-The following was written by Pearl Cloward

Thomas P. Cloward was a pioneer ion every sense of the word. He was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania December 10, 1823 and lived with his parents, Jacob and Anne Pluck Cloward, until he was fifteen years of age when he was apprenticed to Mr. Poulson, a shoemaker. Thomas remained with him until the spring of 1844, and it was at this time that he added Poulson to his name.

After accepting the Mormon faith he went to Nauvoo, Illoinois; and after his arrival in Winter Quarters with the exiled saints, became aquainted with a young lady, Mary Page, whom he married on the 25th of March, 1847.

After his arrival in the valley with the pioneer company, Thomas is credited with making the first pair of shoes in Salt Lake. The wife of Heber C. Kimball, Ellen Saunders Kimball, was badly in need of shoes after the long journey. Thomas took an old pair of boot tops, sat down on the ground where Z.C.M.I, now stands, and made her a pair of shoes, also a pair of moccasins from the scraps for the little one she was expecting,.

In the fall of the same year, Mr. Cloward returned to Winter Quarters to assist the saints in their exodus west. The following spring he crossed over to the east side of the Missouri river, there built a house and made some small improvements on government land. The winter of 1848 Thomas moved to St. Joseph, Missouri and remained there until the year 1852; then fitted himself out with a yoke of oxen, a yoke of cows, and a wagon. With his wife and two children, he joined Captain David Wood's company leaving Kanesville, Iowa in June and again crossed the plains to Utah.

Thomas left Salt Lake that same year and settled in Provo, and here he met and married Mary Amelia Gardner, daughter of Elias and Amy Pritchard Gardner in the year 1853. He remained in Provo nine years then moved to Payson, Utah where he set up a shoemaking establishment. According to a price list from one of the pioneer mercantile establishments in that city, a pair of Thomas Cloward's ladies' shoes sold for $7.50. A pair of high heeled shoes made by this artisan was to be highly prized; and "there was not a child in the settlement who wore neater footwear, or a young man at the dance who was more proud of his boots, than the boys whose father was Thomas P. Cloward. After the boys were married he made shoes for their wives. Often the young boys' boots were made of brown leather with bright red trim around the top."

When Mr. Cloward moved to Payson from Provo he erected a cabin on the highway, east of town. Later he built a cabin further west and still later built a fine brick home. When the Salem Canal was started he left his shoemaker bench and took an active part in its building. He died in Payson, Utah January 16, 1908, being then in his eighty-fifth year.

-submitted to the Cloward site by Marian Bird <[email protected]> and Lori Weinstein <[email protected]>