Indiana Pioneers Harlow and Sophronia Barber
Harlow and Sophronia Barber
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Sophronia Case Barber
Note: One section of this article previously appeared in “Myron F.’s Forgotten Life, Part I.”
On both sides of his family, Harlow Barber descended from Puritans who immigrated to Connecticut in the 1630s. But a life in settled Connecticut was not Harlow’s fate. He would twice be a pioneer, moving west, clearing land, building log cabins, establishing new settlements - an iconic part of American history.
Born in Goshen in 1798, he was the son of Jared Barber and Eunice Bissell. His father was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. For the years of his early boyhood, Harlow was a Connecticut Yankee. When he was about nine years old his parents made an exciting announcement. They were moving to Genesee County in western New York.
And why wouldn't they want to? Handbills circulated up and down the Atlantic advertising this marvelous land. They promised it was "more eligible, desirous and advantageous for settlers than any other unsettled tract of inland country of equal magnitude in the United States, "filled with black and white oak, hickory, poplar, chestnut, wild cherry, butternut and dogwood." It was "finely watered...with never-failing springs and streams, affording sufficiency of water for grist-mills and other waterworks."
It was an area known as the Holland Purchase. Thirteen Dutch bankers and businessmen bought the land from American land speculators for development and speculation. It had once been the lands of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois. The Holland Purchase was a huge tract, bounded by Lake Erie and Lake Ontario on the north and west, and Pennsylvania and the Genesee River on the south and east. It is estimated that three New England states alone lost 800,000 residents to upstate New York in the period between 1790 and 1820. So common was the Barbers' move that Timothy Dwight, president of Yale, called western New York "a colony from New England."
An account in a book of Barber history about a different Barber gives a glimpse of what was likely similar to their experience:
…they sold their little, barren Connecticut farm and with $700 in cash set out with their ox team and sled for New York arriving at the end of February….Here they bought 100 acres…they moved into a log house while the husband worked to clear and improve the farm. The wife was busy with her loom, weaving not only the linen and wool for her own household, but the neighbors’ as well. In 1810, a frame house “of the pattern so common in dear old Connecticut” was built and furnished, the busy loom having paid for the brick in the chimney, the sawing of the lumber, and the labor for shingling the house.
To clear, grub and plant three or four acres in one year was as much as could be expected. Ten acres was considered quite an accomplishment. It took seven to ten days just to clear one acre of land, even if the farmer was a skilled woodsman. Then there was the cabin and outbuildings to construct, crops to put in, fences to build. Neighbors helped neighbor.
As was very typical, Jared and Eunice didn’t make this journey alone. Yale’s president called New York a colony from New England, but it was also settled by town “colonies.” A large group of people from Simsbury, Goshen and that area moved together. Jared’s brothers Roswell and Russell and their families moved with them.
Sheldon consisted of little more than a blacksmith’s shop and a log cabin that served as both store and inn owned by a man named Roswell Turner. Each winter, Turner bought twenty loads of provisions for his customers to get through the winter. Otherwise, settlers had to rely upon themselves. Formidable woods closed in on the little settlement. In 1849, a county history described the area as “a wild and rough region even now.”
Genesee County in 1807 was frontier. Bears, wolves, foxes and wildcats preyed upon the sheep, hogs and chickens of settlers. Sheep had to be kept indoors at night, no exceptions. There was a large bounty for wolves, and some settlers made a nice profit hunting them.
“In cold winters when the snow was deep, the wolves would get hungry and ravenous,” a local historian wrote. “There were several instances of them obliging men to climb trees to avoid them. Bears would come and take hogs a few rods from the dwellings.”
The first years, understandably, were especially hard. Harlow was considered old enough to help clear the land, and that he did. The first year, settlers girded trees and planted corn around stumps. In April 1807, there was a freakish snowstorm, the worst known. Snow was four feet deep, and there was a shortage of hay and grain for the cattle.
More hard times were ahead. A meteorological “perfect storm” would drive even more people out of western New York. It was the Year Without a Summer, also known as Eighteen-Hundred-and-Froze-To-Death, or simply, the Poverty Year. Today, it’s believed the severe climate abnormalities were caused in part by the massive eruption of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia.
The effect was that in May 1816, buds were frozen on the trees in Genesee County. Four days of blizzard conditions hit in the middle of June. This was worse, far worse, than the year the Barbers arrived, when there was the four-foot April snow. Anything that had managed to turn green was killed. In July, there was still frost and ice, and it was impossible for farmers to plant. August found conditions still icy and cold. Crop yields were a quarter of normal production. The Barbers, like everyone around them, would have to survive on greatly reduced crops and what was left from the previous year.
As a result, the first six months of 1817 were called the Starving Season. Whereas flour had sold for $8.50 a barrel in New York in 1813, prices soared to $18 a barrel – if a person could find some to purchase.
Thousands of western New Yorkers gave up and packed up, pushing farther west into Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Many had purchased their property from the Holland Land Company on credit, and now they were unable to make payments. The company accepted cattle in lieu of cash, but losing livestock left the farmers worse off. Crop prices remained high while livestock prices remained low until 1820. Somehow, the Barbers rode out this crisis and stayed in Sheldon.
An Adventure in Georgia
As a young man, Harlow went off on an adventure. He had an uncle, Jared’s brother Israel, who left home at age 21 in 1786 to work on a sailing ship. He decided the sea wasn’t the life for him and disembarked in Savannah, marrying in 1801. Israel claimed to be the first white settler on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp near the St. Mary’s River in the Georgia Bend. He established a cattle ranching operation there – most likely with help from his father-in-law. He built up a large operation with the labor of slaves.
Harlow went to live with Uncle Israel and to work for him for a year in about 1822 or ‘23. This is known only because of a sentence in his obituary. It leaves so many questions. What was his journey like to south Georgia? He also certainly arrived by ship. What were his impressions of the South, and of slavery? What did he do, specifically, to help his uncle’s business endeavors?
Return to Sheldon
Harlow returned to Sheldon and married soon after, in 1824 to Elsie Case. Although Elsie was born in Massachusetts, her family was part of the “Connecticut colony” from Simsbury. Her sister Sophronia married Harlow’s widowed cousin Roswell Barber in 1817, and she had two children with him, Pleiades and Elsie. When she married Roswell she became mother to his youngest children. Harlow and his wife Elsie had five sons, Virgil, born in 1825; Winfield Scott, known as Scott; Frederick, known as Fred; Truman, and Edwin Lusk, who was born in 1831.
Harlow returned to a more happening Sheldon than the one he had left. The Erie Canal opened in 1825, a major historic event with profound effects on New York and the western expansion of the country. Before, farmers in places like Sheldon were in a struggle for bare existence, while the Erie Canal brought what one historian called a “speedy and permanent relief.” The ability to ship one’s goods affordably to market, and of course to obtain goods at a fraction of the previous price was a wonder. A jolting two-week trip from Albany to Buffalo was shortened by half. Freight rates fell to only ten percent of previous cost, markedly increasing the profit margin.
This of course was a great advantage as he and Elsie established a farm in the area known as Barber Hill, which was settled by “Deacon” John Barber.
But poor Elsie died of consumption just a year after little Edwin was born. Sophronia lost her husband Roswell in 1829. A story is told of Elsie on her deathbed, asking her widowed sister and her husband to marry and raise her little boys together.
Harlow and Sophronia did marry. It was an oddity. For the twelve years of her marriage to Roswell, Sophronia had been Harlow’s aunt. She had also been his sister-in-law for the seven years that he was married to Elsie. Another thing that went against typical marital patterns was that Sophronia was twelve years older than Harlow. Their marriage was talked-about, but they never hid anything about it. Even decades later in Harlow’s obituary, his sons noted that he married his uncle’s widow.
Indiana
Pioneers described a “fever” for moving west. The promise of cheap, unbroken land to farm, of fresh opportunities somewhere else, created a siren song. In the late 1830s, a cluster of Barbers began pulling up stakes, selling their New York land and moving to northwest Indiana. Allen County, Whitley County, Miami County and Kosciusko County beckoned. Cynthia Barber Sadd and her husband, her sister Rhoda Barber Hurlburt, Sophronia’s adult stepchildren Nancy, Milo and Myron all moved to Indiana. Harlow’s only brother, Jared, moved to Portage County, Ohio, another popular westward movement by those with New England roots.
In 1838, the Barbers sold the land Sophronia inherited from Roswell, and Harlow sold his land near Barber Hill. On 20 August 1838 at the U.S. General Land Office in Fort Wayne, Harlow paid for 160 acres in full. The same day, he purchased an additional 80-acre tract. His land was in Troy Township, Whitley County.
Most likely the Barbers took the route to Indiana that made the most sense for people in western New York. It involved travel by oxcart, Erie Canal packet boat and a steamship over the Great Lakes, portage down to Fort Wayne, then a slow and challenging multi-day oxcart journey that involved camping in the woods during the nights. It must have been a relief to finally arrive in Whitley County – but how daunting. No homes, no hotels, restaurants or stores.
In a humid Indiana August, Harlow began felling trees and building a log cabin on the banks of the Troy Cedar Lake. He was 40 and Sophronia 52. Since they weren’t spring chickens, they knew better than to be unprepared for their first year in a wilderness, and they would’ve gotten through the winter with supplies that were probably brought from New York. Pleiades was 18 when they moved; Elsie died at an unknown time and place, but probably in New York. The Barber boys ranged from 13 to just-turned seven. The oldest boys helped Harlow clear the land and plant crops. Children in the township made a little money digging ginseng and other roots, and gathering wild berries including cranberries. In the first few years, it was hard to find a buyer as there were no stores, but time remedied that.
Of course Harlow farmed, but his obituary said he was a mason by trade, and Sophronia helped support the family as a weaver. Sophronia was known for her weaving back in Sheldon. In fact, she had remained single until she was 31, a spinsterly age, making a living with her loom. She was an asset to both Roswell and Harlow in her ability to bring in money.
In 1850, Harlow and Sophronia joined the Methodist Church. Two years later, they sold their first farm and moved to another closer to what is now the little town of Larwill. Larwill was founded as Huntsville in 1854 along the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad. The town would change its name in 1866 to honor the Larwill brothers, who were railroad engineers. Like so many small towns in America, it met the needs of the farming and railroad population then, with the construction of a gristmill, hotel and several general stores. When Harlow retired from farming, it made sense that he and Sophronia moved into town.
Sophronia raised two sets of stepchildren and her own two daughters. She must have been a remarkable woman. Harlow died in 1881 at age 83, and she outlived him, making her home with Scott Barber. Sophronia died in 1883 at age 96.
Notes:
Israel Barber and Slavery: p. 83, Tara Fields. The executor of Israel’s estate sold the following: Jacob, about 50; Phoebe, his wife, about 50; Clarinda, about 25, and her three children, Sarah, Yamma and Susan; Daphne, about 21 and her three children, William, Lewis and Salina, 28 April 1834. From p. 84: the executor of Israel’s estate sold Sharper, Rosa, Jim, Harriet, Aaron, Randall, Jerry and Stephen for $2,640 on 12 Sept 1834.
Family Note: Harlow Barber and my great-great-great grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour, were first cousins. (Myron was among the Barbers who chose to change the spelling of his last name to Barbour, while Harlow did not.) Sophronia was Myron’s stepmother. He was six years old when his father Roswell married her, and she raised him.
Sources:
Fields, Tara. Camden County, Georgia Slave Deed Abstracts, 2008, p. 84, https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/15249775/camden-county-georgia-slave-deed-abstracts-afriquest
Kaylor, S.F. and R.H. Maring. History of Whitley County, Indiana, B.F. Bowen & Co.: 1907.
Copyright by Andrea Auclair © 2024
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