Delbert D. Warburton was born on August 12, 1900 in Grouse Creek, Utah, a son of Richard E. and Laura Amanda DeWitt Warburton.

He had the following brothers and sisters:  Laura Belle, Emily Ida, Mabel Richards, Richard Ernest, Amy May, Thomas DeWitt, Pauline Sophia, Mark Laurie, Ross Dewey, and Karl Golden.

It was a large family and six families shared one car, so when anyone went anywhere arrangements had to be made for transportation. This included going to church, going to dances, and even going to the store. The large house was completed about 1908. Delbert remembered moving into it when he was about eight years old. It was a large house and much of the time more than one family lived in it.

The cousins were very close in friendship and duties and age. There are a lot of stories about going out to gather cattle or horses, about processing the calves in the spring, about driving the cattle to summer range and rounding them up again in the fall. A lot of this was cooperative work. The women of the family, of course, stayed home to cook and care for the children.

Dell was educated in Etna and Grouse Creek.

On April 20, 1921 he married Florence Beatrice Shepherd in the Salt Lake LDS temple. They were the parents of:  Dale LeRoy, Gerald Richard, Robert Shepherd, Dorothy Faye and Odell.

Delbert, Thomas & Ira Warburton

Gerald remembers the community dances held in the basement of the church. There would be a children’s dance first and then the adults had their turn. There was a community orchestra. Mark played the violin. Benches would be moved together and blankets put on them so the tired young children could sleep. The dances were lively and everyone had a great time.

Dale tells about riding in a horse-drawn sleigh in winter to school. The sleigh was driven by Ernest Kimber (one of the cousins). The school was divided into the big room for the older children and the little room for the younger ones. In Dale’s memory all the women teachers were gorgeous redheads. It is true that many of the ladies who came out there to teach, stayed to marry one of the ranchers. Florence was one of them.

Dale said that when Clyde Morris was the principal, a group of the boys climbed up into the attic of the school and jumped up and down on the timbers until the whole school shook. He also tells of pelting the girl’s outhouse with slingshots until the girls would run out screaming. Icy snowballs were another favorite weapon the boys used on the girls.

Grouse Creek Basketball
George Paskett, Herbert Tanner, Delbert Tanner, Roy (Frank) Frost, Arlin Wakefield, Afton (Jack) Wakefield, Ted Hadfield, Winfred Kimber, Delbert Warburton

The boys were very involved in basketball and baseball. The principal rivals for the Grouse Creek groups were Park Valley and Almo, Idaho.
Most of the school children transferred to Bear River High School or Box Elder High School for the eleventh and twelfth grades. This was a traumatic experience for most of them, but sometimes the whole family would move into town at the same time.

The polio epidemic hit Grouse creek and two of the cousins died.

The town was also involved in World War II. Dale, Gerald and Robert were all drafted. Dale spent time in the south Pacific, Gerald in Europe, and Robert in California. The boys were very happy to return to Grouse Creek when their time was up.

Robert remembers the good times growing up in Etna, and the many things associated with attending school in Grouse Creek. All through school they competed with students from Yost and Park Valley in an annual spring track meet. Later competed with Park Valley, Yost, and Almo, Idaho in baseball and basketball.

Dale, Gerald, Robert, Dorothy, Delbert and Florence Warburton

Dorothy recalls the January day she slipped on the ice, cutting her above the eye, which required stitches. She was five or six years old. She and her father were taken to Lucin by sleigh. There they would board the train, crossing the Great Salt Lake to Ogden, taking the Bamburger train to Salt Lake City, where their doctor practiced. For the sleigh ride to Lucin (in frigid cold weather), rocks that had been heated in the oven of the wood burning stove were placed in the bottom of the sleigh, then covered with blankets, as were the occupants.

Florence passed away on November 30, 1948. Dell married Vera Westover and they were later divorced.

He was a rancher in the Grouse Creek area most of his life.

Because of an accident that caused him to be paralyzed from the waist down he was forced to give up ranching.

He passed away on February 20, 1980, at Pioneer Memorial Nursing home in Brigham City, Utah. He is buried in the Grouse Creek Cemetery.