The surprising family connection between local funnel cake business and Utah pioneer
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SHELLEY – If you’ve ever attended the Eastern Idaho State Fair, chances are you’re familiar with Thomas and Ann Winder.
The Shelley couple are the names behind Winder’s Original Funnel Cakes, a mobile food truck serving customers since 1985. Tyler Winder, their son who now runs the business, tells EastIdahoNews.com his parents bought it in the 1980s when it had been a church-owned operation.
“Back in the day during the 1970s and early 1980s, the majority of the food booths at the fair were owned by different churches,” Tyler explains. “It helped (fund) budgets.”
At the time, Tyler, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, says his ward (congregation) owned the booth that served a similar deep-fried dessert, along with hamburgers and fries.
Sometime during the 1980s, the method for funding the budget changed and the ward no longer needed it as a means of financial revenue.
The Winders had worked in the booth as members of the ward and when there was an opportunity to buy the business, they took it over as a side hustle. They focused solely on funnel cakes.
Four decades later, Thomas and Ann have stepped away and Tyler is in the process of taking it over. He grew up working in the trailer with his siblings and it’s been a rewarding experience for him.
“Being able to work with my siblings and my parents (has been fun). On the other end of things, it’s also been fun to work with my own kids and have them involved. We use it as a teaching tool to help them learn the work ethic and that’s what we’ve enjoyed,” Tyler says.
During a conversation at Shelley’s Idaho Spud Day several weeks ago, EastIdahoNews.com caught up with the Winders at their trailer and discovered a possible connection with another Winder Family operation more than 200 miles to the south.
Winder Farms in Millcreek, Utah has been providing milk, chocolate milk and other products for tens of thousands of customers throughout the Beehive state since the late 1800s.
John R. Winder founded what was then Winder Dairy in 1880. Winder, Idaho, a small, unincorporated community in Franklin County, is named in his honor.
Tyler says there may be a distant family connection with the Winders in Utah, though he isn’t sure who the common ancestor is. His third great-grandfather, Thomas Harrison Winder, was among the Latter-day Saint pioneers who crossed the plains and settled in Utah. Dan Winder, an Alta, Wyoming man who is a great-grandson of Thomas Harrison Winder, says Thomas initially settled in Spanish Fork before ultimately moving to Thornton. He is buried in the Thornton Cemetery.
Thomas Harrison’s son, John Augustus Winder, originally owned the land that is now Zion’s National Park.
Jeffrey Bryant, the unofficial historian for the Thomas Harrison Winder family, says Thomas is not connected with the Winder family in Utah.
Regardless, Dan says his great-grandfather stopped in Winder, Idaho on his way north.
Mike Winder, an author and former Utah state legislator, is the third great-grandson of John Winder. He wrote a book about the family patriarch and explained how John ended up in Utah and started what is now Winder Farms.
Who is John Winder?
John was born Dec. 11, 1821 in southern England. He was recruited to run a shoe and leather store in Liverpool, where he was introduced to the LDS Church.
“He saw a torn-up piece of paper on the floor of the shop. He picked it up and pieced it together and it said, ‘Latter-day Saints.’ He said to his clerk, ‘That’s a funny phrase. What’s that?'” Mike says.
The clerk told him they were known as Mormons and that they met for church just down the street. He paid a visit and heard Orson Spencer, a missionary from Utah, preaching the gospel.
“He (John) said, ‘Even though I was hiding in the back, I felt like every word was meant for me and it pierced my soul.’ He and his wife were later baptized and crossed the ocean and plains to Utah in 1853,” says Mike.
John operated a tannery in Salt Lake for a time before buying 80 acres of land in Millcreek in 1863. He started a farm, which he named Poplar Farm.
Jersey cattle, which originated in Europe, had started becoming a popular breed in the U.S. around 1850 and John was enamored with the rich, creamy milk they provided. That led him to open what became Winder Dairy.
“He officially started delivering to some hotels downtown and some neighbors in 1880,” says Mike.
Through the years, he gained a reputation not only as a successful businessman, but also as a political figure. Mike says John served on the Salt Lake City Council for a time and played a role in Utah becoming a state as a member of the state Constitutional Convention.
He also became a prominent church leader. He briefly served as a bodyguard to President Brigham Young and went on to serve as a counselor in the presiding bishopric. On April 8, 1887, he was called to serve as a counselor to Bishop William B. Preston, the namesake for the city of Preston.
The church practiced polygamy at the time and John was a known polygamist. Mike says he had four wives, but never more than three at once.
In 1887, Congress passed a law that outlawed polygamy and many church leaders went into hiding.
“Winder assisted many people on the run from the federal government, by helping to hide them or to post bail. His poplar farm on the south of the city served as a temporary church headquarters for Taylor (who practiced polygamy),” according to historical records.
John only had one wife at the time because one of his wives had recently died and he divorced his second wife.
The Church abolished polygamy in 1890.
As a member of the presiding bishopric, John managed the interior work on the Salt Lake temple. Church President Wilford Woodruff mandated the interior be completed in one year after 39 years of exterior construction. John reportedly had it completed ahead of schedule. He went on to serve in the temple presidency, a calling he held for the rest of his life.
John was called to serve in the First Presidency, the Church’s highest governing body, on Oct. 17, 1901. He was the first counselor to President Joseph F. Smith, the nephew of church founder Joseph Smith. Today, men who are called to this position are typically ordained as apostles. Mike says John is one of the few men in the church’s history who served in the First Presidency but was never an apostle.
In this capacity, he was involved in efforts to seat Reed Smoot, one of the Church’s apostles, as a U.S. senator.
In the final years of his life, Mike says John gave a priesthood blessing to the daughter-in-law of his friend Charles Nibley. His daughter-in-law, Agnes, was reportedly having a rough pregnancy and John blessed her that her baby would be healthy and “have an enormous impact on the church.” That baby, Mike says, was Hugh Nibley, a noted scholar and LDS apologist who passed away in 2005 at age 94. Hugh was born the day John died and his full name was Hugh Winder Nibley.
John was 88 when he passed away on March 27, 1910.
John Winder’s legacy
More than 100 years after John’s death, Winder Farms is still in operation. John’s son, George, took it over in the 1950s after his brothers left the family business. Routes for home milk deliveries eventually expanded into Nevada and extended from Logan to Las Vegas. Its home delivery service ceased in 2019, but the Winder name is still a popular brand in grocery stores.
Mike’s dad, Kent, was a partner in the business for years and Mike has fond memories working there as a kid. He helped build the company’s door-to-door sales team as a young adult and went on to work as the dairy’s vice president of marketing in 2004 before successfully running for mayor of West Valley. A separate company ran the business for a time before Mike’s second cousin, James Winder, took it over earlier this year.
Since then, Mike has written numerous books. He served three terms as a representative in the Utah Legislature and currently serves as the city manager of Millcreek, which became Utah’s newest city in 2016.
Many of John’s children are buried a block away from Mike’s office in Millcreek and a city street bears his family’s name. He’s proud to live and work in a community his family has called home for generations.
“There’s still a Winder Lane in Millcreek and there’s still a Winder Lane out in West Valley where the dairy was for years. It’s been fun to see the influence and echo of that family legacy on both sides of the valley and beyond,” Mike says.
Winder’s Funnel Cakes
As for Winder’s Funnel Cakes in eastern Idaho, Tyler hopes to pass the business along to his kids and see it continue for years to come.
While it’s always been a mobile operation at community events, he’s toyed with the idea of opening a permanent storefront.
“I’ve just been a little bit chicken to do anything else, not that we haven’t talked about (opening a) brick-and-mortar (location),” says Tyler. “We’ve just never taken that step.”
Although the business has quite a following, he isn’t sure Winder’s Funnel Cakes is sustainable in a permanent storefront. Still, he’s open to the idea and hasn’t written it off entirely.
For now, he looks forward to continue serving customers at events throughout eastern Idaho.
“Come and find us at the next event,” he says.