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| David Buttars and Sarah Keep |
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Father: David Buttar (1822-1911)
Son of Donald Buttars and Betheah [Betty] Rattray
Mother: Sarah Keep (1840-1936)
Daughter of James Joseph Keep and Ann Miller
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| David Buttars family circa 1900 |
Papa's great grandfather,
Charles William Buttars, was born into a 'blended family'. His father's first wife (Margeret Spaulding
1822-1863 and a newborn infant daughter, Margaret -
1863) joined a young son (David
1853-1854) in death, leaving behind 5 more children for her widowed husband to raise - 2 girls and 3 boys, Margery Meek Buttars, Bethea Buttars, John Spalding Buttars,
Daniel Buttars, and Robert Souter or Sutter Buttars.
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| David Buttars 1822 -1911 father of Charles Wm Buttars |
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In March 1866 his mother, Sarah, fled a marriage in London of about 1 year, with an infant daughter, Lucy. In a history (she wrote) Sarah said,
"At the age of eighteen I was self-willed and thought about marriage. My father told us older girls not to get married until we came to the valley. Although I had a great desire to get to the valley, thinking it would be a Heaven on Earth, yet I thought I would please myself."
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| Sarah Keep 1840-1936 mother of Charles Wm Buttars |
Her parents, the Keeps were converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and counseled their daughters to not marry until they had emigrated from England to join other church members in Utah. In her history Sarah details a dream she understood afterwards to be a warning to obey her parents. It influenced her eventual decision to abandon her marriage.
Sarah then explains,
"At the age of twenty-five I married against my parent's wish and they didn't know it for six weeks. Then to my sorrow I found out that my husband had just joined the church to get me, for my father had said I should not marry anyone out of the church. This was his council and I disobeyed him. When I was married my husband told me that it had been my day, but now it was his day. ... My husband told me that if I went to see my folks off that he would push me overboard."
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Details of Sarah's difficult decision are available in a story titled
'Sarah's Choice'. It was written by Shauna Balls, a descendant, from Sarah's own journals. She also has many original pictures and journal/ histories.
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Her parents and family were leaving England for America - perhaps never to be seen again. She loved her husband but he did not want to share her faith. She held very strong convictions that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was led by a prophet with authority from God as the Bible described Christ's church. She also believed that her daughter should be taught these truths.
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She made many sacrifices to live the principles she knew to be right and true. Some of the history of David Buttars and his wives and family may be read in
a history written in 1911 by Lucy Ann Jensen, Sarah's first daughter, (with additions from one written by Archulious B. Archibald and other family histories). Images of Sarah's original hand written pages of history are kindly provided at no cost and may be viewed at a
site maintained by Lana Archibald.
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When just a boy David apprenticed as a shoemaker and initially, upon arriving in Utah about 1854, made it his profession. Lucy's history of their father and Margaret records, "After a year or two, he raised a team of oxen from calves. He then began to farm a little and that year the crickets came and devoured the crops. There was no flour to be found in Lehi. As they had no flour, they ate bran bread and clabber milk. ...
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"With time, conditions in Lehi improved. ... eight years ... [later] Margaret passed away five days [after a birth] at the age of forty one. ... David saw some hard, sad times and had no relatives to help him to care for his little family. David’s daughter Marjory, just 14 years old, helped to take care of the other children."
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To homestead land, one had to live on the land at least six months of each year, for five years. Parcels for homesteading were generally 160 acres or 80 acres. The land was covered with sagebrush, chock cherry and other kinds of trees. It took a lot of hard hand labor to clear them away. Settlers often cleared a little more each year and planted it.
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Sarah met and married David Buttars soon after her arrival to Utah at the home of her sister Mary. We do not have a record of the dissolution of her first marriage. David proposed to Sarah as they walked home from the wedding supper of his oldest daughter Margery.
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Lucy tells us her parents "... were married December 16, 1866 by their bishop in Lehi. David was forty four years old at the time and Sarah was twenty six. ... David adopted Lucy, and Sarah raised his children as if they were her own. His children were well taken care of and got along nicely with their stepmother, Sarah. They loved and honored her as they would their own mother."
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The first child of Charles parents, a daughter they named Sarah Isabelle Buttars, died a few weeks after her birth at Lehi, Utah. Sarah tells us of the tragedy, "... [Our] first child ... died and was buried in the garden until David came home. There she had been dead eight days. David and I buried her ourselves in the graveyard of Lehi. My husband had been to Clarkston to buy us a home. This was June 1868 ..."
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Lucy says,
"In the fall of 1868 David was ordained an Elder and in October moved his family to Clarkston, Cache County, Utah. He built a two-room log house in the fort. Peter S. Barson lived on one side of him and James Myler on the other."
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Sarah also tells about moving and their struggles to settle in Clarkston. " In October 1868 we moved to Clarkston, Utah. That fall the grasshoppers were so bad that we cut up a cow skin and made a rope which three of us dragged up and down the garden to make the grasshoppers fly away and keep them from cutting the grain.
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"There were so many that when they were flying they would darken the sun. ... In [June] 1869 my third daughter was born [Elizabeth Keep Buttars]. Two more years we fought the grasshoppers and the crickets. (In 1871 there were seven clouds of crickets and three clouds of grasshoppers that came and ate everything up). June 15, 1871 my first boy, Charles was born, and eight days after on June 23, 1871 the seagulls came and ate all the grasshoppers and crickets."
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Charles arrived with the crickets, grasshoppers and gulls, as his ready made family consisting of siblings, step-siblings and some of their children,
struggled for their very existence. See other links below.
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In a history of Daniel Buttars, a step-brother (written by his daughter, Archulious B. Archibald), we learn more about the Buttars family life at Clarkston, Utah.
"1871 was a difficult year in the settlement as the Indians became a menace again. It was during this time that Daniel's brother Charles William was born ... As spring passed into summer, the crops were just getting established. That summer the crickets devoured their crops three times. Three times the seagulls descended on the fields and devoured the crickets. The Crickets were so bad that Daniel (who was twelve years old) and his brothers and sisters each took the ends of a rope and drug it over the grain to drive the crickets off for the night to spare the grain. Three times they replanted their crops and in the fall, his father harvested a record crop of 1,300 bushels of wheat.
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"During the 1870s the hardships of pioneer life began to ease. New homes were built, accompanied by barns, granaries, and gardens. A woolen mill was erected. And a rock meetinghouse was completed and in the 1880s a two room schoolhouse built. Life was good in Clarkston ... while the family was living in the fort...
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"By 1880, most of the Indian troubles were over. The family moved out of the fort and built another two room house on their farm north of Clarkston ... Daniel worked on his father's farm and on the railroad. When he was twenty-one years old [1879], his father gave him a team of horses, a wagon, a new pair of homemade overalls, and a quilt. Daniel moved out of the home and went to live with his brother John and his wife. Being a small community, everyone knew everyone else.''
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A great granddaughter,Lana Archibald, kindly provides descendants with access to much information and many photographs on a free
website she maintains. She has compiled many records and writes,
"Charles William Buttars ... was born in the house, north of town, on the hill (known as Buttars' Estate). His folks were early pioneers to Clarkston, coming from England and Scotland. They came to the mountains in Utah because of their religious beliefs, traveling by handcart across the plains."
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Lucy's history (found on Lana's website) continues,
"In 1870, they moved out of the fort onto [David's] farm. There [father] built a two-room log house, and later he built a new two-story white frame house in its place.
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"They decided to sell their home in Lehi and make Clarkston their permanent home. Sarah and David made the trip to Lehi to sell their home with a team of horses and a wagon. The found a buyer for their home, and took some produce as partial payment. One of the items was several bushel of apples. The rough ride back to Clarkston in the wagon bruised the apples so badly that they rotted immediately.
"David and Sarah used their pioneer skills and removed the seeds from the decayed apples. The following spring they planted the seeds in long rows on the slope south of their house. Many of the seeds grew. When they were about three feet high he thinned them to the right distance and gave many of his friends some of his young apple trees. He visited other apple orchards in the valley and got buds from other kinds of apple trees, which he grafted onto some of his own trees.
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"Budding was done by carefully cutting a cross in the bark of the tree. The bud from another tree was placed in the cut; the bark was carefully put back into place. The cut was then bandaged with a piece of cloth. When the bandages were removed in the spring some of the grafts were green and promising, others were dry and dead. Enough survived to provide about a half-acre orchard.
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"David sent to his native Scotland for some gooseberry seeds. His sister sent three different kinds. She had spread them out on sheets of paper to dry; they stuck to the paper. She carefully labeled the seeds and folded the paper with the seeds still sticking and mailed them to David in Utah. The Gooseberry seeds were planted between the apple trees. They grew well and were of a good variety. The orchard was a pride and joy to David and Sarah for many years.
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"By 1870, all of the settlers had moved out of the fort and others began to arrive. As Clarkston grew, David helped to build the Old Rock church house, which was erected in 1870 on the south side of the Town Square.
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"In 1871 he was ordained a High Priest. He believed in paying a good tithing and paying it in full, knowing the Lord keeps his promise that he would open the windows of Heaven and pour down his blessings on all that keep his laws and commandments, for he had proved it to him in the spring of 1871.
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"The cricketts came so bad that when they flew up they would darken the sun, and three times they ate destroyed the crops. Then the crickets came in herds; there were herds of them, one right after the other. After he had done all within his power by driving them, with his children’s help, to the ditch where the chickens could only eat three or four because they were so large, then he did not know what to do for a living because everything had been devoured.
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"He said, 'We will raise something. I have paid my tithing and the Lord will help us. He has said he will help them that help themselves.' He replanted his crops and the cricketts returned. Then here came the seagulls and devoured the cricketts. They would eat until full, then go to the ditch and throw them up, then eat more until they were all gone and then they would fly away. The grain grew again and David raised thirteen hundred bushels of grain, the largest crop he had ever had up to that time.
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"...When David first started to farm he cut the grain with a cradle; a few years later he bought a cropper to cut the grain with and hired six men to flaw it and bind it. He used to cure his wheat for planting with slack and lime and broadcast sowed it by hand. [An old dictionary defines 'flaw' as a small piece or fragment - used like to cut or flay.]
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"David made shoes the first few years in Clarkston. He used to mend all their harnesses. He used wooden pegs for tacks to put soles on, made out of maple, sawed in little wheels, then cut into little pegs. He also made wooden lasts to make the shoes on. The last pair he made was for his stepdaughter Lucy Ann, and he accidentally made one wrong side out. He said, 'I won’t make any more shoes,' and he never did.
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"In the early 1870s, David had a white frame house built. It was large by all the standards of that day. A two-story house with a porch along the front; three dormer windows on the second floor facing east, and two dormer windows facing the south with a veranda below. It was a beautiful house, and overlooked their land and gave a commanding view of the valley."
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| David Buttars home |
Lana Archibald's history of Charles tells an unusual story,
"When [Charles] was about four years old, his finger was accidentally cut off. His mother buried the finger. A few days later, he was crying and saying 'the worms are eating the end of my finger.' So they dug it up and found that the worms were in it.
"Charles got his schooling in Clarkston, in the log school house on the south corner, across the street from the southeast corner of the town square. He completed the five Readers, and his Arithmetic, and took a penmanship class given by Alfred White.
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"Some of the boyfriends in his youth were David and Willie Sparks and Isaiah Thompson [all relatives]. Together they pulled a Halloween trick one night. They tied two tom-cat's tails together and hung them over the doorknob at the bishop's house.
Lucy records, "[Father] was a progressive farmer, always looking to utilize the latest methods and machinery. He bought the first binder in Clarkston. His son Daniel and William Stokes bound on it by hand one year. Then Samuel Thompson and Daniel, bound another year. Then he bought a self-binder that bound with wire. Years later he helped to buy the first header that came to Clarkston, together with Andrew W. Heggie and Peter S. Barson. One year he had sunflowers so bad in some of his wheat that he put it into a stack by itself, and when the thrashers came, they would not thrash it for him. He made a flail and flailed it out by hand, a bit at a time on a wagon cover.
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"He had to haul his grain to Corinne or Ogden by team and wagon to sell it. He would bring back the things his family needed. It would take two and three days to make the trip. He had cows, horses, sheep, pigs and chickens. He also used to plant five to ten acres of potatoes each year. ...
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"When the Logan Temple was being built, he donated one hundred dollars each year until it was finished. David and his wife Sarah did temple work for many of their ancestors and paid for hundreds of more names to be done. ...
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"On June 11, 1884, he married Sophia Jensen as a plural wife. She was a forty three year old single mother from Denmark with two teenage sons, John Hansen (21 Jul 1867) and William Christian Hansen (30 Oct 1870). She continued to live in Logan with her two sons for a time. By 1900 she was living in a rented house next to David and Sarah. David's relationship with her was more that of a caretaker. In 1889, the polygamists were advised by the authorities of the Church to give themselves up instead of being hunted down by the law. On the first day of June 1898, David gave himself up and was fined one hundred dollars. On account of his age, he did not get the six-month jail sentence usually given; he paid his fine and came home a happy man. When the practice of plural marriage ended, to satisfy the request from the Church and the demands of the law, David and Sophie were divorced. However he did continue to support her."
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Charles William Buttars was born and lived surrounded by loving family members. He had two patriarchal blessings in his life, one as a small boy and one in later years.
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Baptized: 31 July 1879
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US 1880 Census Clarkston Utah Charles William Buttars age 9
This record shows that he did not attend school the previous year. |
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Spouse: Angeline Vilate Stewart
Married: 18 May 1892 Logan, Cache, Utah, USA
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Lana Archibald's history gives us several other important dimensions of our great grandfather's life, character and personality.
"Charles courted Angela Stewart on his pony. He first went with her sister Julie. Angie was attracted to him and Julie wasn't, so Angie asked Julie if she could have him. At the age of 21, Charles married Angeline Vilate Stewart in the Logan LDS Temple, sealed for time and all eternity. They were married May 18, 1892. Angela was 18 years old. ...
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"Charles' life was his family and his horses. ...
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"Charles loved his horses as few men do. He doctored them, put them in slings, and ruptured his own side doing it. His horses were beauties and understood his every word. He ran hundreds of head of horses on the range for other people, up in the mountains above Clarkston where they got summer feed. His own little pony "Little Bolly" he rode with pride, a beautiful bay who was eager to respond to the touch of his hand. The people of the town could tell when he was coming by the rhythm of his horse's footsteps. ...
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"He farmed well, an inherited characteristic of the Buttars family. Charles' home and surroundings were scrupulously clean and wholesome. "The Buttars" were know as good citizens, good managers, hard workers, very progressive and loyal people to the community they lived in. They helped it to grow. He was loved and respected by all who knew him. He stood for what was right and honest to the core, regardless of the cost. He was cheerful in disposition and loved to talk and visit with people. He often would sing or whistle. He was always aware of others' needs and was on hand to offer himself or what he had. He was an advisor to many. ...
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| Charles William Buttars 1871 -1908 |
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"He was a well-built man, six feet tall in his stocking feet. He had strong square shoulders, dark wavy hair and grey-green eyes. ...
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Charles' mother, Sarah Keep Buttars, lived in Clarkston, too. He was a very dear son to her. He often went to see her. She had many flower gardens around her home, and when Charles got ready to leave after a visit, she would tuck a sweet pea in his hat band. ..."
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Died: 5 October 1908 Clarkston, Cache, Utah, USA
Buried: 10 October 1908 Clarkston, Cache, Utah, USA
See other links about pioneer grasshopper/cricket problems here or:
Farming the Plains http://www.slideshare.net/DHUMPHREYS/farming-the-plains-problems
Kansas http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/grasshopper-plague-of-1874/12070
Minnesota http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mnbecker/ch31.php
Nebraska http://www.memoriallibrary.com/NE/Antelope/1868/nine.htm
Pictures show us this family were close enough to gather for a family picture as adults. 
