James White Barrington (1825 - 1900)

Born 6 Dec 1825 in Alden Center, Alden, Erie, New York, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Phoebe Rachel (Bennett) Barrington — married 6 Jan 1847 in Pennsylvania, USA

Descendants

Died 29 Jan 1900 at age 74 in Mission Hill, Yankton, South Dakota, United States

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Biography

James White Barrington was born 6 December 1825 and died 29 January 1900. He married Phoebe Rachel Bennett.^[1] Note that his Find A Grave memorial says incorrectly that he was born in 1822. The photo of the headstone clearly says 1825.

He died of heart disease at the age of 75 years and 1 month. He was a blacksmith in later years, and a lumberman and farmer. He married Phoebe Bennett in 1847. They had 13 children, 4 of whom died in infancy.

• Fact: Residence (1850) Gratiot, Lafayette, Wisconsin, United States
• Fact: Residence (1860) Wiota, Lafayette, Wisconsin, United States
• Fact: Residence (1870) Wisconsin, United States
• Fact: Residence (1880) Township 94 Range 55, Yankton, Dakota Territory, United States
• Fact: Burial Mission Hill, Yankton, South Dakota, United States

Sources

1. ↑ Find A Grave: Memorial #98215826 for James W. Barrington

• "Family Tree," database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : modified 20 April 2021, 20:54), entry for James White Barrington (PID https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:9KP9-YJM ); contributed by various users.
• "United States Census, 1840," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHY4-F63 : 2 March 2021), James W Barrington, Alden, Erie, New York, United States; citing p. 179, NARA microfilm publication , (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll ; FHL microfilm .

Notes

Note N01330James W. Barrington came from Alden Center in Erie County, New York. He left sometime between 1843 and 1846 when he was 18 or 21 to make a new life in Wisconsin Territory. He went first to Pennsylvania where he stayed for awhile in Warren County, in northwestern Pennsylvania which is just south of the New York state line.

James was the eldest of six children, the firstborn son of Samuel and Amanda Foote Barrington. He was born in the town of Alden Center in Erie County, New York on Dec. 6, 1825. His five younger siblings were Betsey, Niles, Charles, Mary and Samuel. Their grandparents, Abigail and James White Barrington lived nearby.

While in Warren County he became acquainted with the Bennett family and learned that some of the Bennetts were also planning to go to Wisconsin Territory. There he met and married Phoebe Rachel Bennett who was known as Rachel. She was the eldest of nine children of Asaph B. Bennett and Lydia Esther Babcock. Rachel was born in Sugar Grove, Warren County, Pennsylvania in February 1833 and she was named after her maternal grandmother, Rachel Peck. Three of the Bennett sisters of this generation married three Barrington brothers and a fourth sister married a Boughton. In the next generation one of the Boughton daughters married a Barrington first cousin. According to obituaries James and Rachel were married on Jan. 6, 1844 in Pennsylvania. While the month and day are no doubt correct, the year was probably 1847. The original source for this information may have been an old bible. The year 1847 could have been misread as 1844 since sevens and fours look similar, particularly if handwritten and faded.  If they were married in 1847 James was 21 and Rachel 14, yet still a very young bride. Shortly after their marriage James and Rachel left Pennsylvania and went to Gratiot in Lafayette County, Wisconsin Territory. Many of the Bennetts and all of James' siblings soon came to Gratiot and nearby Wiota, too.

Lafayette County was formed in 1847 and named after Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the Revolutionary War and friend of William S. Hamilton who was the son of the American statesman, Alexander Hamilton and the first settler of Gratiot. The first white settlers, domestic and foreign, were drawn there by the discovery of lead mines. They came from the eastern and southern states to what was then the western frontier of this country. In the late 1830s advertisements promoting the rich, fertile farmland and great virgin timberland abounding in Wisconsin Territory were being circulated along the Eastern seaboard. The rush of settlers to southern Wisconsin after the Blackhawk Indian War in 1832 was the most rapid settlement in United States history up to that time. Wisconsin was originally part of the Northwest Territory and became a Territory in its own right in 1836 to become the 30th state of the Union on May 29, 1848. There was phenomenal growth and, by 1850 its population had nearly tripled to 304,456.

One can only imagine the hardships they must have endured as they traversed the hilly, timbered terrain in the foothills of the Alleghenies. Roads, where they existed at all, were just dirt trails, and sometimes had deep muddy ruts, depending on the weather. Part of the journey must have been by oxcart and covered wagon until they reached the Allegheny River. From there they may have boarded a steamboat which took them to the Ohio River, then to the Mississippi River and finally, the Pecatonica River in southwestern Wisconsin. This could have taken months and may have been a thousand miles or more. By 1845 steamboats were ascending the Pecatonica from the Mississippi. Travel by stagecoach on old roads to Gratiot and other points was common. The Mineral Point Railroad did not reach town until the Fall of 1856.

Gratiot is located about thirty miles from Dubuque, Iowa. The first plat of the village of Gratiot, at the junction of the Wolf and Pecatonica streams, was laid out in 1835 and was then generally known as Wolf's Ford. The first store in the village, a grocery store, was opened in 1838. There was a post office in 1839 and the first sawmill was built that year in the northeast corner of Gratiot. James Barrington later purchased this sawmill which he ran with his younger brother Niles for several years.

Most of the early settlers were illiterate. Their children learned to read and write when the first one room schools were established. The first church in Gratiot, the Kingsley Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church, was not built until 1871. Until then ministers, called circuit riders, went from town to town to conduct services in the settlers homes and perform baptisms and marriages. These events were duly noted in the family bible. Vital records were not required to be recorded until 1907.

Babies were born at home, with a midwife or family member in attendance. Anyone, with little training, could be a doctor and home remedies were the medicines used. In 1845 and 1846 the ague and bilious fever affected nearly everyone. Many settlers in Gratiot perished during the dreaded cholera epidemics during the 1840s and early 1850s. The first burials were on family cemetery plots, sometimes in unmarked graves.

Rachel delivered her firstborn, Martha, in March of 1849 when she was sixteen. The following year, on Sept. 21, 1850 the census listed James and Rachel, one year old Martha, and their first son, Niles, one month old. Also living with them were three of James' siblings; Niles (18), Mary (12) and Samuel (10). James and Niles were listed as lumbermen.

A brother, Charles, came with the others but was living elsewhere, probably as a hired farmhand. Betsey, the second oldest sibling, stayed behind in Alden Center, presumably to look after their elderly grandparents who lived nearby. It is not known how Niles, Mary and Samuel came to be living with James and Rachel. But it does seem that something tragic must have occurred for alll of these children to be separated from their parents when they were so young. It has been said that their parents died in a house fire. The family was last listed together in the 1840 census of Alden Center, the year that Samuel was born. By 1850 the parents were not found in the census and the children were living with their brother James.

On Aug. 31, 1853 James purchased a forty acre parcel of land from John Thompson with a mortgage of 0. This place is about one and one-half miles north of Gratiot in Wiota township on what is now Pecatonica Road. There were several transactions over the next two decades as they farmed more land and prospered. At one time James owned 237.5 acres and by 1870 he owned real estate valued at ,800 and personal property worth ,400, a substantial net worth in those years.

In 1857 Niles started a whiskey selling business, the first business in the nearby village of Riverside. This village was demolished by a tornado in 1944 and no longer exists. Niles drowned two years later while rafting logs down to Illinois on the Mississippi River. James later sold the sawmill.

In 1858 Betsey and her husband, Ed Blanchard, left Alden Center and came to Wiota with their two children. They also brought their recently widowed grandfather who was 82 and the orphaned and mentally retarded son of Luther Bennett who died on the banks of the Ohio River while enroute to Wisconsin. Grandfather Barrington went to stay with James and Rachel. Betsey and her family moved in next door and their brother Charles and his family lived on the other side. By this time James and Rachel had three living children and had lost their firstborn son who died in infancy.

On Dec. 15, 1860 Ed Blanchard and Charles Barrington bought ten acres from Richard Smith with a mortgage in the amount of 0 to be paid in two installments of at an interest rate of 7%. The parcel became a family cemetery and was located on Riverside Road near where the Barringtons lived. It became part of the Andrews family homestead and is now known as the Houghtaling Andrews cemetery. Grandfather Barrington was probably the first to be buried there although his gravestone has never been located. Three of James and Rachel's infant children and an infant grandchild are also buried there. Their firstborn son Niles died before the cemetery plot was purchased and his grave has not been located.

When Martha married Michael Sherman in 1864 they lived across the road from James and Rachel. The Homestead Act was passed in 1862 entitling virtually anyone over the age of 21 to claim a 160 acre parcel of land. The homesteader had five years to farm, build a proof house and improve the land for a mere filing fee. Mike and Martha Sherman were the first of the Barrington family to leave and they moved to Woodbury County, Iowa in 1870 to homestead there and later settled near Niobrara, Nebraska.

A few years before this some of the Bennett relations led the way when they left Wisconsin to homestead first in Iowa and then Nebraska. Rachel's unlce, Andrew Peck Bennett known as "Uncle Andy" and his wife Miriam, went first to Ringgold County in Iowa in the late 1860s. Then, on October 5, 1871 Andrew, his brother John and nephew John set out for Nebraska with a team of two horses and a spring wagon. Andrew's youngest brother Jesse had gone there before them to claim a homestead near Elgin, Nebraska. They were the first white settlers in what is now Logan Township in Antelope County, Nebraska.

In the Fall of 1878 James and Rachel also left and they went to Woodbury County, Iowa. It is likely that they travelled in a covered wagon, known as a Prairie Schooner. Wagons crossing the plains were usually drawn by a team of two or more oxen which were driven by a teamster or drover, who walked at the left side of the team. Mules were also used and they were harnessed and driven by someone sitting in the wagon seat holding the reins. Another option was travel by rail, which was common by this time. They brought with them four sons and two daughters between the ages of three and nineteen. Sadly, they had to leave behind four of their infant children and a grandchild who died in infancy. A married son, John, stayed in Wisconsin. A daughter, Addie, married Ben Sallee the year before and Ben worked for James as a farmhand. Uncle Samuel Barrington was killed in the Civil War. In 1880 Uncle Charles Foote Barrington went to Edgar in Clay County, Nebraska where he was a hotel keeper. Aunt Betsey Blanchard eventually went to Belleville in Republic County, Kansas in 1883.

In 1979 James and Rachel lived for a time in Plymouth County, Iowa before moving on to Yankton in Dakota Territory. Just three years earlier, in 1877, the trial, conviction and hanging of Jack McCall took place in Deadwood, South Dakota for the shooting of Wild Bill Hickock. He was buried in an unmarked grave north of Yankton.

The "wild west" was an untamed frontier at that time. The railroads were a major incentive to settlement and, from 1878 to 1887 settlers were pouring into the vast area of Dakota Territory which included what is now North and South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. South Dakota became the 40th State of the Union on Nov. 2, 1889.

James and Rachel lived on what was known as the Todd Trading Post on the east side of the James River Bridge. On October 15 of that year a 24 hour blizzard of intense proportions struck southern Dakota. elderly Indians testified that in their lifetime they had never seen such a bad storm so early in the season. they were also there in the Spring of 1881 during the memorable flood of the James River, known by locals as the Jim River.

In 1882 James and Rachel moved once more, to Kimball in Brule County, Dakota Territory where they stayed for eight years. By the Fall of 1890 they were getting on in years and so they moved back to Yankton. All of their children had married except for two sons. Charles married the following year and Michael, the youngest, was fifteen. At one time James was a blacksmith and this was likely to have been at the time they moved back to Yankton. Their daughter and son-in-law, Phoebe and Ed Richards, moved back to Mission Hill near Yankton that same year.

James and Rachel lived in Mission Hill with Phoebe and Ed Richards until James died of heart disease on Jan. 29, 1900. He was 75. Rachel then went to live in Yankton with their son and daughter-in-law, Mike and Philenia Barington until her death from influenza on Mar. 17, 1906. She was 73. They were laid to rest in the old Mission Hill cemetery which is about seven miles southeast of Yankton.

Most of the early Barringtons were tall and had blonde or light brown hair and blue eyes. Whereas the Bennetts had dark hair and dark eyes. Children were often named after grandparents, aunts and uncles and other relatives. Amazingly, there were only a few with the exact same first and second name and these were sons named after the father. Many were known by their middle name or a nickname such as Charlie, Mike or Kitty.

They endured many sorrows and hardships, including the loss of infants and young children from contagious diseases. There was no government support, financial or otherwise, and family members helped one another where needed. They opened their homes and took in the children of siblings and other relatives who fell on hard times.

Sons often worked as farmhands by the time they were in their early teens and daughters married when they were only sixteen or seventeen. In 1900 the average life expectancy for males was 48 and for females 51. Some of our early Barrington ancestors lived into their 80s and a few into their 90s.

Large families, with ten to fourteen children, were common. James W. Barrington and four of his siblings had 23 children among them. There were 77 cousins from these 23 children, not including the extended families who were related through marriage with the Bennetts. Family gatherings, if they had them, must have been quite an event. Twins are prevalent in the Barrington family. 27 of the 36 known sets of twins are descended from James W. and Rachel Barrington and 14 of these 27 are through Martha Sherman and Phoebe Richards.

James and Rachel Barrington were married for 53 years. They had 13 children, including 4 who died in infancy, and no twins. There are 1,333 known natural descendants from 8 of their 9 surviving children. Many more descendants are unaccounted for.

Acknowledgements

• Barrington-203 was created by Debby Powell Massie through the import of Deborah Jean Lowe Ancestors 5 Generations .ged on Jul 15, 2015.