Stephen Rollins Barton

Stephen Rollins Barton was born July 11, 1860, and died February 10, 1944, at the age of 83 from senility according to his death certificate, which I found on www.bartonancestry.com. He died in Greenville, Beaver County, Utah, and was buried there on February 14, 1944, Valentines Day. He was engaged in farming and stock raising as a profession, according to his death certificate. Perhaps his middle name was in honor of his mother's sister's husband. Sarah Esther West Barton's sister, Nancy Malinda West, had married John Henry Rollins, Sr., in June of 1860. Salt Lake Tribune, February 12, 1944:

GREENVILLE -- Stephen Rollins Barton, 83, prominent Beaver county resident, died at the family home Thursday of ailments incident to age. He had been ill for more than a year. Mr. Barton was born July 11, 1860, at Minersville, a son of William and Esther West Barton. When he was a youth the family moved to Beaver, then to Greenville. He married Sarah Elizabeth Miller in December 1883, at Greenville, where they had since resided. They engaged extensively in farming and stock raising. They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in the summer of 1934.

Additional information below was found at this source :

http://greenvilleutahcousins.blogspot.com/search/label/Stephen%20Ro...

Stephen Rollins Barton was the 5th son and 6th child born to William and Esther. William had moved his family to establish a mine in Minersville, first called the “Rollins Mine.” (NOTE: This mine was called the Rollins Mine because James Henry Rollins was the person who discovered it. James Henry Rollins was the father of John Henry Rollins, Sr., who was the brother-in-law of William Barton, since his wife, Sarah Esther West Barton's younger sister, Nancy Malinda West Rollins, had married John Henry Rollins, Sr.)

William Barton built the first log home in Minersville where Stephen was born. Even though Stephen was born into a polygamist family (William had married Mary Williamson in 1857), he would never remember both families living together. In 1862 Mary (first child born in 1863) moved to a house near the mill where William worked in Beaver and Esther and children lived in the adobe house William built on the corner of third East and third North in Beaver, later moving to Greenville.

In 1874 at age 13 Steve went to work hauling water. He drove various teams for 45 days at $1 a day. With the money he bought “an old cow, two changes of underwear and a $9 pair of Buckingham Boots.” A few months later, 1875, he was kicked in the knee by a horse that left him so lame he had to use a stick for a cane. Unfortunately just one month later he was thrown off a horse. The horse’s heels hit him as she tipped over and broke his leg in two places.

He “bawled and cussed” but his new boot had to be cut off! They did what they could to help him, but the upper break was never discovered, which left his right leg nearly one inch shorter than the left. Because of being lame, he was unable to do heavy work, so became a guard with his older brothers at the Beaver County Jail. John D. Lee was incarcerated at the time in Beaver. Stephen became convinced that Lee was made the “scape goat” for the Mountain Meadow Massacre. Unfortunately this experience caused him to have very negative feelings towards the LDS church, influencing his thinking the remainder of his life.

In 1883, at age 23, Stephen married Sarah Elizabeth Miller. He owned two cows and a yellow horse named “Coyote.” Shortly after they were married, Sarah and Steve went on a horseback ride together. Sarah was on Coyote, who took advantage of Sarah’s lack of horsemanship as well as riding side saddle and ran just fast enough to stay some distance away from the slower horse Steve was riding. Coyote nearly unsaddled Sarah as he headed for home. The story was a source of friendly jibes for a long time.

The couple lived at Grandma Barton’s in Greenville for a short time until they could get together enough furniture to move into one of the log homes Steve and his brother John built in Greenville. The homes were about 18' X 20' feet. Steve and Sarah lived in the log house until 1903. All of the children (William, Adelaide, Fletcher, Blanch, Barbara, Sherman, and Hilda) except for the youngest, Annie, were born in the log house. During this time Stephen worked on a series of cattle drives, accumulating many harrowing and interesting stories. Steve, along with his brothers, acquired a good deal of acreage in Greenville, and made his living mostly by raising cattle.

Grandpa Stephen Rollins was a well educated man, having attended public and private school for 12 years in Beaver, then the University of Deseret in Provo and the Beaver Central School. He was very strict about honesty and attendance to duty, and made certain his children were taught well. He took plenty of time to do a job well, was a self-made carpenter, practical veterinarian, and expert horseman. He was a courageous and outspoken man who hated weakness in others.

He passed away at his home in Greenville in February 1944 at the age of 83.

The information below was taken from a document written by Steve's niece entitled, "Our Eternal Legacy, the story of William, Esther and Mary Barton," written by Sarah Esther Barton Rollins and Sherman Stewart Barton, who was a researcher of the document. The typing and editing of the document was done by Kerril Sue Rollins, the daughter of Sarah Esther. Here Sarah writes about her Uncle Steve:

Steve was a tall slender man of six feet. Because of a broken leg that he received at the age of fifteen, he walked with a limp. Your author remembers him as being very kind to her: "I along with my other brothers and sisters, carried our drinking water from Uncle Steve's artesian well, and many times, when I stopped for a while to visit with his granddaughter, Esther Barton (Fletcher's daughter), he made me stay and eat supper with them. And Aunt Said usually served home-made cottage cheese with cow's cream. How we all enjoyed it? Once when I was going home from town on my mare, Pet, I gave her the rein and let her run too fast. When we began nearing our home lane, which turned west at a 45 degree angle, I flew off my mare. She cut the corner so close that I had to raise my leg in order to keep it from being injured on the corner fence post. Uncle Steve was in his yard, watching me as I was tearing down the road, and even before I fell off and landed with a belly-flop on the hard ground, he was running as fast as his seventy-year-old legs would permit. He reached me in record time, lifted me up and patted me, and asked if I was alright. "Are you hurt, Esther," he kept asking me. When he was certain that I was alright, he helped me back on Pet who had been trained to stop dead still when her rider fell off, and I was back on my merry way down the country lane, heading toward home."

Steve was a successful farmer and cattleman and was a perfectionist in all he did. He was also a very high-minded person. He believe emphatically in higher education and saw to it that every one of his children who so desired attended the University of Utah. Some of his children later taught school. Sherman even went so far as to finish his master's degree in biology when he was in his fifties. Steve himself attended the Brigham Young University when it was known as the Brigham Young Academy. Steve married Sarah (Said) Miller on December 24, 1883, and became the father of nine children: David (who died in infancy), Adelaide Banks, Stephen Fletcher, Sarah Blanche Toone, Barbara Ellen, Sherman Stewart, Hilda Jane Mathews, Amasa, and Annie Orilla Williams. Steve died at the age of eighty-four on February 10, 1944, and was buried int he cemetery at Greenville, Utah.