Walter Elias Gardner was born in Lee, Berkshire County, Massachusetts on July 4, 1828, the son of Elias and Harriett Smith Gardner.  His mother died when he was a small boy leaving Walter and two other small children.  In a short time Walter’s father remarried . His father was a shoemaker and Walter Elias helped his father in the shoe shop.  Also, Walter’s father was a dance instructor, and this was their main entertainment.  All Gardners loved to dance.

When the saints started across the plains from Nauvoo, Walter’s father and his boys started with them in the company of President Brigham Young.  They endured many hardships.

While crossing the plains with the rest of the saints, Walter met Martha A. Tuttle.  He may have already known her.  They were married at Winter Quarters, Nebraska on April 28, 1846.  Elias’s wagon was the first in line, then Walter’s and his new bride followed him. 

Walter took his wife to live with his father where they stayed for two years until 1848 suffering many hardships with the rest of the saints at Winter Quarters.  Walter had to stand guard to watch for Indians or mobs.  He performed his duties well and did it day and night.

One day word was received that Walter had been killed, but it proved to be false.  They built a log house in which to hold their meetings and dances.  There they spent the winter.  In the spring of 1848, in April, he and his wife started on their long journey across the plains to Salt Lake Valley. 

Brigham Young had returned and ordered the march forward dividing them into groups of forty, fifty and one hundred with a captain as a leader for each group.  The leader of their group was Heber C. Kimball.  The road was long and tedious over mountains, having to ford streams.  On their way Walter got sick and had to be put in the cart and be pulled by his wife as they had lost their horses to the Indians.

They were on Horse Shoe Bend in Wyoming where their son Ira was born.  On a Sunday, the next day, they started on.  As they were in Buffalo Country, they killed some to help out with the food supply.  They encountered some storms before reaching Salt Lake Valley in September.  Walter got a fort for his family to live in with other people, making nine in all.  They lived there one month, then he moved up to the north canyon.  He got out logs and built a home, living there the winter of 1848.  Then in the spring of 1849 they moved back to Salt Lake where he helped build dobies for the first Tithing House in Salt Lake.

Walter and his wife and baby attended the first 24th of July celebration held in the city where they sat down to a table where they enjoyed the food of the bounteous harvest that God had provided for them.  He traded his oxen for some more food, getting $15.00 extra to help them out in their poor conditions. 

During the Black Hawk War he and his wife and children slept in the school house at night.  The Indians took three of his horses, leaving him with only a team.  He then helped the men build a fort for their families to stay in to protect them from Indians.

In 1858 the grasshoppers got bad, destroyed their crops and left them very little to live on.  He then left Payson and moved to Richfield where he took up farming once again.  They were living there at the time the railroad came to Salt Lake in 1869.  Here their last children were born.  They were proud parents of seven boys and three girls.  Charley died when he was a small boy, but the rest grew into manhood and womanhood and raised families to be proud of.