James Barton (1825 - 1908)

BARTON, MCDONALD, RIGSBY, TUBBS, PAGE

Posted By: Karen Brewer (email)
Date: 1/24/2020 at 10:44:34

The Osceola Sentinel, Osceola, Iowa
September 3, 1908, Page 8

The funeral of Mr. Barton was held Monday at Ottawa. Rev. Reynolds conducted the services and interment at Ottawa cemetery.

Osceola Sentinel, Osceola, Iowa
September 17, 1908, Page 1

What Do You Know About That?
(The following obituary notice of James Barton was written by the Sentinel editor last week, for publication in our paper. A relative of the deceased asked to see it while we went to dinner and did not return it, but instead it was handed in to the Democrat and printed, exactly as written by us. That accounts for the fact that it was not in the Sentinel. The Sentinel is not in the habit of loaning its copy and the next fellow who asks it bad better have his life insurance in full force.) J. L. LONG

OBITUARY

James Barton was born in Cheshire, England, March 19, 1825 and died at his home in Woodburn August 28, 1908 aged 83 years, 5 months and 10 days.

He came to America when 16 years of age and settled in Iowa that year, in 1841, 10 miles northwest of Burlington. On April 27, 1852 he was married to Jane McDonald, and to this union two daughters were born. His wife died in 1853 and four years later he married Mary J. Rigsby. To them were born five sons and five daughters. In 1884 the family moved to this county where they have since resided.

Mrs. Barton died in 1893. He is survived by four sons and three daughters, 18 grandchildren and one great grandchild, also two brothers and three sisters; the brothers, Joe of Roscoe and William, of Winterset both attending the funeral.

The surviving children are; Will of Monmouth, Illinois, Mrs. Josephine Tubbs of Burlington, Mrs. Etta Page, Miss Martha and J. F., J. W. and Benedict all of Woodburn. They were all present.

Father Barton was a man of rugged but kindly character and disposition, loyal to his home and family and to his adopted country. He was a member of the U. B. church and died firm in his faith. For years he had suffered greatly and during the last few months, intensely, but he bore it with a patient philosophy characteristic of the stern Anglo Saxon race from which he was descended.

For 67 years he was a citizen of Iowa and he saw the wild desert to which he came blossom into the fairest of the sisterhood of state and realized that tho dream of his boyhood of the Land of Promise across the waters was none too extravagant.

He rounded out the fullness of his years and in his death he but fulfilled nature's inexorable laws and paid the toll that all of us must pay; yet his passing leaves a place vacant in the lives of many. He was but a man but he was all of that, which is saying much.