Thirteen Grandchildren: The Next Generation of Myron F. Barbour and Jane Suttenfield
Myron Fitch Barbour and Jane T. Suttenfield married in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1836. They had six children, four of whom lived to have children of their own. Lucius had seven children by two wives; Myron and Lida each had only children, and Sylvia had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. I have listed them in order of birth.
As n many families, the grandchildren lived very different lives, from hardscrabble to a trio of doctor brothers. Two grandsons served time in prisons, Albany State Penitentiary in New York and San Quentin in California. A third grandson was tried for murder, but not convicted. Two granddaughters, Stella Lipes and Hattie Thompson, who were not raised in Fort Wayne, nevertheless spent a great deal of time there with their grandparents. Both married in New York to Fort Wayne natives who were known to Myron and Jane from many years back.
Following is brief information about each. Some I have written articles about, as noted below.
Jeanette B. “Nettie” Barbour (1867-1952) - Nettie was the daughter of Lucius and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Loring. She was raised by her mother in Rising Sun, Indiana. In 1886 she graduated from Rising Sun High School, one in a class of seven students, one of whom was her brother Myron. At the time, high school graduation was rare. She was a popular teacher in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky before her marriage. In 1892 at age 25 she married Dr. George Augustus Stevenson, a childhood friend who graduated from Rising Sun High School a year before her. He had gone on to graduate from Wabash College and Northwestern University Dental School and was well-positioned to give Nettie an easier life than her mother had as a single parent.
The Stevensons moved to Harvey, Illinois where he became president of the Bank of Harvey and served as township school treasurer for thirty years. They had five children. Nettie lived a life expected of a bank president’s wife. She was involved in the women's club movement that was so important in her era. She was president of the Harvey Women’s Club and chairman of the international relations committee of the Illinois Federation of Women’s Clubs. In 1935, she tied for first place in a national essay contest at the General Federation of Women’s Clubs national convention. Essays were judged by faculty members from Columbia University. Her 4,600-word essay was on “the danger of the uncontrolled manufacture of arms for private profit.”
Her oldest son, George Jr., followed in his father’s footsteps as a dentist and also became a pilot. In 1952, he was flying to Florida with 85-year old Nettie when a storm became so bad that he attempted an emergency landing. In the fog and rain, he crashed his plane in an orchard, killing both of them. Nettie died in Kentucky.
Jeanette "Nettie" Barbour
Myron Loring Barbour (1869-1937) -The son of Lucius Barbour and Lizzie Loring, Myron graduated from Rising Sun High School in 1886 with his sister Nettie. As was the custom with the very small graduating classes, each member gave a presentation at commencement. Nettie read a paper titled, "None Liveth Unto Himself," and Myron's was "There's Luck In Grit." After high school he became a bank teller in town. He married Carrie Reamy and they had an only child, Mary Rebecca.
Myron and Carrie were tried for the murder of a neighbor in 1904, with the death penalty hanging over their heads. I wrote about this in “Even the Sun Is Not Without Spots: Murder in Rising Sun.” Due to convoluted legal issues and a second, separate trial of another alleged accomplice, they were never found guilty. Their reputations were in tatters, though, and Myron lost his job at the bank when customers said they didn’t want to do business with a supposed murderer. The Barbours did the only thing they could do – left Rising Sun. They moved to Cincinnati where Myron had a 30-year career as a real estate agent. He served as secretary of the Cincinnati Real Estate Board from 1909 to 1913.
They had no grandchildren.
Frank Morris Barbour (1870-1959) - Frank was Lucius and Lizzie’s last child. He must not have had the scholarly interests of his older siblings as he did not graduate from high school. He married Ora Mae Petty in 1896 and had six children. He farmed in Ohio County, Indiana just outside Rising Sun all of his life.
Laura Stella “Stella” Lipes (1870-1955) - Stella was the oldest surviving child of Sylvia “Sibbie” Barbour and Henry Harrison Lipes. In her early years she lived the life of an itinerant minister’s daughter as her father moved from one small town to another in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, before moving to small towns in New York.
In 1887, in spite of her parents best efforts to prevent it, she eloped with Clair Mersereau, who was involved in his family’s iron manufacturing business. They had three daughters. She was widowed in 1905 when Clair died suddenly of a heart attack. She remarried to Henry Gibford, a Fort Wayne native, in Broome County, New York in 1910. They moved to Conconully, Washington and had two sons there. She died in Washington in 1955.
Harry Judson “Judson” Lipes (1871-1948) - Judson was the first of three doctors born to Sibbie Barbour and Henry Lipes. After a childhood moving from one small town to another in the Midwest and New York as the son of a Presbyterian minister, Judson graduated from Ithaca High School in Ithaca, New York, and from Cornell University. He married Lulu Sagendorf in 1896 and their only child, Caroline, was born a year later. He became an obstetrician and served as a lecturer in obstetrics at his alma mater.
In May 1916 he was elected president of the Medical Association of Albany. Two months later he was celebrated at his Rotary Club for completing a record number of examinations as a major sergeant of the Troy, New York Hospital Corps National Guard of the Second Regiment, 1,720 in all, only 22 of whom were rejected for service. The men were sent to the Mexican border because of raids by “Mexican bandits,” with active duty from June to October 1916. He also served in the military in World War I.
Dr. Harry Judson Lipes
Myron David Lipes (1873-1966) - The second of Rev. Henry Lipes and Sibbie Barbour’s sons to go into medicine, he was born in Kendallville, Indiana when his father was posted as a minister there. He graduated from Richland Springs High School in New York, from Syracuse University in 1899 and from Baltimore Medical College. He also did postgraduate work at John Hopkins University. In 1901 he married Carrie Westfall. Like his brothers, he had an only child, Henry. Sometime after 1910 he and Carrie divorced and he remarried to Charlotte “Lottie” Dana.
He practiced medicine as a general practitioner and surgeon working for the state of New York at the state hospital in Poughkeepsie and at Dannemora Prison before establishing a private practice in Watervliet for the last 25 years of his career. He served as county coroner when he lived in Cobleskill and was also president of the local medical association. In what is now known as the “Golden Age of Fraternal Organizations,” he was a member of the Masons, the Elks and the Odd Fellows.
When he retired he fulfilled a lifelong dream of sightseeing in Alaska, and indulged in his hobby of bowling.
Clyde Banta Barbour (1874-1948) - I told Clyde’s story extensively in “When My Great-Grandfather Was An Outlaw.” The son of Myron Cassius Barbour and Agnes Banta, he was raised in Pierceton, Indiana and Montgomery County, Kansas outside of Coffeyville. As a teenager he moved to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) to work on the XU ranch near Lenapah. After serving a three-year prison sentence for an armed robbery, he married Melissa Patchett in 1898. They farmed outside of Lenapah and had eight children, six of whom survived.
After Melissa’s untimely death in a fire, he moved to New Castle, then Sheridan, Wyoming where he supported his children by working as a house painter. In 1925 he moved to Stockton, California where he worked as a patient attendant at a tuberculosis hospital and then ran a railroad lunchroom cafe. He remarried in 1931 to Louise Graff, who ran a photography studio adjacent to the cafe. Clyde was 73 when he died of tuberculosis, and was buried in Stockton.
Harriet “Hattie” Thompson (1874-1964) - Hattie was the only child of Eliza “Lida” Barbour and George Thompson. Hattie was raised in Englewood, Illinois and moved to Manhattan with her mother and stepfather around the turn of the century. In 1903 at age 29 she married Oliver Farrand, a Fort Wayne native 36 years older. Oliver had deep Fort Wayne roots as a member of the Miami tribe. His father and Hattie’s grandparents attended church together from the time they were young. His story is told in my article “Oliver Farrand, the Diamond Merchant Descended From Chief Little Turtle.”
Hattie was widowed in 1921. By 1925 she was remarried to Frederick Muller and lived with him and his sixteen-year old son Fred Jr. in Queens. After Fred Sr.’s death in 1944 she moved to Tennessee to be near her stepson. She died in Memphis in 1964.
Robert Suttenfield Lipes (1880-1919) - The youngest Dr. Lipes was the son of Rev. Henry Harrison Lipes and Sylvia “Sibbie” Barbour. He graduated from Union College Albany Medical College in 1907 at the head of his class. He was an eye, ear and nose specialist. He married Lillian Ford in 1908 and they had their only child, Robert Gilford Lipes in 1909. They moved a few times, locating in Hudson, New York where he established a practice. Dr. Lipes’ obituary said he died of pneumonia after an illness of three weeks, when it was thought that he was on the mend. It also said that during the influenza epidemic, he treated many patients at no charge.
Dr. Robert Lipes as a young college studentEdna Naomi Barbour (1884-1968) - Edna was born to Alice Hatfield and Lucius Barbour when her father was still married to Lizzie Loring Barbour. I wrote her story in “The Indominable Edna Barbour.” Edna was a thoroughly modern woman who worked on educating herself and improving her status in life. She worked in the best-paying fields the average woman could find, office work as a skilled stenographer and a teacher at commercial colleges. Later she worked in real estate.
Edna moved from Indiana to Montgomery County, Kansas outside of Coffeyville when she was a little girl. She briefly attended Montgomery County High School and completed a program at a commercial college. She married five times but never had children. Edna moved to New Castle, Wyoming with her mother and some of her brothers. She moved to Seattle and eventually Los Angeles. She died there in 1968.
Harry Dearing Barbour (1891-1919) - Harry was the son of Lucius Barbour and Alice Hatfield. His story is told in “The Death of Luetta Spayd.” (Etta Spayd was his fiance.) Harry was a young man with a promising future. He was twelve when his father died, and after a few years trying to operate their farm, his mother moved to Dearing where she ran a boarding house for a time.
In 1904 he attended school for a brief period in Manhattan, Kansas. It was probably in the preparatory department at Kansas State Agricultural College. In a time when high schools were still few, colleges had preparatory departments that offered the rough equivalent of middle and high school education. In 1906 he graduated from common school in a countywide class of 76, which was considered a large number. This was somewhat equivalent to an eighth grade education and as far as most Americans ever went in school. A commencement ceremony was held in Independence.
Harry clerked at stores and was appointed assistant postmaster at Dearing. In 1911, when he was only 19, he married Blanche Palen. He moved to Nowata, Oklahoma where he was assistant postmaster for eight years. He resigned what was considered a very desirable position to serve in World War I. On his return he worked as a bookkeeper at the Nowata National Bank, and served as treasurer of the Elks. He was a personable and well-liked young man.
Harry died as the result of a burst appendix when he was only 28. He and Blanche had no children. She never remarried and continued to go by “Mrs. Harry Barbour” for the rest of her life.
Jesse Delbert Barbour (1893-1942) - Jesse’s story is largely told in my article “The Indominable Edna Barbour.” He was born in Fawn Creek Township, Montgomery County, Kansas and raised on the farm where he was born. He just turned ten days before his father died of alcoholism. Understandably, life was difficult for his mother after that. In January 1907, when he was only 13, he began the equivalent of a high school program at a college in Emporia. It may have been the College of Emporia, a Presbyterian school, or Kansas State Normal College. In an era when many communities did not have high schools, or students lacked the transportation to them, colleges provided preparatory programs. Clearly he didn’t stay, however, as in February he was assisting a neighbor in driving a herd of cattle to Moline, Kansas, then visiting his brother Harry, who was working at a drugstore there.
In November 1907, Harry was appointed assistant postmaster in Dearing, Kansas, their hometown, and Jesse took Harry’s place at Brighton furniture store. For the rest of his life, except for a few years in Wyoming working on his mother’s homestead ranch in Wyoming, Jesse worked at jobs clerking in stores, a railroad company and hotels.
Jesse had what seems to be a traumatic adult life. In 1914 he lost the lower part of his left leg in a train accident. He had two marriages that ended in divorce. He served a sentence at San Quentin for robbery. He died at age 49 in Los Angeles not long after getting out of prison. His funeral notice described him as the beloved brother of Edna and Mack. Jesse had no children.
McKinley Hobart “Mack” Barbour (1896-1967) - McKinley was enthusiastically named after President William McKinley. He was the youngest child of Lucius Barbour and Alice Hatfield, born 29 years after his father’s oldest child, Nettie, who he probably never met; and 21 years after his mother’s oldest child, Charlie. He was born in Fawn Creek Township in Montgomery County, Kansas on the family farm. His father died when he was a month away from his eighth birthday and his mother had a difficult time afterwards.
After a few years of continuing to run their farm, they moved to Dearing, the nearest town, where Alice ran a boarding house for a while. In 1910 she moved to New Castle, Wyoming where her oldest son had a restaurant, and homesteaded with the help of sons Jesse and Mack, on what they named Black Thunder Ranch. They successfully proved up her claim.
Mack was a very athletic young man who loved being outdoors and working with horses. He moved to Oregon and California, having a career as a rodeo star, raising horses and cattle and establishing his own rodeo show. Mack had his only child, a daughter, in 1948 and had a very brief marriage to her mother, Hazel Stone, who was 30 years younger than him. He served in World War I and was buried with military honors in Sacramento, California in 1967.
Sources:
Note: See articles mentioned for other sources.
Graduation Exercises: The Aurora Journal (Aurora, Indiana), 6 May 1886, p. 3.
"Rabbit Hash, Kentucky Items," Aurora Spectator (Aurora, Indiana), 2 Jan 1890, p. 8.
“Rotarians All Cheer For Lipes. Albany Doctor At Camp Whitman Makes Record For Examining Soldiers,” The Argus (Albany, New York), 1 July 1916, p. 12.
“Honor Chicago Club Women at Convention. Mrs. George A. Stevenson Wins Silver Cup For Essay,” Chicago Tribune, 7 July 1935, p. 78.
“Watervliet Doctor Plans Alaska Trip,” Troy Record (Troy, New York) 6 April 1946, p. 22.
Goodwin, Hilda. “Troops Left For Border Fighting Forty Years Ago,” Troy Record (Troy, New York), 20 June 1956, p. 6.
Copyright by Andrea Auclair © 2024
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