Thomas Barber and His Son Edward

     ©  Kathy Duncan, 2021

If I could give beginning researchers any advice, it would be to research your ancestor's siblings and check newspapers for additional information.

I really intended for my next step in researching Thomas Barber to be a focus on Onslow County, North Carolina deeds, but I took a little newspaper break and found these gems instead. 

The first clipping was in the Savannah Morning News on 8 September 1885.

"Joseph Jackson, Thomas Cowart, Jack Cowart, and several others, came to Lee the second year it was organized. Thomas Barber was the father of Edward Barber, my correspondent, and he was said to have been the first white man buried in Lee county. His funeral took place fifty-five years ago. Jesse Jackson, the crippled son of Joseph Jackson, is, I am told, living yet."

This little tidbit confirms my theory that Edward Barber was the son of the Thomas Barber I am researching. The death of Thomas Barber fifty-five years before would fit with my theory that he had died about 1829, possibly early 1830 in Lee County. I still think this probably occurred in the portion of Lee County that became Sumter County. 

This article then went on to relate the experiences of an Uncle Mose and the night the stars fell. The way it was worded made me think there might be more information from the author's correspondent, Edward Barber. Since this article originally appeared in the Americus Recorder, I went searching for that paper. 

That search paid off in an additional newspaper column. Both of these appeared in the Americus Daily Recorder on 6 September 1885. Notice that this article is called "scraps and sketches of Sumter County History."

"Having seen an article from the RECORDER, copied in another paper, on the early history of this county, Mr. Edward Barber, of Jonesboro, writes me a few interesting facts for which he will please accept my thanks. His father came to Lee county when there were but twenty families within the wide boundaries of that vast wilderness. They had to go to old Hartford to mill, a distance of many miles over roads that were merely blazed out through the unbroken forest. Mr. Barber came as an overseer for Joseph Jackson, whose plantation was on Spring creek, near Flint river. He says that 'most of the time they ground their corn on a steel mill, people from ten miles around coming to the Barber's mill to grind their corn.' He remembers but one family, and that was Tomlinson, the same Tomlinson who was for years an honored representative of Sumter county in the legislative halls. Jared Tomlinson's name occurs very frequently in the old journals of the House and Senate. He is still enjoying a green old age, living in Albany, retired from the bustle of life, and doubtless his memory often runs backward to those early times when true worth and intrinsic merit paved the royal road to honorable preferment."

Among other things, this article tells me the vicinity of where the Barbers settled, that they had a mill. and that they came to Lee County with Joseph Jackson. Given that Thomas had a son named Jackson Barber that seems noteworthy. Joseph Jackson may have been a relative of Thomas Barber or his wife Sarah Mashburn. Since the one family Edward remembered was named Tomlinson, I want to be on the alert for any documents that include them. 

The presence of Joseph Jackson is noteworthy since my Joseph Barber's son George named one of his sons Joseph Jackson Barber. My thinking is still that the elder Joseph Barber did not have a middle name, or at least, he did not have one that can be documented. I'm now thinking that young George W. Barber heard stories of Joseph Jackson, a revered man who Joseph Barber knew in his youth, as well as stories of Joseph's brother Jackson, so he named his own son Joseph Jackson Barber. Additionally, Joseph Barber named his youngest known son Edward. I'm thinking that he named this son after his only surviving brother, Edward Barber. 

One of the most important bits of information was that Edward Barber was living in Jonesboro, Georgia in 1885. This should help me flesh out the records for him since I last found him in Dooly County in 1850. 

I am hoping that this will lead to more information about the Barbers. And, of course, there is an old mill to find.