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Historical records matching John Henry Rollins, Jr.
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About John Henry Rollins, Jr.
I wish I knew more about my great grandfather, but unfortunately I don't know much. I remember my mother telling me when I was a small girl that he worked as a driver on the twenty-mule teams that were used to haul borax out of the mines in Arizona, and that he died when he fell from one of the wagons, which ran over him and crushed his skull. At the time, he was only 24 years old, and had a three year old daughter and a one year old son. His wife, my great grandmother, Dortha Roxana Madsen Rollins (later McKinney), was only 20 years old at the time. She had to raise her two children on her own, at least until 1897 when she married an Arizona Sheriff named Joseph T. McKinney, and they had 4 more children together before they separated sometime between 1910 and 1915 and she moved to California.
My great grandfather, John Henry Rollins, Jr., was the grandson of James Henry Rollins, who became a member of the Mormon Church shortly after it was organized in about 1830. James Henry's father died in a ship wreck on Lake Erie in about 1820, when James Henry was only about 4 years old. His mother took James Henry and his two sisters, Mary Elizabeth Rollins (later Lightner, who was also a plural wife of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church), and Caroline Rollins from their home in New York to live with her sister and brother-in-law, who were living in Ohio at the time. That was where James Henry first met Joseph Smith. He worked in a store that Joseph Smith owned in Kirtland, Ohio, at the time when he was only 14 years old.
Later the Mormons were driven from Ohio to Missouri, and then Illinois, Iowa and eventually settled in Utah. James Henry assisted in building the Mormon Temple in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois. After Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed on June 27, 1844, eventually plans were made for the members of the church to move west to the Utah Territory, which James Henry did in 1848. He was with one of the first groups of Mormon settlers to travel by wagon train to Utah, and after living in Utah for a while, the church sent James Henry and his family with other church members to settle the area of San Bernardino, California, around 1851.
In James Henry's autobiography he mentions that when the church called them back to Utah in 1857, his son John Henry Rollins, Sr., who was 14 years old at the time, was nearly killed by Indians on the return journey to Utah. But John Henry did survive, and after living in Utah for 20+ years, finally relocated to Arizona in about 1880. Unfortunately, John Henry Rollins, Sr. died in 1887 at the young age of only 46 years old. It may have been due to a diphtheria epidemic, since four of his sister-in-law's grandchildren also died in a diphtheria epidemic that year.
At the time John Henry Rollins, Sr. died in 1887, his son John Henry, Jr. was only about 22 years old, and he must have had to work hard to help his mother, Nancy Malinda West Rollins, raise the rest of her younger children, although by 1885 he had already married Dortha, and they had their daughter Dortha Evelyn in 1886 and their son John Delbert in 1888.
Ironically, several of John Henry Sr. and Nancy's son's died young including their first-born son, Ephraim Edward, who was 25 at the time of his death in 1887, Moses Porter (or Porter Moses) who died at the age of 21 in another freak accident in 1896, and Charles Watson Rollins, who died as an infant before his first birthday in 1878.
Only two years after his father's death, John Henry, Jr. died at the young age of 24 years old, leaving his wife a widow at 20 years of age, with a young daughter and son to raise by herself. This death must have been hard for John Henry's mother Nancy to bear as well, considering the death of her husband and first born son in 1887.
Following is some information contained in a diary started by John Henry Rollins, Jr.'s wife, Dortha, in about 1937 to 1940 when she was 71 years old. I don't know if there is any connection between the 20-Mule Team Borax story she mentions here and how her husband was killed.
"In 1883 the first load of Borax went out of Death Valley, hauled by the 20 mule teams. A man by the name of Perry who was a stockholder in the Borax mine and also Superintendent conceived the idea of building the large wagons. They were built in Barstow, California. It took two years to complete the building of the wagons and assembling and purchasing the mules at tremendous cost. Several wagons with the 20 mules manned by expert teamsters made the trip together. It was very hazardous at that time.
A young man by the name of Bill Parkinson asked permission to drive the first outfit. For 25 years he drove through that desert and like many others had narrow escapes from death by sand storms, broken wagon wheels in the scorching sun, running out of water for both man and beast, teams would get sick and die. Many were the hardships those faithful teamsters endured but they loved their job. When the freighting days were over and they scattered to different occupations, the most outstanding experiences they would rather relate was of the old 20 mule team days.
When Bill Parkinsen was dying he said to his wife, who had always been his constant companion, 'My dear, I’m heading into Death Valley for the last time, going down grade, no one can put on the brakes. No matter who comes after us or what way they get the Borax out of Death Valley, it will always the 20 Mule Team Borax, we named it that.'"
I don't know if Borax was ever hauled out of mines in Arizona by a 20-mule team which my great grandfather may have worked on at the time of his death. I believe the 20-mule team which hauled borax was taking it out of the Death Valley area of California and not Arizona. Although perhaps he was working in California and not Arizona when he had the accident, or maybe he was hauling some other type of freight when he was killed in the accident in 1889 and died on Christmas day that year.
Della Dale Smith-Pistelli
March 18, 2014
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John Henry Rollins, Jr.'s Timeline
| 1865 |
December 3, 1865
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Minersville, Beaver, Utah, United States
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| 1886 |
October 18, 1886
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Layton, (Now Safford}, Graham, Arizona, United States
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| 1888 |
August 26, 1888
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Safford, Graham, Arizona, United States
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| 1889 |
December 25, 1889
Age 24
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Safford, Graham, Arizona, United States
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1889
Age 23
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Safford City Cemetery, Safford, Graham, Arizona, United States
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