Tempe Historic Property Survey

This house was most significant as the residence of prominent Mormon pioneer, Bishop Samuel Openshaw, and for its historic associations with the early development of Tempe. Openshaw, and English convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and son-in-law of Benjamin Franklin Johnson, was a pioneer in the Mormon westward migration. He had been a member of the Martin Handcart Company in 1845, and a pioneer settler of several communities in Utah, including Salt Lake City, St. George, Springlake, and Santaquin. Openshaw, along with two of his wives and several children, arrived in Tempe in the spring of 1883 with the third group of Johnson family members to arrive there. He built this adobe house that year on two acres at the northwest corner of 6th Street and Maple. In 1882, the Maricopa Stake of the LDS Church was organized with wards created in Mesa, Lehi, and Tempe. Samuel Openshaw became the first bishop of the Tempe ward in June of 1884, a position he occupied for a year before increased persecution of polygamy forced him to leave his family and seek refuge in Utah. He returned in 1885, and in the following year, he moved to a rural area west of Mesa called Nephi. He became bishop of the Nephi Ward and held that position for 15 years until his death in 1904, at the age of 70.

The Samuel Openshaw House was constructed of adobe, nearly square in plan, and measured 30 feet wide by 25 feet deep. The house was covered with a gable roof, ridge line parallel to the street, and a gently-sloped pitched roof over the north half of the house. An addition, built to the rear of the house about 1938, was of frame and plaster with a gable roof intersecting the rear slope of the original roof. An early veranda, which had extended across the front and east side of the house, had been infilled, and portions across the front façade had been removed. In 1938, windows had been replaced with metal casements, but original opening were not changed. The house had been located on two large lots set back from the street, which distinguished it from other houses on the street.

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