John Barnum (1797)

Born 1 Jul 1797 in Danbury, Fairfield, Connecticut, United States

Ancestors

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Patrick Barnum [send private message]

Biography

This profile is part of the Barnum Name Study.

The Barnum Family, 1350-1907 mistakenly shows him as the son of his great grandfather. The same source says that, in 1812, he went out with John Jacob Astor on a fur trading expedition. From that date onward, he was supposedly not heard from again. John Jacob Astor (born 17 JUL 1763, Waldorf, Germany - d. 29 Mar 1848, New York, New York) was a fur magnate and founder of a renowned family of Anglo-American capitalists, business leaders, and philanthropists. His American Fur Company is considered the first US business monopoly. Astor started a fur-goods shop in New York City about 1786, having learned about the fur trade from a fellow German immigrant aboard the ship that brought him to the US Benefiting from a treaty between England and the US (1794) that opened up new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region, and from shrewd dealings with Indian tribes, by 1800 he had amassed $250,000 and become the leading figure in the fur trade. Given permission to trade in ports monopolized by the British East India Company, he made lucrative fur transactions in China (1800-17). His plan to establish a network of fur-trading posts around Astoria (now in Oregon) failed, however, when the British captured the post during the War of 1812 (Jun 1812-Dec 1814). It might well be that John Barnum was captured or killed during the battle for Astor's trading post at Astoria.

Sources

• The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records - White, Lorraine Cook, ed. (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 1994-2002) Vol. Danbury, Page 10
• Barnum, Noah G., The Barnum Family, 1517-1904 (Privately Printed, Albion, NY, 1904)
• Barnum, Noah G., The Barnum Family, 1350-1907 (Privately Printed, Albion, NY, 1907)
• Barnum, Eben Lewis & Barnum, Francis. Genealogical Record of the Barnum Family Presenting a Conspectus of the Male Descendants of Thomas Barnum, 1625-1695 (Meals Printing Co., Gardner, Mass., 1912)