Sarah Estella Barton

On July 12, 1896, William and Esther's beloved daughter, the family songbird, died of complications from childbirth. She had been very ill and in much pain for several days. Then the baby was born dead, just a little while before Estella passed away. Fletcher, Stephen's son, remembers the last time he saw his Aunt Telly. He was looking through the window at her just the day before she died. She was lying in bed, so still and white. Daphne remembered seeing her in her casket and in her arms lay her beautiful baby. No one could take the lace of dear, lovely Telly. Her brothers were so overcome with grief that they well-known Barton Quartet, like the mill, became still. Their hearts were too heavy with sorrow. Again Grandma Esther was composed, but she too suffered a broken heart. Grandpa William, in his heavy anguish cried, "Oh, God, let me die before we have to lose another. I can bear this kind of grief no longer." Estella, dying at the age of thirty-four, had left her husband, Morgan Griffiths, and their two little girls, Lennie and Edith. Grandma Esther and her son Jack took these little girls and raised them.

Estella's death was especially hard for Jack and Stephen. They had sung so many songs together with their sister. Daphne said that nearly every fourth of July Jack and Estella sang "The Star Spangled Banner" as a duet in the program held in the Greenville Ward Chapel. It was not until Jack had children of his own that he finally became able to sing again.