Contributed Photo/Courtesy Edres Bryant Barney: Pictured are, front, from left, Aurelia Stinson, Ida Stinson Farrington, Joseph Pinkney Stinson, Joseph Willie (Bill) Stinson, Sarah Frances Farrington, Sarah West June Stinson, and Allie Stinson; back, from left, Billie Stinson, Porter Stinson, Clifford Farrington, Annie Stinson, and James (Jim) Stinson.
Column By Edres Bryant Barney
Early 1888, the lives of Joseph Pinkney Stinson and Sarah West June Stinson and their children were forever changed when they welcomed the Mormon missionaries into their Goshen, Alabama home; heard their message, and became members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Joseph was born to Joseph Terrell Stinson and Hannah Patience Moore on 4 Jan. 1850 in New Providence, Alabama. Sarah West was also born in New Providence on 27 Feb. 1852 to James Henry June & Elizabeth Rebecca West. They were both children of farmers, grew up there, and married in 1872. A desire to be closer to more church members, 1889 found them in Safford where Joseph had employment at the flour mill and where 1 ½-year-old Alma died in 1890, the results of whooping cough, not having fully recovered from measles.
They moved to Mesa where their last daughter was born. Sanford, Colorado was their next home. Due to winters being too cold with the growing season too short, they relocated to Espanola, New Mexico where their last child, a son, completed their family. Another move took the family back to Mesa. With flowery letters on the merits of Pima from Joseph’s sister and husband, Rosebell and Jim White, they returned to the Gila Valley, this time to Pima. They settled in a two-room lumber house two blocks from the school, with the two wagon boxes serving as bedrooms. Then a four-room brick home near the depot (current site of Bush & Shurtz) became home until the children were grown, married, and had homes of their own.
Joseph appreciated animals and was never happier than when he could doctor someone’s sick cow or horse.
Sarah became ill and passed away in 1906, with Joseph following a year later. This left five children to be cared for by two older brothers, as the three oldest girls had already married. Ida married Clifford Farrington, Annie (Layfayette Judd), Bettie (Charley Ferrin), James (Agnes Nuttall), Allie (Alvin Lines), Aurelia (Rube Duke), Willie (Bernice Steel) and Porter never married.
Joseph and Sarah have among their posterity, school teachers, medical people, engineers, farmers, contractors, miners, and church workers. Many of these call the Gila Valley home.
The information for this story is from the Pima Centennial Book. This and other individual and family stories may be found at the Eastern Arizona Museum in Pima, Thursdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
