Person:Joseph Barton (1)

BEP Good laughed and always laughed. Liked to tell stories over and over. About tithing and about how much he loved his wife. He was in his 70 and went and met lady in Touquerville and stopped smoking. He lived at same house as Mary Louise in the summers.

Story of Joseph Thomas Barton Joseph Thomas Barton born 16 January 1868 in Kaysville, Davis County, Utah, was the son of John Barton and Elizabeth Walley. His father and mother were converts to the L.D.S. church and had come to Utah from England just three years previous.

When Joseph was six years old his mother died and left him and his one brother and two sisters. His twelve year old sister, Sarah, took over the roll of mother. His mother Elizabeth Walley was the second wife of his father, the first wife, Catherine Curden the mother of eight children, had died many years before. His half brothers and sisters were grown and married, two had come to America with Joseph's parents, two came to America later with their husbands and families, and three had died as small children. His half sister Alice remained in England.

When he was seven he left home and went to live, first with one half brother or sister and then with another. From that day he never knew what it was to have a home that was his own, he was pushed from one to another. And when he was ten years of age he started working for other people and making his home with them while he did chores for his keep.

Joseph's schooling was very meager, at that time schooling had to be paid for and one winter he and his sister worked for their schooling, he was to build the fire in the morning and bring in the wood and coal, and she was to sweep and dust after school, they helped each other. He has told how he didn't have shoes to wear and would wrap his feat in strips or gunny sack and run to school to keep his feet from freezing and after he had the fire going, he would take the strips and hang them by the stove to dry so that he would have them to wear home at night. These were his shoes even in the winter with the snow on the ground.

He only had nine months of schooling, three the first winter and six months when he was thirteen years of age. At that time schools were not graded but were classed according to the reader you were reading and one advanced as fast as they could master the readers. Joseph was a brilliant student and in the last winter he attended school he advanced to the fifth reader which was the last reader in the elementary school at that time.

As spring approached that year he was walking to school one day with his teach and his teacher made comment that now that spring was coming he would probably have to leave school and that he hated to see him go as he said, "If any boy in Kaysville deserves and should have an education, you are that boy." But Joseph told him that as soon as he was needed by his boss of the previous summer, he would have to go and that very afternoon he was called out of school and told that he was needed to help take the sheep to summer pasture and so he left school for the last time.

But although, Joseph never had formal schooling, he was quite well self-educated. He never had the opportunity to go on a mission, but he read and studied the scriptures until he knew the gospel and the scriptures very well. He was familiar with all the Church works and also kept up very well on world happenings. Not having the guiding hand of a mother he met with many pitfalls and trying times. He was allowed to run and do as he wished with no one to check on him. And so sometimes maybe he got into mischief that he would not have had he had the mother's love that all children need. He always seemed to be with the gang that got into someone's strawberry or water melon patch cherry orchard and many an interesting story he tells of these escapade. And yet for all his mischief he was honest and truthful and trusted by all who knew him.

He tells the story of how when the polygamists were on the underground that he worked for the Bishop and many a night he spent under the bridge just outside of Kaysville with his horse tied near by and if a stranger crossed that bridge going into town he would ride his pony through the fields and before the stranger reached town by the road, every polygamist knew that a stranger was coming.

One morning when he came home from the watch at the bridge, the Bishop asked him if he were very tired and when he said not very, the Bishop then asked him to take the horse and buggy and go down to the railroad depot and meet the morning train. He was told that there would be an old woman get off the train and he was to say nothing but he was to take her to John Taylor's home.

When he met the train a lovely looking old woman with a bonnet covering her lovely gray hair got off the train. He took her suitcase and helped her into the buggy without saying a word to her. When they were on the way the lady spoke to Joseph and asked him if he knew who she was and Joseph said, Yes, he recognized her voice as that of Wilford Woodruff. Wilford Woodruff had come to Kaysville in disguise to officiate at the sealing of one of the young girls of Kaysville to President John Taylor. John Taylor was on his death bed. Joseph was a witness to the wedding and when he asked them why they trusted him to do the work he was doing, they told him that he always had been a boy that could be trusted. He was also told that he was known as such a mischievous boy that he could tell the truth and still throw suspecting people off the track.

For several summers during his teen years Joseph worked for sheepmen and spent the summers alone on the range, often not seeing any other person for many weeks. One spring he was hired by a man from Randolph to help gather his herds of cattle from the winter range and drive them to Randolph, Utah. When he reached Randolph a brother of the man whom he was working for bought his horse and then hired him to work for him. It was there that he met his wife, Mary Ann Norris. She was the belle of Randolph.

When the man who hired him was told that he should find him a girl there in Randolph the man answered that he already had one picked out for him. One Sunday afternoon he was in town with a fellow he had met while working in Randolph when they met three girls whom the other fellow knew. They spent the afternoon together and when it came time for the girls to go home Joseph took the two girls who were sisters home and the other fellow took the other girl. The two girls were Mary Ann Norris and her sister Elizabeth .

Mary Ann at that time was living with her grandparents a block from her folks home, so Joseph took Elizabeth home first then walked the other block with Mary Ann. He asked her if he might take her to the dance the following Saturday night. She told him she had a tentative date with a fellow who was working out of town on a ranch, but that if he was not there by five o'clock Saturday afternoon she would go with Joseph to the dance. The boy did not get into town for the dance so Joseph took her. A few days later he was in the grocery store with his employer when Maryann entered with a basket of eggs to sell and to get some groceries. When she came in the man said, "There's the girl I have picked for you." And when Joseph told him that he had taken her to the dance the Saturday before, he told Joseph to stick with her that she was the pick of all the girls in Randolph. Joseph heeded his advice.

That winter he went into Wyoming to work in the coal mines and the next spring Mary Ann's grandfather went and brought him back to Randolph. They were married at the home of her grandfather 3 May 1890.

Joseph tells of an interesting incident on their wedding night. Her grandfather's house was a humble adobe building of three rooms, kitchen, bedroom and living room. Mary Ann and Joseph were sleeping in the living room and the door between there and the bedroom was open. They lay in bed talking and laughing when all of a sudden the door was shut with a bang. Joseph said, "we've kept grandfather awake and made him mad." Mary Ann told him that that couldn't be as she had never seen her grandfather angry in all her life and she had lived with them most of the time since she was four.

The following morning when her grandfather got up and came through the living room to go start the fire and go out to do his chores he never spoke to them and was very white. Joseph said, "See he is still angry with us." and Mary Ann had to admit that it seemed as if he were. Her grandfather, William Norris, built the fire and went out to milk and when breakfast was ready he came in to eat and sat down without a word. Finally his wife, Caroline, asked him why he had slammed the door the night before and he said that he hadn't. Then he turned to Joseph and asked him if he intended to some day take their Mary Ann to the temple and have her sealed to him, and when Joseph said he hoped some day to be able to, William asked him if he would have their daughter Elizabeth sealed to him also. She had died when she was eighteen years of age and William said that it was she who had shut the door the night before that she had come to him and asked for the sealing to be done.

Fifteen years later when Joseph and Mary Ann were living in Price, Utah and were getting ready to go to the temple with their family Elizabeth again came to Mary Ann, so when they went to the temple she was sealed to Joseph as his second wife.

1. ↑ GPS Coordinates.

   41.04497 / -111.92733

2. ↑ Utah State Archives[1].
3.   Verified 13-Mar-2003