150 West 2nd Street - Gillson

Gillson Family Built the House c.1866

William Gillson & Charlotte King

William (1811-1873) Gillson and his wife Charlotte King (1810-1899) left England and moved to South Africa in 1845. Nineteen years later they left South Africa and moved to America to gather with the Saints in Zion. That journey took seven months. They settled in the abandoned Bingham Fort in 1859 on the north side of 2nd Street on the Old Pioneer Road which continued on to Harrisville at that time.

Upon arrival, the family was dirt poor; William was 48 years old and his son Edward was 18. All had to work together to create a house, a farm and lateral ditches and provide food and clothes. Martha Gillson was nine years old when they arrived. She recalled that her mother would walk to North Ogden and wash all day for a little white flour to mix with the brand they had to make bread for the children. While the mother was away the little children worked but were afraid of the Indians when they were alone. Martha worked helping her father strip sugarcane to grind for molasses, carrying sage brush to make fires and helping with the family cooking.

Martha also gleaned in the fields gathering wheat; sometimes she could glean five bushels a day which she could sell for five dollars per bushel. This money would help to buy their clothes. She would start to town with a bushel of wheat on her back, sometimes she would get a ride; she would sell her wheat and buy calico that cost $.60 a yard. She felt very proud when she was able to get a new dress.

She enjoyed the bread her mother baked in a large kettle over the fire in the fireplace of the cabin. Sometimes they had very little to eat and very often when Martha went out to glean in the fields, all she would have to eat was a piece of bread with a cucumber and salt. [1]

As the years went by the family prospered, and in about 1866 they built the board farmhouse house pictured above. In the beginning, the house was handsome; the exterior walls of the main structure were board and the interior walls were adobe brick covered with lath and plaster. The exterior walls and interior walls of the kitchen lean-to were adobe; the square footage of the house was 24 x 29 feet. A cellar was dug under the lean-to with stone lined walls six feet high and a well in the SE corner. In time a lean-to was added to the lean-to. Square nails were found in all the old construction of the house. [2] These kinds of improvement over the log cabin were typical of farmhouses built the late 1860s.

In the 1920s, the Genta family covered the exterior board and adobe walls with cement, as it appears in all the pictures.

Granary Built By Edward Gillson

By 1870 William Gillson was so good at plastering that he chose to make that his vocation; he and his wife moved to another residence on Washington Ave., leaving the farm to his son Edward Gillson who built this granary with orange brick from the Gates Adobe-Brick Mill in the 1870s. The granary was two-level with a four-foot rock foundation. Wheat and grains were stored in the upper level; the lower level had a dirt floor and served as a root cellar. [3]

In 2002 Brent Baldwin stripped the cement off the granary, added a porch, put a door on the extension, added a new roof, installed windows and made a barber shop and guest room filled with charm.

Genta Family

Anna Bertinotti Genta immigrated from Italy in 1889 with her husband, two sons and her widowed mother, age 55. Her uncle Michael Bertinotti owned the Gillson property at this time, and he allowed Anna’s mother, Maria Peraca Bertinotti, to live in the Gillson farmhouse and he moved into a simple board house about 100 feet the north. So, there were now two houses at the address 150 W 2nd Street rear, the larger and nicer house for his sister-in-law, Maria, and a simple board house for Michael. Maria never learned to speak English, and Michael looked after her until his death in 1911.

In 1912, widowed Anna Genta bought all her uncle’s property on 2nd Street: the Gillson house, the granary, the simple board house and five acres of farmland. She moved into the larger house with her mother, and her son John and his family took the other house, and John farmed the land. They fit right in with the neighborhood; at this time there were so many Italians living on West 2nd Street that it was known as “Little Italy”.

By the 1920s the Genta family covered the Gillson house with cement for preservation. They also covered the granary with cement, added a room and turned it into a house. So now there were three houses at the address of 150 W 2nd Street rear.

After Anna Genta’s death in 1925, her son John Genta and family continued to live and farm here, renting some of the houses to family members. In 1937 when Wall Ave was constructed and the Utah General Depot was under construction, many farmers were forced to sell their land and the large farming community on 2nd Street dissolved at that time. John Genta quit the farm and left the houses to various relatives.

[1] - Rueben L Hansen, A Sketch of the Life of Martha Gillson Hall, manuscript, 1938.

[2] - Interview Brent Baldwin, 2011.

[3] - On site visit in May 2000 by Gordon Q. Jones, author Pioneer Forts in Ogden Utah, 1996, Sons of Utah Pioneers.