Barnes, William A.

BARNES

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 6/26/2021 at 15:56:33

History of Warren County, Iowa from Its Earliest Settlement to 1908, by Rev. W. C. Martin, Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1908, p.609

WILLIAM ALVA BARNES
William Alva Barnes, of Indianola, is conducting a prosperous business in the purchase and sale of cattle, which he handles upon his farm in Otter Township, where he owns three hundred and forty acres of rich and productive land. Iowa claims him as a natives son and in 1881he came to Warren County. During a later period he resided in St. Charles, but again came to Warren County and is now classed with its progressive and representative business men. His birth occurred in Van Buren County, this state, August 31, 1852.
His father, Hiram Barnes, was born in Ohio and the blood of Irish and French ancestors flowed in his veins. He acquired a common-school education and afterward learned the carpenter’s trade. He arrived in Iowa in 1839 when it was still under territorial rule, taking up his abode where the town of Birmingham now stands in Van Buren County. The entire district was wild and unimproved and he entered a tract of raw prairie from the government, which with characteristic energy he converted into a good farm. He had lived in this state for about ten years when, attracted by the discovery of gold in California, he crossed the plains in 1850. After a brief season spent in the mines, however, he returned to this state and for over forty years was proprietor of a livery stable in Birmingham and also engaged in the purchase and sale of horses. He built the first frame house in Oskaloosa and was closely associated with the substantial development and improvement of his section of the state during pioneer times and also in the era of latter progress. When the county became involved in the Civil War he espoused the Union cause, enlisting in 1861 as a member of Company H, Third Iowa Cavalry. He thus served until toward the close of the war, when he developed dropsy and was thus obliged to resign. He assisted in organizing his company and was made its first lieutenant. While at the front he participated in a number of important skirmishes in Arkansas and Missouri.
In politics he was an earnest Republican and was mayor of Birmingham. His official prerogatives were exercised for the benefit of the community and never for personal aggrandizement and his citizenship was always characterized by a lofty patriotism. His life, too, was at all times in harmony with his profession as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the work of which he took an active part, serving for some time as one of its officers. His death resulted from a railroad accident June 23, 1899, when he was eighty-one years of age. His widow still survives him and resides upon the old family homestead at Birmingham, at the age of eighty-six years. She bore the maiden name of Hannah Loomis, and was born in Ohio in1822 and is of New England ancestry. She, too, has been a lifelong member of the Methodist Church. Their family numbered eight children.
William Alva Barnes, who was a twin and was the second in order of birth, attended the public schools of Birmingham and was also a student in the college there. He afterward pursued a course in the Keokuk Business College in 1873-74 and later went to Colorado, spending two years in that state and in Wyoming, engaged in sheep and cattle raising. On his return to Iowa he joined his father in the livery business and they were thus associated for about two years. On the expiration of that period Mr. Barnes again went to the west and became a bookkeeper in a mercantile house in California. He also purchased a ranch in Mono County, that state, and remained in California for three years. In the spring of 1881 he arrived in Warren County, Iowa, settling on a farm in Jackson Township, where he carried on the work of tilling the soil until the fall of 1895. In that year he removed to St. Charles, Madison County, where he engaged in farming and also bought and sold cattle. After a period of ten years he came to Indianola and has since engaged in buying and selling cattle here, handling the stock on his farm in Otter Township, which comprises three hundred and forty acres of rich and productive land, providing him with ample pasturage, while the fields return rich crops. He has been quite successful in his undertakings, his business affairs being capably managed, so that he is now numbered among the substantial citizens of his county. He is also the vice president of the J.F. Johnson Bank at St. Charles, Iowa.
On the 15th of March, 1878, occurred the marriage of Mr. Barnes and Miss Ida M. Wood, who was born in Lee County, Iowa, and died on the 13th of November 1896, leaving three children: Edwin H., of California, who is captain of a dredge boat; Lelia, who is in the Chicago Training School for Missions, and William Alva, a fruit-grower of California. On the 28th of November 1900, Mr. Barnes was again married, his second union being with Mrs. Mary Phillips, the widow of W.S. Phillips, and a daughter of Elias and Harriet Peterman. Her father, a harness maker by trade, is now postmaster of Lemonville, Missouri. By her first marriage, Mrs. Barnes had four sons, of whom two are living: Maurice, who is a clerk in a store in Indianola, and William. By the present marriage there is one daughter, Harriet Lane. Mr. Barnes and his wife both hold membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church and he is equally loyal to the teachings of the craft, belonging to the Masonic Lodge at St. Charles, while both he and his wife are connected with the Eastern Star. His political endorsement is given to the Republican Party and he has held some local offices. As a business man he has been conspicuous among his associates, not only for his success but for his probity, fairness and honorable methods. In everything he has been eminently practical and this has been manifest not only in his business undertakings but also in his social and private life.