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Title: Sol Barth of St. Johns: The Story of an Arizona Pioneer by Charles B. Wolf ISBN: 0-7596-7633-X Publisher: Authorhouse Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95

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Average Customer Rating: 2 (1 review)

Rating: 2
Summary: Perpetuating the Legend of a Shyster
Comment: There is no doubt Sol Barth had a large impact on the development of St. Johns, Arizona. He used every gamblers trick of the trade to swindle the Hispanics out of their land and cattle, and as soon as he invited the Mormons to settle in the area, he cultivated a strife between the Mormons and the Hispanics to keep them constantly at odds with each other. The effects of this division are still present today. You have to give him credit for successfully playing both groups against each other so well!

In this book, Mr. Wolf mainly accounts from the stories passed down through the Barth family. There are no proper citations, no bibliography, no substantiating facts. Also, Mr. Wolf leaves out quite a bit of the more dirtier deeds of Sol Barth (and his brothers), which are documented in territory newspaper and legal paper archives. He tries to discredit Sol's imprisonment for embezzling from Apache County by saying many more were involved and were never brought to justice. As much as a sly gambler and opportunist Sol Barth was, why would he want to "show his hand" at dipping into the Apache County funds? The only exception of who he may have trusted while doing his dastardly deeds were his brothers, or maybe the person that was murdered while his trial was going on.

Here are a few clarifications for some of the inconsistancies in this book:
1)Even though Mr. Wolf states Sol Barth had "squatter's" rights over land he won gambling, Sol Barth never applied for any homestead patents in Arizona or New Mexico Territory.
2)There were Hispanics already living and sheepherding in the St. Johns (El Vadito Land grant) area long before Sol Barth attemped to settle in the area. For the area to be known as the El Vadito land grant, it had to be issued many years before the 1862 Homestead Act.
3)He didn't "bring" Manuel Antonio Candelaria to Concho as insinuated on page 15. With his newly started family, Don Candelaria was moving back to the area he knew and grew up in as an Apache captive. Other Hispanic families had settled in the Concho area during the period of time when Don Candelaria left the tribe to find a wife.
4) If Solomon Barth and Refugio Landovaso got married in Cubero on June 24, 1884, as Mr. Wolf states in his book, it would have had to be by a judge on that date. They were married January 21, 1885 by Father Badilla at the St. Johns the Baptist Catholic Church, more than a year after Refugio Landavaso gives birth to Cecilia on (baptism) December 8th, 1883. This was not very respectable during the Victorian era. I could only imagine how many ears burned over the town gossip on this breach of honor at the time!
5) Solomon Barth never gave anything to anyone out of the kindness of his heart, there always had to be a benefit in it for him. He had everyone believing he was very generous, and looking at it from another viewpoint, he was. For instance, it was common for him to supply the beer at the card games where he won loads of cattle and land. It is his daughters, Cecilia and Clara Barth, that upheld a decent level of morality and honor in the St. Johns community. It is their generousity and commitment to community that gained respect for the Barth name.

I have to give some credit to the stories told in this book. One star is for enough information given to accurately research them. The second star is for that the stories are somewhat entertaining despite how truthful they really are. In comparison of this book against archive records, it is surely evident that Mr. Wolf has some of the same attributes as his conniving, opportunistic great grandfather did. They both liked to tell a story, to make a gain or a buck, and to make themselves look bright and wonderful no matter how many embedded layers of dirt. This book is an attempted to continue to glorify a pioneering blackleg of Arizona.