the country.
At Logan, Utah, June 10, 1890, Mr. Nebeker was married to Miss Lillian
Martineau. Their children are as follows: Franklin K., Jr.; Marjorie,
wife of Captain S. H. Young; Lyman M.; Joyce; Bella; and Ruth. Both
sons, as well as Captain Young were in active service in France.
Mr. Nebeker is a democrat, but aside from representing his party on the
democratic national committee for one term has declined to accept
nomination for any office that would interfere with his law practice.
He is a charter member of the American Institute of Criminal Law and
Criminology; a member of The National Association for Constitutional
Government; an honorary member of The Texas Rangers, a member of The
National Economic League; is also a member of the Benevolent Protective
Order of Elks, Alta Club, Country Club and Commercial Club of Salt Lake
City and of the Iroquois Club of Chicago.
On the occasion of Mr. Nebeker's appointment in June, 1919, as
assistant attorney general of the United States, in charge of the
public lands division of the department of justice, the Salt Lake
Telegram said editorially: "Merit demands recognition. This is seen in
the appointment of Frank K. Nebeker of Salt Lake as assistant attorney
general of the United States in charge of the public lands division of
the department of justice. Mr. Nebeker has won this high appointment
solely through merit, and citizens of the forty-seven other states will
join with Utahans’ in extending the glad hand to Mr. Nebeker, with the
salutation 'Good work.' Mr. Nebeker goes to Washington not through any
services rendered to his party, but through services freely given to
the United States in her hour of need.
The circumstances of those services so given are known to all Utahans’
and the results are seen in the imprisonment of 'Big Bill' Haywood and
one hundred other I. W. W. agitators. When the government found itself
threatened by the I. W. W. conspiracies, it looked for a man to
extricate it from this menacing position. A real man was sought, a man
with nerve, ready to take his life in his hands, and a man with brains,
with ability to carry on a vigorous prosecution of these agitators,
undaunted by the obstacles placed in his path and threats uttered
against him. Consequently the government looked westward and discovered
Frank K. Nebeker. How well Mr. Nebeker conducted the prosecutions
against the I. W. Ex.’s is seen not alone in their conviction. It is
made manifest by the I. W. W.'s themselves, in including Frank Nebeker
among the prominent Americans, who were accorded the great honor of
receiving bombs in the frustrated May day anarchistic plots, because
they were real Americans and fought Bolshevism. Close upon Bolshevism's
recognition of Mr. Nebeker's ability and patriotism, the government
bestows well merited recognition upon Mr. Nebeker. With the departure
of Mr. Nebeker for Washington Utah fills another niche in her wall of
fame. 'Congratulations and good luck,' is the message of Utahans’ to
the new assistant attorney general."
[Source: Utah since Statehood:
Historical and Biographical Volume 2; By Noble Warrum; Publ. 1919;
Transcribed and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack.]
CLARENCE J. NEILSON, M. D.
A progressive spirit characterizes the professional career of Dr.
Clarence J. Neilson, one of the best known among the younger physicians
and surgeons of Salt Lake City and until recently a first lieutenant in
the Medical Corps of the United States Army, stationed at Fort
Oglethorpe, Georgia. Dr. Neilson was born at Mount Pleasant. Utah, July
23, 1882, a son of Samuel J. and Caroline (Christenson) Neilson, who
came to the new world from Denmark in early life and established their
home at Mount Pleasant, Utah, where the father turned his attention to
mercantile pursuits. Subsequently he engaged in sheep raising and still
later became a well known factor in financial circles as the organizer
of the Mount Pleasant Commercial & Savings Bank, of which he was
president at the time of his death, which occurred in 1893, when he was
but forty-four years of age. The mother survives and is now a resident
of Salt Lake City. Their family numbered five children: Victor, a
railroad engineer living at Magna, Utah; Peter, an attorney at law
practicing his profession in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Mrs. Samuel
Cloverdale, of Salt Lake City; Clarence J., of this review; and
Christian, who has passed away.
The boyhood and youth of Dr. Neilson was largely devoted to the
acquirement of a public school education in Mount Pleasant and the
pursuit of a further course of study in Wasatch Academy, from which he
was graduated with the class of 1902. He then entered the University of
Minnesota, where he pursued a literary course, winning the Bachelor of
Arts' degree in 1906. With broad literary learning to serve as a
foundation upon which to rear the superstructure of professional
knowledge, he then entered the Cooper Medical College of San Francisco,
California, where he continued his studies for two years, at the end of
which time he matriculated in the Jefferson Medical College of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was there graduated in 1911 and won an
internship in the Methodist Episcopal Hospital of Philadelphia. In the
fall of 1912 he returned to Utah and opened an office in Salt Lake
City, since which time he has built up a very successful practice. In
September, 1918, he was commissioned a first lieutenant on the Medical
Staff of the United States Army and was assigned to Fort Oglethorpe,
Georgia, where he remained until mustered out of service on the 20th of
December, 1918, following the signing of the armistice.
He then returned to resume his medical practice in Salt Lake, where he
has specialized in surgery. He is thoroughly conversant with anatomy
and the component parts of the human body, the onslaughts made upon it
by disease or left to it as an inheritance from ancestors. He is cool
and calm in times of excitement and emergency and his surgical work has
gained high rank. He has been a member of the county medical health
department for the past three years and is now acting as county
physician of Salt Lake county. He practices in all of the hospitals and
is physician and surgeon for the Bamberger Electric Railway and
assistant surgeon of the Cudahy Packing Company of Salt Lake.
On the 5th of July, 1912, Dr. Neilson was married to Miss Pauline E.
Downs, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John
Downs, of Williamsport, that state. In his fraternal relations the
Doctor is a Mason, proving a worthy exemplar of the teachings and
purposes of the craft. Along strictly professional lines his membership
is with the Salt Lake County and Utah State Medical Societies. He is
thoroughly conversant with the latest scientific researches and
discoveries of the profession and keeps abreast with the best thinking
men of the age regarding all medical and surgical matters.
[Source: Utah since Statehood:
Historical and Biographical Volume 2; By Noble Warrum; Publ. 1919;
Transcribed and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack.]
JOHN NICHOLSON
Always, a man stands for something. A big man or a little, a good
man or a bad, it is the same—there is ever that vital quality about him
for which he is known to the world or to his intimates. This is
that distinguishes any one of us from any other of us. Caesar
Borgia is the personification of extreme cruelty, Judas Iscariot of
treasury in the human relation of friendship, Benedict Arnold of
disloyalty; Napoleon and Alexander the Great are the lasting types of
ambition, Washington of the fine balancing of parts that goes to the
making of rememberable statesmanship, and Lincoln of incorruptible
honesty and rare “common” sense. And whenever these names strike
upon the ear, what instantly comes to mind is, not the dates, facts,
and events in the men’s lives, but rather, for the most part, the
qualities of cruelty, treachery, disloyalty ambition, balance, and
honest common sense for which they stand.
Nor, when we stop to think, it is essentially different with our own
friends and acquaintances. For they too, have their larger traits
of character. Only, here they are often less obvious than in
historic persons, and not so easily separable from smaller straits that
grow out of them, by reason, partly, of our closeness to their
owners. But they are there none the less. Here is a man,
for instance, who is controlled by selfishness, that small quality
which can always be depended upon, in every transaction, to look out
for its own interest. Here again is one in whom the main thing
seems to be a certain broadness of mind with which he views every
subject that comes up for consideration. And here, one more, is a
man pronounced for a tender humanity which tinctures all that he says
and does. Do what we will we cannot get away from the rather
melancholy fact that in the long run we make only one impression on our
friends, and that, as time goes on, this impression deepens and hardens
till in the end we stand for it. So that the keen-sighted Dickens
is not so much wrong as he is sometimes thought to be when he makes his
characters, bug and little, act out some dominant trait. Only, if
he errs at all in this matter, it is in exaggerating these
characteristics as he does. But even this appears necessary
judged by the exigencies of fiction.
Now, the practical value of this reflection, whether we wish to
understand characters in history or our contemporaries lies in the fact
that the task of knowing them becomes comparatively easy. This
main trait is a sort of root quality, simple and primitive enough
usually in itself, put of which pretty much everything else in the way
of personal manifestations grows. Without a knowledge of this
leading characteristic we are apt to misunderstand and misjudge a man;
with it we are able, with tolerable accuracy, to understand what he
does in the world and to estimate him at something like the true
value. Hence, if I may take the hazardous chance of criticism,
there is an imperative necessity for biographers to give the subjects
of their writings in a more luminous manner than by detailing with
scrupulous exactness the dates and proper names in the lives of those
whom they endeavor to portray to us. For, while dates, names,
bare facts are essential in their way, still they are not the most
important thing about a man. A look, a word, often a single small
incident in his life, reveals more of his real self than a hundred bald
facts and details of time and place. Carlyle, for instance, “once
observed Macaulay’s face in repose as he was turning over the pages of
a book.” And he comments, “I thought to myself, “Well, any one
can see that you are an honest, good sort of fellow, made out of
oatmeal!’”
John Nicholson, the first Vice-President of the Genealogical Society of
Utah, was no exception to the rule that men have their root
characteristics which, once you have got hold of them, give you
immediately a new power of interpretation of character. Indeed,
in him the main traits were rather more obvious that in most men.
That square Scotch face with firm jaw would tell you at once that here
you had met a man whom you had to convince before he would act, and,
when he was convinced of the rightness of a course, would take it in
spite of all the powers of darkness. And accordingly, this was
his main characteristic. “Intrepid, honest, earnest, true—these
four words,” says Elder Orson F. Whitney, “sum up the character of John
Nicholson, as the author has known him by an acquaintance extending
through a quarter of a century.”(“History of Utah.” This is the
best account of John Nicholson that has appeared, and to it, therefore,
I am indebted for the principal facts and incidents therein touched
upon. Most of these incidents I have heard, however, from
Nicholson’s own lip.
The facts of John Nicholson’s life are soon given, for his was not a
life of outer events. He was born in Boswells, Roxburgshire,
Scotland, July 13, 1839. His parents were John Nicholson and
Elizabeth Howison. In the family were seven children, including
John, he being the fourth child. The family moved to Kelso on the
Tweed when John was about six years old, and, when he was ten, to
Edinburgh. On account of the depleted condition of the family
purse, the boy’s opportunities for an education were extremely
meager. His first occupation was in a tobacco factory, where he
got thirty-six cents a week. Leaving school at thirteen, he
became an apprentice to a painter and paper hanger. Having read
Orson Pratt’s tract on the “Necessity of Miracles” and heard an Elder
preach, he joined the Church in 1861. He was ordained a Deacon,
made branch clerk in Edinburgh, and then ordained a Priest. Two
years later, however, he was made an Elder and given a mission in
England, which required his entire time. Though it meant a great
sacrifice both to him and to his parents, he accepted the call and
three days was in his field or labor in the Sheffield
conference. In 1866 he came to Utah, where he lived
practically all the time from then till his death. Settling at
Salt Lake City, he made journeys to various parts of the territory in
the interest of the “Juvenile Instructor.” He did this, however,
only for about a year, at the end of which time he set up in his former
calling of painter and paper hanger. At twenty-eight he married
Susannah Keep, and four years afterward, Miranda Cutler. Fifteen
children were born to him of these two marriages. He was, with
others, the organizer, in 1872-3, of the Twentieth ward Institute, a
sort of mutual improvement association, before the organization known
by his name was effected. Since then he was prominent in
religious affairs, becoming a president of Seventy, president of the
stake Improvement Association, a member of the High Council of the Salt
Lake Stake, and clerk of the general conferences of the Church.
In 1878 he went on a mission to England, to act as editor of the
“Star,” traveling meanwhile to various parts of Great Britain
preaching. The anti-polygamy crusade of the eighties saw him
arrested, tried on evidence furnished by himself, and incarcerated for
his convictions. Both before and after this he worked in the
editorial rooms of the “Deseret News.” At the completion of the
Salt Lake Temple he became chief recorder, which position he held
almost to the end. He died January 25, 1909.
Such are the principal facts and dated in his life. Let us now
turn to what is more important—the things for which he stood.
I have set down as his chief trait of character the simple word
integrity. If John Nicholson stands for anything, surely it is
this fine quality in its highest and broadest signification. And
what an admirable characteristic is this! How rare, too, with all
our vaunted love for high virtues—this quality of being simply true;
true to one’s view of what is right, true to one’s brethren, true to
God! Is there any other one thing that we would rather have in a
good man than dogged faithfulness, a depend upon-ableness in every
department of life, a sureness to do a thing if it ought to be done, a
knowing where to be found at every point! Surely, such a
characteristic will cover a multitude of sins. If to be a traitor
is the most despicable of all villainies, as the world seems to be
pretty well agreed, then to be a true man is the best of all human
virtues. And John Nicholson was a true man, as an analysis of his
character will reveal.
John Nicholson was inherently a good man. A thing had to be
right—at least, it had to look right to him—before he would receive it
into the realm of his experience. He was deeply religious; he had
an abiding and virile faith in God and the soul’s immortality, which
colored all his thinking and all his conduct. He took no small,
temporizing views of like and its purposes. Deceptions,
hypocrisy, oppression, unfaithfulness, were always abhorrent to
him. He sought with puritanic diligence to bring his conduct in
harmony with his higher convictions. All his instincts were
noble. His feelings were strong, and, when roused by injustice
and wrong, swept out with the violence of a tornado. And yet they
were. at other times gentle as those of a woman with a crooning infant
in her arms. More than once I have seen him melted to tears by a
beautiful song or a tender passage in a sermon.
Now, generally speaking, men in whom the emotional element is large,
are often led into doing things against their judgment. Usually
their feelings predominate over their intellect. But with John
Nicholson it was not so. His mental qualities were not only far
above the average, but were of a high order considered
absolutely. Naturally his temperament was philosophic,
reflective. He possessed a finely discriminative mind. He
loved to contemplate the speculative aspects of the Gospel, to look at
the probable causes of things, their effects, and the relation of
thought relied, partly because his instincts were true, partly because
his opinions bore marks of having been carefully thought out. And
he had the endowment of a rich, expressive, and convincing vocabulary
and style.
All the fine mentality becomes evident at once when we consider his
writings. An article entitled ”The Philosophy of Baptism,”
published in a volume of the “Contributor,” shows a high power of
philosophic grasp, a power to think our aspects of a subject on which
the average person can generate no thought at all, and the ability to
reason closely on abstract topics. His editorial writings for the
“Deseret News” reveal an aptitude for logical and trenchant English,
tinctured with wit and humor, and sarcasm. It is so of the
“Tennessee Massacre,” a lecture delivered before a large audience in
the Salt Lake Theatre—a specimen in which there is a happy combination
of the analytical power, strength of expression, and delicacy of
invective.
And so it was that if you would have John Nicholson follow a certain
course of action, you had both to win his heart and to convince his
intellect. Once you did this, you were sure of what he would
do. That course one pursued, there was no deviation; he overcome
every opposition. Not ridicule, nor brow-beating, nor threat, nor
cajolery ever got successfully in his way. Once he made up his
mind—and he did not make up his mind easily—tat settled the
matter. In doing what he conceived to be right he was courageous
beyond the imagination of most persons. He was one of those
extremely few men who do not even know what fear is.
Many instances in his life attest this utter fearlessness. Once
while doing missionary work at Whittington in the Sheffield conference,
before his coming to Utah, a mob determined to waylay Elder Nicholson
as he was going home from meeting. A friend, knowing this,
advised him to make a circuit round the place where it was supposed the
men were hiding. But this, to him, looked like sneaking, and he
walked boldly on. Presently, stones came flying towards
him. Then those with him ran away. A stone struck him on
the breast, nearly knocking him down. But he was undaunted.
Walking towards the mob, he read them a volcanic lecture on cowardice
and brutality. And true to the instincts he had detected in them,
the men slunk away, leaving him standing there white with wrath.
One other trait must be mentioned as growing out of his fine
combination of heart and head qualities—his instinct for fairness and
his unclouded vision of the right. All biographers of Macaulay
tell to this great man’s praise—and high praise it is—an incident which
happened in India to the effect that while the newspapers were unjustly
hurling the epithets of “scoundrel,” “fraud,” and worse terms at his
head, Macaulay was at the very time writing and speaking on the freedom
of the press. A similar incident occurred in Nicholson’s
life. While he was in the penitentiary his dying father requested
as a last wish that he might see his son. The marshal—E. A.
Ireland—refused to allow the son to do so. Afterwards the elder
Nicholson died and John requested the privilege of attending the
funeral. This, too, was not granted! Just as if the victim
of this unkindness were a desperate criminal instead of a man of the
most unquestionable honor and trustworthiness. Not long after
this and after Nicholson had been released from prison, the marshal was
charged with certain abuses at the penitentiary during the time when
John Nicholson happened to the there. Now, he knew that the
charges against Ireland were not true. He knew also that the
simplest way to do was to keep still. But he did not keep
still. He wrote for the press defending Ireland from the attacks
made upon him!
Such was the man John Nicholson—sound to the heart’s core, true as
steel to the finer appeals in life, genuine in all the beautiful
relations among the children of men. May the memory of him be
kept ever sacred!
(Source: The Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine, January 1910. Transcribed by Maggie Coleman)
HARRY DORR NILES
Niles, Harry Dorr, president of the State Medical Association of Utah
for 1907-1908. Son of Andrew Fletcher and Margaret Ann (Dorr) Niles,
the latter a niece of Jonathan Dorr, one of the pioneer surgeons of New
York state, was born April 14, 1856, in Pennsylvania. His father, at
the age of 76, is still actively engaged in the practice of medicine.
After the usual routine school work, he, in 1875, entered the
University of Pennsylvania and in 1880 graduated in medicine from the
Ohio Medical College. In 1890 he located in Salt Lake City and
subsequently became surgeon to the Holy Cross Hospital, and is now
president of the staff. He has been an assiduous worker, taking
post-graduate work almost yearly, either in this country or abroad. He
is a regular contributor to various medical journals and was among the
foremost in advocating and adopting surgical procedures in abdominal
and gastric complications, being the author of several monographs
treating on the technique, etc. His election as president of the
Western and Gynecological Association was a recognition of his work
along these lines.
He has also served as president of the Rocky Mountain Interstate
Medical Association, 1903-04. During his recent presidency of the Utah
State Association he has, assisted in that organization of the three
Councilor Medical Districts into which the state is divided. His
efforts for the betterment of the profession has also been recognized
by election to honorary membership in the state associations of
Colorado and Idaho. Married in 1880 Miss Anna M. Lietz of Scranton, Pa.
Their children are Prank Lietz and Elizabeth Margaret, the latter being
a 1908 graduate of Wellesley College.
[Source: Denver Medical Times:
Utah Medical Journal, Nevada Medicine, Volume 28; By Utah State Medical
Society; Publ. 1908; Transcribe by Andrea Stawski Pack.]
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