MILLWOOD — The greatest joy of writing the History Knox column is the number of times I’ve been able to suss out long-forgotten stories. The greatest frustration of it is when those stories remain just out of reach.
I thought I had a case like the latter this week, until I backtracked through available sources to discover a rather famous figure: Joseph Barker, who lived with his family in Knox County in the mid-1800s.
What was initially so confusing was that Barker eluded my attempts to document him in census or atlas records. It turned out that there was a very good reason for that.
Barker was an abolitionist who spoke out publicly about the need to end slavery in the United States. The references to him which I found both come from letters to a weekly newspaper published in Salem, Ohio, called the Anti-Slavery Bugle.
One praises Barker and his family, while the other challenges him to a religious debate (while simultaneously refusing said debate).
It’s fascinating to see how the anti-slavery movement built up as a grassroots phenomenon. The Anti-Slavery Bugle quotes a letter by the hugely influential African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
“It is the poor man’s work,” Douglass said. “The rich and noble will not do it. I know what it is to get a living by rolling casks on the wharves, and sweeping chimneys, and such like, and this makes me able to sympathize with the poor, and the bound everywhere.
“It is not to the rich that we are to look but to the poor, to the hardhanded working men of the country, these are the men who are to come to rescue of slaves.”
Douglass was right. Most rich people were invested in the status quo, because it made them money. It takes a movement of the people to effect change.
Efforts to make that change were underway in Knox County, but it was certainly an uphill battle at first, for the majority of people in the county were not abolitionists. That doesn’t mean they were all in favor of slavery — though many were — it just means that few thought that such a deeply ingrained national system could be overturned without catastrophic results (and they were correct about that).
There can be no doubt, however, that many in this region were sympathetic to the slave-holding states. A significant portion of the county’s white settlers came for Virginia and points further south that were later to become the Confederate States of America.
The racism endemic in Ohio at the time can’t be disputed.
In 1853, at the time of these letters, a bill was actually advanced in the Ohio state legislature proposing to ban all Blacks, Mulattoes, or other people of color from the state. Fortunately, the exclusionary bill failed and cooler heads prevailed.
Joseph Barker and his wife Frances appear to have been very progressive thinkers, advocating for the end of slavery and the application of reason over superstition. Yet they lived somewhere in the remote countryside of eastern Knox County, hardly a hotbed of radical thinking in those days.
According to a Dec. 24, 1852, letter to the Anti-Slavery Bugle by an abolitionist named Henry C. Wright, he stayed with Jonathan Barker, his wife Frances, and their three children, aged 17 to 21, at Millwood.
According to Wright, when Barker first came to central Ohio, he took over 160 acres of land near Millwood which had only a log cabin as residence. Barker improved the property, making it a comfortable place to live.
His children were educated by a tutor from Summit County named Theodore Sulliat, who taught them English, French, and mathematics.
Wright goes on to say that he knew both Suliatt and the Barkers previously, and stayed with them in Liverpool and Newcastle. He also specifically states that Suliatt, though born in France, taught in Liverpool, England, before moving to the U.S. This information implies, then, that the
Barkers originally hailed from Newcastle, in the northwest part of England.
Under the spelling Theodore Suliot, the teacher can be documented. Papers suggest that he was born in England, not France, but otherwise, known information about him matches up with Wright’s description. But Joseph Barker and family remain elusive in Knox County.
There was a Joseph Barker who lived in Hilliar Township near Centerburg, but he had several children and a wife by a different name. There was also a Joseph N. Barker who got married in Knox County in 1869, but that would likely make him too young to be our subject.
One census report that does match up is from 1840, which was alas before the government started putting more in-depth information on the census. The 1840 Barker is recorded as living near Gambier, with two adults and two children in the household, which matches up with what little we know.
The odd thing is, I was completely unable to find any record of him in the 1850, 1860, and 1870 censuses. 1870 is understandable, as that is a document where the census taker’s ink has faded so badly, online scans of it are virtually unreadable. But 1850 and 1860 are quite clear.
He could have left the area by 1860, but he should be somewhere on the 1850 census, which does list full names of all the members of the household, if he was the same as the 1840 Joseph Barker.
Unfortunately, there’s no sign of him. And “Joseph Barker” is a plain enough name, that there are quite a few people across Ohio and beyond with that name.
There was a John Barker listed on census reports and the 1871 atlas in Butler Township, near Millwood. His property was a little east of Hazel Dell Road, lying on the north side of Kirk Road.
Could this have been our abolitionist? John’s wife is listed as Jane, but in both cases, nicknames and middle names often ended up on census reports when the formal first name wasn’t used. This Barker’s original property is in the right location, and it looks like it originally would have matched the 160-acre size Wright described, though by 1871, a portion of it had been sold to a “W. Barker,” presumably a son.
John Barker lived on in Butler Township for many years, eventually being listed on the 1880 census as disabled due to blindness. But my experience is that any document which requires two or more exceptions (name irregularities, for instance) almost certainly does not fit.
Wright says in his letter that Barker had spoken in his house and at local churches about slavery, temperance, and the Bible, bringing much light to what Wright describes as “that benighted region.”
Wright says that earlier lecturers on these subjects were prevented from speaking in Knox County and across the border in Holmes County at New Castle. Wright said he was able to speak in those locations thanks to Barker’s efforts.
The other letter in the Anti-Slavery Bugle which refers to Joseph Barker comes from January of 1853. In it, the Reverend Jonas Hartzell, of Hardin County, Ohio, notes that he heard a recent speech by Barker. Hartzell said that “after a few weeks of mature reflection,” he wished to challenge Barker to a debate about the Bible.
While they were both anti-slavery, Hartzell was very alarmed at Barker’s call for rejecting superstition and applying logic and rationality to the matter.
“I feel disposed to meet you in public discussion,” Hartzell wrote. “I therefore submit the following propositions.
“First, that the Creator has endowed man with the requisite mental capacity, to acquire from the developments of Nature, a perfect knowledge of his relations, duties, and destiny. You affirm, I deny.
“Second, that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, contain a series of communications, supernaturally revealed, and miraculously attested — from the latter, man may acquire a perfect understanding of his relations, duties, and destiny. I affirm, you deny.
“Now sir, if you can maintain the first, I shall have neither interest nor inclination to debate the second …”
Not surprisingly, since Hartzell both challenged Barker to a debate and then refused to debate, no such meeting appears ever to have taken place. Hartzell himself went on to a long career as a Christian writer and speaker.
This second letter may, in fact, give us the key to Joseph Barker. His noted prominence as an abolitionist speaker and religious reformer connects him to a known English reformer of the period by that name, who specifically stated a plan to come to the U.S. and live in various places to get to known this large nation.
In a letter published in several abolitionist newspapers, this Joseph Barker said that he wanted, “…[T]o contribute a little, as opportunity may offer, towards the cause of American and universal freedom and reformation. I shall come in one of the steamers, very likely, to Boston; proceed from Boston to New York; from New York into Ohio, where I have three brothers settled. From Ohio I intend to pass on through Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.”
He showed both a sense of humor and that he had contacts in these areas when he added, “How I shall bear the heat of your July and August, I cannot tell.” This letter was written in 1849.
This Joseph Barker was quite famous in England. He started as a Christian minister, then slowly grew to reject the more supernatural parts of the Bible. He also became a pacifist and abolitionist.
He was indeed from Newcastle, England, but became famous (or to some, infamous) as a fiery speaker. What these references in the Anti-Slavery Bugle show is that Barker, prominent abolitionist and friend of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and other prominent anti-slavery activists, placed himself in Knox County in the early 1850s to help spread the word about his beliefs.
A couple letters from Barker himself place him arriving in Knox County in late 1852, though he initially bobbles the name of Millwood as “Milbrook.” We’ll forgive the mistake as he was busy fixing up the property to make it more livable. Once he was done with that process, he returned to speaking about slavery and religion, both locally and nationally.
As much as he traveled to speak, Knox County functioned only as his home base. Then, just a few years later, he kept moving further westward, ending up eventually in Omaha, Nebraska.
Later on, Barker began to have second thoughts about some of the doors he had opened, in terms of religious reform. He saw how many followed his lead questioning the supernatural parts of the Bible, to entirely denounce Christianity and traditional morals.
In response, Barker began to backtrack and declare that he did value Christianity and traditional morals, eventually returning to preach in some of the churches where he had gotten his start in the 1820s in northern England.
He returned to the US in the late 1870s, where he passed away and was buried in 1879, in Omaha, Nebraska.
It’s amazing to think that briefly, one of the world’s leading abolitionists made Knox County his home before continuing on with his quest to make people think. Based on the statement in
Barker’s letter, I think it is likely that some of the other Barkers in Knox County which I mentioned were relatives of his, explaining why he came to settle here in the first place. The John Barker property in Butler Township may even be the original farm upon which Joseph settled and began his local preaching.
I guess this means I get to move this story into the “retrieved from obscurity” column, after almost giving up on it as inexplicable. I’m glad I kept digging.
