BARKER, CHARLES I.

BARKER, BABBITT, BELL

Posted By: County Coordinator
Date: 1/31/2025 at 23:44:27

BURLINGTON CITY.
(P. O. BURLINGTON)

BARKER, CHARLES I., was born in Westmoreland, Cheshire Co., N. H., June 4, 1826; his parents were Benjamin Barker and Abigail Babbitt Barker ; he was the youngest of thirteen children, ten boys and three girls, all born in the old homestead, on a hill farm back some three miles from the Connecticut River; this large family lived to be men and women, and nine are still living (1879), showing moral habits and vigorous constitutions, not only reflecting credit upon parents, but speaking well for their representative children; the girls grew to be wives and mothers respected by all, and the boys to citizens of various localities, and all have received manifestations of confidence by their fellow citizens in many ways in being selected representatives in the New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts Legislatures, county officers, members of the city government of Boston and Worcester, Mass., Government officers under Pierce and Buchanan's administrations, regimental officers in the last war, etc. These facts are mentioned as much in honor of parents as children. The subject of this sketch was left at the age of 3 years without a father ; but in this misfortune he was spared a mother possessed of those Spartan qualities that did not allow her to sink under the weight of the many cares falling upon her, but who resolutely determined to keep her family together and provide for them a home, aided by the older children, until all were prepared to go forth into the world with habits of morality, industry and economy fully formed; she died at the good old age of 82 years, in March, 1870. In 1845, he left the old homestead, and the first point he made was to secure two terms at two different academies as a little finishing touch to his district-school education back on the rough hills of New Hampshire, obtained only in the winter months ; in the winter of 1845-46, he taught school, and, in the spring, went into a printing office in Keene, N. H., and there and at Newport of the same State, he served two years as an apprentice to that business ; late in 1847, he started out as a journeyman and worked at Barre and Worcester, Mass., until September, 1849, when he left the old Worcester Spy office for the West; he visited Detroit, Milwaukee, Racine, Chicago and other points, and arrived at La Fayette, Ind., late in October, where he at once took charge of the Daily Courier office as foreman, and remained there about fourteen months, the four last of which he published the paper for the estate of its late owner, who died during the summer; he made his arrangements to buy the office at administrator's sale, and would have done so but for the treachery of one who ought to have been a friend; from La Payette he went to Nashville, Tenn., to Washington, D. C, where he spent a winter, and then to Cincinnati, in the spring of 1852, where he soon became foreman of the Gazette office, which office he left in July, 1853, to go to Hamilton, Ohio, where he became editor and part proprietor of the Telegraphy the Democratic paper of Butler Co. ; at the close of 1855, he sold out his interest in the paper and at once went to Bloomington, Ill., where he purchased the National Flag, a Democratic paper, and edited it during the canvass of 1856, which resulted in the election of Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency; after the election, he sold out and went to Indianapolis and took charge of the State printing; in the fall of 1857, he purchased the Democratic Standard, at Anderson, Ind., which he edited until 1863, when he sold out and went into the boot and shoe trade, which he sold out in 1864, and purchased a large flock of sheep and came to Iowa, into Polk Co., and went into the real estate business at Des Moines; in 1865, he disposed of his sheep and went to Memphis, Tenn., and remained two years, connected with the press of that city ; but in the summer of 1867, he came to Burlington, Iowa, and went into the Daily Gazette as part proprietor and one of its editors ; shortly afterward, he purchased the entire office, and conducted the paper until late in 1874, when he sold out, and at once purchased a steam book and job office, and added a bindery, which establishment he is conducting at the present time (spring of 1879). In 1862, he was candidate for Secretary of State before the Democratic State Convention of Indiana and secured a solid Congressional vote with several counties outside for that office, by which vote he felt flattered ; in 1872, he was a delegate from the First District of Iowa to the Baltimore Convention, which nominated Horace Greeley for the Presidency; in 1875, was elected a member of the Council of Burlington, leading all other candidates by a handsome vote ; he has been modest in his aspirations for office ; he has been an earnest, active and consistent member of the Democratic party always. His life has been an active and earnest one, keeping up the habits of his earliest boyhood days, which have been so regular that he has scarcely ever lost a meal on account of sickness ; his tastes run in the line of newspaper life, to which profession he proposes to return at the first favorable opportunity, if life and health be spared. On February 19, 1856, he married Hannah M. Bell, at Hamilton, Ohio, while publishing his paper in Illinois ; she was the daughter of Hon. Daniel S. Bell, formerly a prominent lawyer of Urbana, Ohio, where she was born Feb. 10, 1838 ; after the death of her father in 1849, she lived with her uncle, Geo. P. Bell, a retired merchant, at whose residence she was married ; another uncle, Hiram Bell, represented the Greenville, Ohio, District in Congress early in 1850 ; she is still living, and has been the mother of four children—two boys and two girls—the baby boys dying, one in 1859, the other in 1876 ; the former 18 and the latter 1 month old ; Bell Corwin and Abbie Florence, the former 18 and the latter 9 years old, are left to their parents, and are members of the flourishing high school of Burlington, and have every promise of becoming ornaments of society and a comfort to their parents in their declining years.

Source: BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY
HISTORY OF DES MOINES COUNTY IOWA
CHICAGO: WESTERN HISTORICAL COMPANY, 1879

Transcription typed/proofed as article was originally published in 1879