Dr. J.L. Barker: Country Practitioner
Dr. Barker’s arrival probably looked much like this 1898 illustration.
An obituary followed in the October 1899 Coffeyville, Kansas paper.
Mr. and Mrs. Stedham have the heartfelt sympathy of the entire community in the loss of the disease all parents dread, scarlet fever. Dr. Barker, the attending physician, did all for the little sufferer that medical skill could do but the disease was of such a virulent form and very contagious. The neighbors, especially the families of L.T. Barbour, Enos Patchett, Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Blakeslee were some of them constantly in attendance and have the thanks of the family and Dr. Barker for their kindness and willingness to help at such a time.
L.T. Barbour was Lucius Barbour, my great-great-grandfather’s brother. And Enos Patchett was my great-great-grandfather. Dr. Barker was Dr. Joseph Leftridge Barker (1868-1937). They were all neighbors in Fawn Creek Township, Montgomery County, Kansas. Dr. Barker was who you called in the Dearing, Kansas area if you broke an arm, your wife was in labor, your son was kicked by a mule or your kids had diphtheria, scarlet fever, pneumonia, measles or mumps. He was the classic country doctor - and of course, you didn’t go to him; he came to you. This gave him a special intimacy with his neighbors.
Montgomery County
June 1898 a horse kicked ten-year-old Guy Wilson on his family’s farm, breaking his leg below the knee. Dr. Barker came and set the leg. This was the first reference to him in Montgomery County. The following month the Coffeyville newspaper noted that he bought the house he’d been living in on Broadway Street in Jefferson, an unincorporated community just north of Dearing.
He moved to Jefferson from Olathe, Kansas after a bit of a scandal. A month after his nine-year old daughter died in September 1897, and a week after his wife Clara divorced him on a charge of extreme cruelty, he married Sarah “Sadie” McMains. She was originally his wife’s friend and had started regularly spending overnight visits with the Barkers.
Joseph and Sadie married in St. Clair, Illinois, which kept any marriage notice out of the local papers. In fact, after they were married the social columns in Sadie’s hometown Kansas paper noted that Dr. Barker was visiting Miss Sadie McMain at her sister’s home. The Olathe newspaper said that Dr. Barker was going for a visit back home in West Virginia and expected to be gone six months. After the West Virginia trip, the newlyweds seemed to think it was a good idea to get a fresh start in a new place, and Montgomery County happened to be it.
Unlike in Olathe, he didn’t run advertisements in the newspaper, perhaps because word of mouth was all he needed in the farming community. He had only one other competitor in the area versus five doctors in Olathe, a town of some 3,200 people. In addition to Guy Wilson, the newspaper was soon reporting how he dressed the wound of a little girl who’d been playing with a hatchet and cut off part of an index finger. Next was the piece about caring for little Vera Stedham, the toddler who died of scarlet fever. He and his wife made new friends and the “country correspondent” columns were soon reporting their activities.
In 1900, Lucius Barbour’s stepdaughter, Clara Hoover, married James Lewis at the Barbour home. Dr. Barker and wife Sadie were their escorts, walking them down the stairs to the family parlor as someone played a bridal march on the piano. He continued to socialize with Lucius Barbour, and joined the Anti-Horse Theft Association. He and Sadie never had children and she must have enjoyed entertaining friends and their frequent trips and visits. In 1904 they attended the St. Louis World’s Fair.
Dr. Barker stayed busy in nearby Dearing and eventually moved there. He treated a young man who had his collarbone broken by a fall from a horse, and a man whose arm was crushed by the severe bite of a horse. Setting bones seemed to be a big part of his business. Horse injuries were plentiful in the horse and buggy days.
There were some dreadful cases that made the papers; in 1909 a 16-year old boy got his foot caught in a “crusher” machine at the American Lead and Zinc Smelter. His entire leg was taken up in the machinery and “horribly mangled.” Dr. Barker rushed to the scene where he gave the boy painkillers. He took him to the hospital in Coffeyville where Dr. Barker and another doctor amputated the leg. The poor boy died nonetheless. (His father sued the company and won $2,000.)
Another sad case in 1910 was when little Fern, a three-year old, fell into a well. A neighbor boy climbed down and put a rope around Fern. Just as she was reaching the top, the rope broke and Fern fell 30 feet, splitting her skull open. She was pulled out, but Dr. Barker had just finished putting the last stitch in her head when she breathed her last.
Then there was a little boy who was playing with his father’s pocket knife. He ran, fell, and rammed the pocket knife into his eye. Dr. Barker did what he could for him then took him to an eye specialist in Parsons.
In 1911 Dr. Barker was one of three doctors called to care for a strikebreaker beaten unconscious when the men at the American Lead and Zinc Smelter Company went on strike. The company refused to recognize the union and brought in the strikebreakers.
He was regularly at many bedsides doing “all that medical skill and care could do” as his patients lay dying. In one case, he stopped a suicide attempt when 18-year old Marie Blancett tried to take her life using chloroform.
Beginning in 1916 newspaper accounts reported Dr. Barker caring for the victims of car crashes, one a terrible head-on collision. He seemed to have nine lives himself after his car was struck by a 15-car train, and he had a couple of other car crashes of his own.
He bought his first car in August 1911, “the last victim to fall to the attack of automobile fever,” the Dearing Times claimed. He bought a Flanders car from the very short-lived Flanders Automobile Company; they were sold through Studebaker dealerships. It was news in Dearing when he drove his wife and a nephew over to the county fair in Coffeyville in September. In November the car was in a garage having repairs made, and the doctor was walking or back to the horse and buggy. After that, there were mentions of new cars about every year and a half or so, all Studebakers.
Earlier Years
Joseph L. Barker was born in West Virginia about 1868, the eleventh of thirteen children, stretching a 26-year span. The oldest was a Confederate soldier who died in a Union prison camp in Ohio. His second-oldest brother Robert became the first president of what is now Oklahoma State University, serving from 1891-1894.
The doctor’s earliest years were in places like Jumping Branch and Pipestem, West Virginia. Sometime in the 1880s, Joseph moved to Kansas where he met and married Clara H. Geiger. In October 1886 a small item in the Olathe newspaper said he and his wife were going to Kansas City where he would complete his medical training. In December there was another short item that he completed his training and due to his father’s death (in late November), he was going back to West Virginia. His plan was to settle his father’s estate and, the item said, he would probably not be returning. Clara was four months pregnant.
Bessie Kate Barker was born in West Virginia in May, and in September the family was back in Olathe. By at least November he was advertising his services as physician and surgeon, calls answered day and night. He had an office downtown and could be reached at home. In May 1889 he was appointed county physician, caring for inmates at the jail, poor farm and county infirmary at a salary equivalent to about $6,500 in 2023 value. It was a nice side gig with a predictable source of income; of course he also continued his private practice, running weekly ads in the Olathe News.
As in Montgomery County later, there were articles from time to time about Dr. Barker’s practice. There was a man he treated who suffered a severe stroke in jail, for example. Another was badly injured and his wagon damaged when his horses got spooked. Dr. Barker performed a successful craniotomy and an operation for “stricture of lacrimal duct.” He delivered babies and was at bedsides with patients with a variety of illnesses. In 1891 county commissioners had doctors bid on pauper care by township. Three physicians bid for Olathe and Loathe Township; Dr. Barker made the lowest bid and was appointed.
Yet in 1892 a restlessness seems to have set in. In January a newspaper announcement said he was relocating to Memphis. In April the newspaper reported that he returned from the South after looking for a place to relocate and chose Galveston, Texas. He was said to be settling his affairs, then leaving. But in May, he and his wife were in Johnson County District Court in Olathe, Joseph L. Barker vs. Clara H. Barker. Whatever the trouble was, the case was dismissed with court fees.
Their second child, Jessie Julia, was born May 1896, almost exactly nine years after their last. The following year, there were a series of little items in the paper that didn’t look consequential, but were.
April 2 - Miss Sadie McMains was visiting friends in Olathe.
May 6 - Miss Sadie McMains was visiting Mrs. Clara H. Barker,
June 11 - Miss Sadie McMains was visiting the family of Dr. J.L. Barker.
On June 25th, Clara and her daughters left for an “extended trip” visiting relatives in California. On August 12th, Joseph received a telegram that daughter Bessie was sick with diphtheria. In late August, Clara managed to bring her home to Olathe. Joseph was praised in the paper for his skill and care, but as with so many infectious diseases in that time, there was little he could do. Bessie died September 8th at age ten.
On the 24th, Miss Sadie McMains was again back visiting her friends, with a plan to stay “several weeks.” Three days later, Clara was granted a divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty and given custody of their little daughter Jessie. Eight days later, Dr. Barker married Miss Sadie McMains in St. Clair, Illinois. He was not mentioned again in the Olathe newspaper after the small item that he was going to West Virginia for six months.
More Marital Drama
Dr. Barker’s marital drama did not end with his divorce from Clara. For the first 13 years, things seemed to go well between him and Sadie. But in 1910, he began to have “relations” with a neighbor woman. In court papers Sadie Barker said she was humiliated by the situation. The woman was probably 18-year old Lilly Lemoine. Sadie left Dr. Barker for a time, but he persuaded her to return by making promises. The marriage lasted another three years.
But Sadie said he had not kept his promises, and in October 1913 she filed for divorce. Joseph did not contest the divorce, and it was granted. He married Lilly Albina LeMoine, possibly as early as that fall, when she was 22, and he was about 45. They probably married outside of Montgomery County, where no one would see that they filed for a marriage license. Unlike his first divorce, he didn’t leave the community.
Summary
Dr. Barker did not seem to have a relationship with his only surviving child, Jessie. She was never mentioned among the many family members reported as visitors, or in the many visits he made to see family. He may have had a sometimes-messy personal life, but was valued for his medical skills and care. He died in 1937 and was buried in Coffeyville. Lilly outlived him by nearly fifty years, never remarrying. In fact, his two previous wives never remarried either. Lilly lived with her mother and different sisters, first in Los Angeles and then in Oregon, where she died in 1984.
Note: Joseph Barker’s nephew Frederick Calloway Barker, the son of Robert, had even more marital drama. He established a practice in Caney, Kansas, also in Montgomery County. In 1910 he married a young woman named Mila, and they moved to Kansas City. In 1912, purportedly in a jealous rage, he entered a manicure parlor in Kansas City where his wife was working and attempted to shoot her. Fortunately for her, a man who was in the parlor grabbed Fred and pinned his arms, with Miss Lee, the salon’s owner, and Mila jumping on him. In the scuffle his gun was discharged, shooting Fred in the thumb. The gun was forced to the floor and picked up by Miss Lee.
Sources:
Medical Training: Olathe News (Olathe, Kansas), 16 Dec 1886, p. 3.
Craniotomy: Olathe Republican Tribune, 26 July 1895, p. 5.
Funeral for Bessie Kate: The Kansas Patron (Olathe, Kansas), 9 Sept 1897, p. 3.
Sadie McMains’ Visit: Olathe Republican Tribune, 24 Sept 1897, p. 5.
Little Sufferer: “East Brown,” Coffeyville Daily Journal, 13 Oct 1899, p. 4
“Dearing Smelter Accident Fatal, Coffeyville Daily Journal, 20 Nov 1909, p. 1.
"Mrs. Barker Seeks Divorce,” Coffeyville Weekly Journal, 24 Oct 1913, p. 5.
“Grade Crossing Accident - Dr. J.L. Barker, of Dearing, is Struck,” The Sun (Coffeyville), 22 May 1914, p. 1.
“Attempted Suicide,” Coffeyville Daily Journal, 25 July 1916, p. 5.
“Former Veteran Teacher Expires of Heart Attack,” Independent-Herald (Hinton, West Virginia), 24 Nov 1937, p. 1.
Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023
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