Hardware Leader Eddy Barbour

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This portrait of Edward C. "Eddy" Barbour appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette in 1908.

To succeed in business, it doesn’t hurt to have a wealthy and supportive father-in-law. Eddy Barbour had that. Septimus S. Woodward was said to be the richest man in Carlinville, Illinois. He had been in business for twenty years when he formed a new corporation with his son and son-in-law in December 1888. The S.S. Woodward Hardware Company had capital stock of $15,000 for general hardware, tinware, stove, and agricultural implements. The state of Illinois issued a license to incorporate to S.S. Woodward, Charles Woodward and E.C. Barbour. It was a time when every town had a hardware or hardware and general merchandise store downtown, laden with items everyone needed.

     As professional organizations grew, the new generation, represented by Eddy and Charles, formed state hardware dealer associations and joined the National Retail Hardware Association. Eddy and Charles became state leaders. 


     Edward C. Barbour was born in Madison, Indiana in 1852, the youngest of five children of Edwin Case Barbour and Harriett Hinman. Madison had a golden age before he was born, when it was an important transportation hub and pork packing center on the banks of the wide Ohio River. An uncle made a fortune there, then returned to the family’s original home, Connecticut. Throughout the 1850s, as the railroads rerouted hogs to other slaughter houses, Madison began a decline, followed by a pattern of boom and bust. In the 1860s with the Civil War, it was booming with foundries and shipbuilders supplying the Union Army. It must have seemed like an exciting place to a young boy, with the wharves bustling with paddlewheelers being loaded and unloaded. But as Eddy reached adulthood, financial panics plagued the town and stymied growth.

     Victorian Americans rarely escaped childhood without the loss of at least one sibling and not uncommonly, a parent. Eddy was 12 when his mother died. His sister Mary died when he was ten. She was 18 years older than him and may have been like a second mother. 

     At 18, he was working at one of the flour mills along the river. The Seventies, with the “bust” part of the cycle, were a good time to get out of Madison. Eddy and his sister Grovie joined older brother George in Illinois. There were other relatives there – his aunt, Evaline, for example, and cousins but he ended up in a different town than them, Carlinville. 

     Today Carlinville is noted for being on the famed Route 66; for its “million dollar” courthouse, for having the largest collection of Sears & Roebuck catalog houses still standing, and for Blackburn College, a small Presbyterian school founded in the 1850s. Its downtown is an example of quintessential Midwest nineteenth century architecture.

     In 1878, Eddy married Sep Woodward’s daughter. She was Mary Anna – Annie, as she was called, noted as a musician with a lovely soprano voice. He and Annie had only two children, a boy, Septimus and a girl, Mildred. They were shattered when little Millie died at age six. They were well-to-do enough to commission a graveyard statue of Millie sitting on a bench, her kid button shoes carved in stone beside her, one symbolically tipped over. 

     With the Carlinville newspapers not yet digitized as of this writing, there is a gap from the 1878 marriage and the 1888 newspaper item about the S.S. Woodward business incorporation. By 1900, the family had moved to Fort Madison, Iowa where Eddy had a store. By 1909, he was serving on the board of the Iowa Retail Hardware Association. (His brother-in-law was on the board of the Illinois Retail Hardware Association.) He was also president of the Commercial Club of Fort Madison, a precursor to the Chamber of Commerce. That year, he, the mayor, and members of the club congratulated themselves on gaining a commitment for a new manufacturer to locate in the city. Bonicamp Manufacturing Company, a maker of horse collars, signed a contract to purchase land at a cost of $4,500. John Bonicamp came out of retirement to start his second horse collar factory in Fort Madison. It was a success and stayed in business until 1923.

     On the 1910 census, unsurprisingly Eddy employed a live-in maid. He indulged his son Septimus’ interest in music, sending him to New York, Chicago and Warren, Ohio for training. Evidently, Eddy didn’t push his son into joining him in the hardware business. In 1911, he and his wife surprised Septimus by setting up a studio for him to teach lessons in.  A newspaper article in February said he would probably not seek to remain vice president of the retail hardware association due to ill health.    

      On a May day in 1914, Eddy and Annie took the train from Fort Madison to Carlinville for a special event. Their son Septimus gave a recital for the Library Association, accompanied by his pianist and protégé Viola Daube. Annie was prevailed upon to sing a few songs, and received a standing ovation, the Streator, Illinois newspaper reported. It was a Thursday night, and Saturday Eddy returned home alone, while Annie stayed for some social engagements. Septimus was busy in Streator preparing for a lead role as King Cole in a community operetta, “The House That Jack Built.”

     Monday afternoon, Eddy made a trip to the bank then returned to his store. He was working in his office when his clerk looked up and saw him standing over the typewriter desk looking decidedly ill. By the time the doctor arrived, he was unconscious and died minutes later. The doctor said cause of death was due to heart trouble.

     Eddy was taken back to Carlinville to be buried near his little daughter.

 

Note: Unfortunately, Mildred Barbour’s head and feet are missing on her fascinating gravestone.

     For more information about Eddy’s son, see my blog post, “The Story of Septimus Barbour.” For information on his sister see “Grovie and Her Rich Uncle.”

 

Where He Connects In My Tree: Eddy was a second cousin of my third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour. Eddy’s grandfather “Deacon” John Barbour was the brother of Myron’s mother Betsey. 

  

Sources:

 

     Incorporation: Chicago Tribune, 17 Dec 1888.

     “Iowa State News,” The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), 19 Feb 1908, p. 10

     “Hardware Men Choose Officers,” Muscatine Journal (Muscatine, Iowa), 16 Feb 1909, p. 3.

     “President Abbott To Keep Job. Hardware Association Will Reelect Most of Its Old Officers,” Des Moines Tribune, 2 Feb 1911, p. 2.

     “Ft. Madison Man’s Death Was Sudden,” The Daily Gate City (Keokuk, Iowa), 5 May 1914, p. 3.

     “E.C. Barbour Dies at Iowa Home,” The Times (Streator, Illinois), 5 May 1914, p. 5.

     “E.C. Barbour Victim of Heart Trouble,” Ottumwa TriWeekly Courier, 7 May 1914, p. 5.

 


Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024 

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