Bishop James S. McNiven of near Burlington in Bighorn County a prominent stockgrower and farmer of this fertile region and also an active and successful worker in the Church of the Latter Day Saints, is a native of Highlands of Scotland, where he was born on June 22, 1848 and exhibits toward the land of his adoption and especially the portion of it in which he lives the same loyalty and devotion that his forefathers did to clan and its interests, of which they were conspicuous and serviceable members in the stirring times of the border wars between his native country and the lowlands. His parents were John and Jeanette (McNiven) McNiven, scions of the old Scottish families. When he was three years old his father died and ten years later his mother emigrated with her children to the United States, heroically braving the perils of the sea at the time increased and intensified by the Civil War in this country and afterwards resolutely undertaking and enduring the long and dangerous trip across the plains to Utah where they settled in Morgan county where her son James was reared and educated. As soon as he was able to conduct an independent enterprise he went to farming and carried on the business for some years. He was then sent to Arizona on a church mission and remained two years. At the end of this period he came back to Utah and located in the southern part of the territory where he carried on a thriving industry in farming and raising stock until 1894 when he moved to Wyoming and took up his residence on the land which he now owns and cultivates two miles southeast of Burlington. Here he has a beautiful farm of 240 acres and raises cattle and horse in large numbers and good crops of cereals and hay. He is a man of great public spirit deeply interested in the welfare of his section of the state, holding a considerable portion of the assets of the Townsite Co. of Burlington, and using it to good advantage in the development and improvement of the town. Since 1886 he has been a Republican in politics and has given to the affairs of he party attentive and serviceable devotion serving as chairman of his precinct organization. In church work he has been loyal and zealous from his young manhood and by the merit of his services on missions and in other respects has risen to influence and consequence in church circles having been the first bishop set apart in the Bighorn stake, and being still in the full exercise of his official duties. He was married in 1872, at Salt Lake City to Miss Lydia Littlefield, a native of England but during the greater part of her Mature life a resident of Utah. They have five children living, James R., Violet, Jeanette, May and Sylvia D. Found in the 1880 Census living Morgan City, Morgan, Utah
