Goodrich Barbour and the Civil War Quartermaster

      Around two o’clock on a February day in 1862, Goodrich Barbour, a partner in a wholesale dry goods firm, left Burnet House, Cincinnati’s grandest hotel, and headed down the street. A fellow resident of the hotel approached and called out to him.

  Goodrich didn’t answer until he was addressed a second time. It wasn’t someone he was happy to see.

  “How do you do, Captain Dickerson?” he replied briskly. John H. Dickerson was assistant quartermaster for the Union Army, Department of Ohio, in charge of supplying troops with whatever was needed, be it clothing, mules or steamboats.

  “Mr. Barbour, did you insult my wife on Sunday last at dinner?” Dickerson asked.

  “Not that I am aware of, sir.”

  “Why did you do it?” Dickerson persisted.

  “Because the atmosphere did not suit me,” Barbour replied.

  “Well how do you like this ‘atmosphere?’” Dickerson said, punching Barbour with a blow that should have dropped an ox, according to one reporter.

  Barbour staggered back a few paces. 

     There are differing accounts of exactly what happened next. A story in the Buffalo Commercial reported that Barbour lunged for Dickerson as the two fell to the sidewalk. Dickerson got him in a headlock, punching Barbour in the face repeatedly with his right fist. By-standers immediately gathered and began shouting like kids at a middle-school fight, some yelling for the one or the other to “get him,” others urging them to break it up. Cooler heads succeeded in pulling the two men apart and hauling them to their feet. Barbour’s face was a bloody mess; Dickerson appeared unscathed.

  But in the Cincinnati Enquirer version, after Dickerson attacked Barbour, Barbour grabbed him by the collar and threw him to the ground on his back. It was Barbour who stood over Dickerson “having him completely under his control.” Dickerson’s friend grabbed Barbour by the back of his neck as some men rushed out of the store and pulled them apart.

    

  There was a related incident from the day before that everyone was talking about at the Burnet House. Cincinnati planned a grand celebration for Washington’s birthday, February 22nd, 1862. Residents and businesses hung masses of banners, evergreens, red, white and blue muslin, flags and streamers from their windows. Schools, public offices, banks and other businesses were closed, and a parade was organized. Public and private buildings had been asked to illuminate their windows at dusk.

  Captain Dickerson and his wife Julia were standing at the corner of Walnut and Fourth Streets watching the parade when a telegraph delivery boy found the captain. His mother was dying in Terre Haute; he needed to come quickly. Dickerson  hurried to buy a train ticket for the next train, departing that evening. Rejoining his wife later, she reminded him of the citywide plan to light each street-facing window. Wouldn’t it be unseemly under the circumstances, she asked, to allow their rooms to be lit? It would be improper with an impending death in the family, he agreed. She should not allow it.

  Around dusk one of the hotel servants arrived at the door with a basket of candles. He left after she told him to go. Sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m., some men standing outside the hotel noticed the windows in Room 48 were dark and called a hotel clerk’s attention to the matter. The boy was sent back upstairs; Julia refused to let him in, and he went back to the hotel desk to report what happened. He was told to return with a message from the manager, Mr. Johnson: there would be no exceptions made. All front-facing windows were to be lighted.

  Julia demanded to see Johnson. When he came to her room, she did not explain why she wanted her windows kept dark and continued to refuse to cooperate. Mr. Johnson offered to move her to a room in the back of the hotel, but Julia refused that also. The boy was ordered to light the candles, which he did, and the two left.

  In one version of the story, a few minutes later there was another knock at her door, to which she did not answer. Later she said she heard the hotel manager,  Johnson, out in the hall telling the young servant to force open the door. Her door was opened; the boy entered and lit candles in all the windows. The impropriety of a male entering her room when her husband was out, and she had not given access, angered her. She blew out the row of candles, whereupon the servant boy re-lit them.

  In another article, when Johnson returned to her room he told her he would put a guard in the room to watch the candles if she did not cooperate. She made no resistance. However, a group of boarders gathered on the balcony nearest her window, saw her shut the window blinds, then reach between the slats to snuff out every other candle.

Gossip swept Burnet House. Mrs. Dickerson clearly wasn’t a patriot, a Union patriot. She must be a “Secesh!”

  

  Actually, it was true. This Union Army captain’s wife was sympathetic to the Confederacy. Julia Armadine Pratte was born into the most prominent French-American family in St. Louis, in a state with a large number of Southern sympathizers. Her family had owned slaves, and the order of nuns who taught her owned slaves.

  Her father was Bernard Abadie Pratte, Jr., former Missouri legislator and twice mayor of St. Louis. His father established himself as an official trader with the Osage and the Omaha tribes and became brigadier general of the territory. A marriage aligned him with the powerful Choteau family, and wise business alliances in fur trading followed.

  Julia was described in a St. Louis newspaper as “one of the creole belles noted for beauty of face and form and for wonderful musical talent,” queenly in appearance, with “dark, flashing eyes.”

  “Although deeply sympathetic to the South, she married Capt. Dickerson of the United States Army,” the reporter wrote.

 

  Burnet House was a luxury residential hotel, the kind of place where presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, and other nationally-known figures, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, stayed. It was crowned with a dome 42 feet in diameter and sweeping views of the Ohio River. When it opened in 1850, it was said the furniture in the ladies’ drawing room alone cost $7,000 (about $260,000 in 2022 value).

  As a residential hotel, people took rooms or apartments for years, and had their meals in one of the four dining rooms. (One was just for children and the family servants accompanying them.)

  The day after the candle incident, Julia went down to dinner with a relative but found her accustomed table taken. The waiter seated them at another table. Shortly after, Goodrich Barbour and his wife Harriet entered and were seated at the same table. The two ladies exchanged pleasantries.

  Then Goodrich leaned over and whispered something in Harriet’s ear. One article said he asked his wife, “Is this Mrs. Dickerson?” He and Harriet got up, and according to one account, Goodrich said -- loud enough for others to hear -- he did not want his wife associating with someone with Secesh views. He spoke curtly to the waiter, making somewhat of a scene, taking him to task for escorting them to that table.

  Another article said the opposite – that he was discrete, and careful that he was not overheard. However it happened, Julia Dickerson immediately rose, put on her wraps and left the hotel outraged.

 

  Captain Dickerson’s mother died in Indiana. Before he even met with his wife on his return, he’d heard the way she’d been publicly insulted, and had her privacy invaded. He demanded to have the manager and one of the hotel clerks come to his room. There, he confronted them over the lighting of the candles. When they admitted that candles were lit in the windows over Julia’s objections, Dickerson attacked them, causing them to run from the room.

  This was when Dickerson charged out of the hotel, accompanied by a friend, to search for Goodrich Barbour. After awhile, they sat on the steps of Heielbach, Seasongood & Co.’s store, knowing Barbour would pass by on the way to his business.

  After the fight, Barbour brought charges against the captain, who was arrested and brought into court the same day. Judge James Saffin found Dickerson guilty of assault and battery and fined him $35 – about $1,250 in 2022 value. But in the chivalric code of expected behavior of the time, he said he did not blame Dickerson for defending his wife’s honor. However, as a military officer, the judge said, he had to be held to a high standard.

  The newspaper reported that Dickerson “cheerfully” paid his fine and left the courtroom with his attorney.

    

  The story spread on the wires and appeared in places like Chicago and Buffalo. The Chicago Tribune reported that Dickerson had gotten himself into the papers “quite unenviously.”

 

Epilogue

 

  Dickerson, a West Point graduate, had a fascinating military career prior to the Civil War. He served in the Mexican-American War in New Mexico, in the Seminole War in Florida, and in the Utah Expedition (also known as the Utah War against Mormons), in addition to other postings. He continued to serve as a quartermaster until March 31, 1864, when he resigned from the Army. At first they stayed in the Queen City, where he worked as a commission agent providing supplies for the army. He and Julia moved to St. Louis, his wife’s hometown, where was a commission merchant until 1871.

  Evidently, he had some sort of breakdown and was sent to St. Vincent’s Institution for the Insane. Founded in 1858 by the Sisters of Charity, it was considered a premier mental hospital by the 1870s. Dickerson died there March 2, 1872 and was buried in Julia’s family plot in the Calvary Cemetery, opened by the Archdiocese of St. Louis in 1858.

She was a widow with four young children. She remarried fairly quickly to William Gilpin, the first territorial governor of Colorado. They had twins, then another child. When she died in 1912, she left over $1 million.

  Goodrich Barbour, a graduate of Marietta College in Ohio, lived in Cincinnati for the rest of his life, continuing to operate Shaw, Buell and Barbour, “wholesale dealers in foreign and domestic dry goods,” at 81 West Pearl Street in Cincinnati. He was also a leader in his church. He died in 1901. He and Harriet never had children, and she went to live with a niece after his death.

 

Note: I “orient” myself in my family tree by connections to my grandmother and to my third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour. Goodrich Hollister Barbour (1824-1901) was one of Myron’s first cousins. He was the son of "Deacon" John Barber III, who was the brother of my fourth great-grandmother, Betsey Barber.

 

Sources:

      Kesterman, Richard. “The Burnet House, A Grand Cincinnati Hotel,” Ohio Valley History, Vol. 12, No. 4, 2012, https://filsonhistorical.org/wp-content/uploads/OVH_Winter_2012.pdf

  

  “Signer Record, John H. Dickerson,” Indiana Land Tenure Foundation, http://portal.treatysigners.org/us/Lists/Signers1/Item/displayifs.aspx?List=c07a9a47%2D8a78%2D4049%2Da09d%2De1e4fe30314a&ID=596&ContentTypeId=0x0100E1DF37A2DF6F88458F62FB152CE3F121

 

  “Bernard Pratte (1771-1836), Missouri Encyclopedia, The State Historical Society of Missouri, https://missouriencyclopedia.org/people/pratte-bernard 

    

  “The Story of Enslavement by the Society in Missouri and Kansas,” Society of the Sacred Heart, https://rscj.org/

 

Newspapers:

 

     “U.S. Quartermaster Dickenson at the Burnet House and in the Police Court,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, 1 March 1862, p. 2.

 

  Captain J.H. Dickerson: Chicago Tribune, 3 March 1862, p. 2.

 

  “The Latest Excitement,” Buffalo Commercial, 1 Match 1862.

 

  “Old-Time Belles – Beautiful Women Who Have Reigned as Society Queens in St. Louis,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8 May 1892, p. 29.

Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023