In 1941, my father, Robert Arthur Meeks, in his history, said he served as a petty juror under Judge Tylmon Johnson for 10 days.
We are writing a book on my father's life and since he is no longer with us I am very curious about this trial and judge.Could you help me find out about this matter? I have called the county clerk in Wayne County (my father lived in Bicknell) and she searched her records there. She said there was only one trial case in the county that year and it didn't involve Judge Johnson.
I'm now wondering if this could have been a federal court trial held in Salt Lake City. It may not be so important, but I am curious. - G.M., Price.
The judge was certainly a man of note. Tillman D. Johnson (please note correct spelling) was a federal district judge in Utah for 34 years, from 1915 to 1949. He retired from the bench at the age of 91, the oldest U.S. judge in the country's history at the time. He was appointed by Woodrow Wilson.
He was born in Tennessee and moved West where he was the principal of a government Indian school in South Dakota and then one in Fort Hall, Idaho.
He moved to Ogden in 1890 where he practiced law. He served in the Utah House of Representatives and was the Democratic candidate for Congress in 1912.
He died in 1953 at the age of 95.
His secret to longevity? "If you would live long and happily, don't take your worries and problems home with you, live the best life you know how to live, and refrain from habits which you know do not agree with you," he told a Deseret News reporter in a 1938 interview marking his 80th birthday.
The judge's tenure covered the developmental years of Utah's mining industry.
Among his most widely quoted decisions was the 1920 settlement of a dispute between farmers and industry. Farmers believed that gases from American Smelting & Refining Co. in Murray and United States Smelting Co. in Midvale damaged their crops, land and livestock and impaired the health of their families. They asked the judge to ban smelting operations in agricultural areas.
Johnson did not issue an injunction against the companies, but he did impose restrictions on the smelters that required them to neutralize the sulphuric acid coming out of their smokestacks. He also set up special restrictions during the growing season.
Judge Johnson was 83 years old in 1941, the year your father served as a juror. Simple arithmetic leads us to believe it will be impossible to find out what trial your father served as a juror for. According to one published estimate, Johnson had handled 15,800 cases by the time he was 88.
Without knowing the case number or the names of the plaintiff/defendant, we think you're out of luck.
The trial probably wasn't exceptional or your father would have written more extensively about it in his journal.