JOHN BENTON BARNES
Page 549

JOHN BENTON BARNES. There are few residents of Mason County who are unfamiliar with the name introducing this sketch. It is that of a self-made man in the broadest sense of the term, one who in his youth resolved to make life a success if that result could be secured by industry and wise management. Without the prestige of family or the influence of wealth to aid him he has worked his way to the highest round of the ladder and now occupies a prominent place among the agriculturists of Forest City Township, where he owns a quarter-section of valuable land; he is also the proprietor of an improved tract of eight hundred acres in Nebraska. Our subject is the youngest son of Deacon Nathan Barnes, now deceased, and of whom a more extended sketch will be found in the biography of George E. Barnes on another page of this work. John Benton Barnes was born on the 3d of October, 1846, in Greenfield, Hillsboro County, N. H., and upon the removal of his parents to Bunker Hill, Macoupin County, this state, there attended the public schools. During the progress of the late war Mr. Barnes, in February, 1864, left home and in company with Fred Cross, who was sutler for the Seventh Illinois Infantry, joined that regiment at Pulaski, Tenn. It formed a part of General Sherman's army and was stationed the greater portion of the time at Rome, Ga. In September of that year our subject was appointed Clerk to the Postmaster of the Fourth Division, Fifteenth Army Corps of General Sherman's army, which position he held until April 13, 1865, when he participated in the celebrated march to the sea and on through the Carolinas. He left his regiment at Goldsboro, N. C., returning home May 11 of that year to this county. In the fall of the above year Mr. Barnes purchased forty acres of land on section 30, this township, which he sold three years later to A. H. Barnes, and going to Whiteside County rented land there. He was married in that place June 9, 1869, to Miss Mary L., daughter of Rev. Francis and Marcia Cornelia (Blair) Smith, the former of whom was born in Ireland, and the latter a native of New York State. Her parents were married in the Empire State and there made their home until coming to Illinois in 1846. The father was a minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church and died near Independence, Iowa, in 1872. The mother still survives. Three of their children are now living. Marian, the wife of J. W. De Lapp, resides in Chickasaw County, Iowa. Flora J., now Mrs. Robert Miller, makes her home near Shenandoah, that state, and Mrs. Barnes, who is the youngest, was born June 2, 1851, near McHenry, this state. In March, 1870, our subject and his wife came to Mason County and lived for a year with A. H. Barnes, when they purchased a farm on the bluffs nine miles northwest of his present place. But selling very soon afterward, he rented property for three years and in 1875 bought his present estate. It includes one hundred and sixty acres, and bears a fine line of improvements, the most of which he has placed upon it himself. His present substantial and commodious residence was erected in 1874. Our subject and his wife are the parents of three children: Ida M., now Mrs. James B. Whittaker, who lives in Manito Township; Gilbert A. and Alta Roselle. The wife and mother is a member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, while our subject is a Baptist in religion. They have given their children fine educations. Mrs. Whittaker was a student in the Lincoln (Ill.) University. Our subject is a Republican in politics with prohibition tendencies, and has been keenly alive to the interests of his party. He has been Director of School District No. 9, and for eleven years was Commissioner of Garden Special Drainage District, of which he was one of the organizers, and was very active in getting it in working order. An uncle of our subject, Artemus Barnes, was a bachelor and made his home with him for seventeen years, or until his death, January 23, 1892. Mrs. Marcia C. Smith, the mother of Mrs. Barnes, has also made her home with our subject for the past twenty years.

1894 Biography Index

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