William C Barker and Elizabeth Hurtt

Burwell Barker (1787-1844 also "Burrel") was married to Nancy Holloway. They had several children in Wake County. Burwell's will mentions Henderson, Gray, Brinkley and Zachariah. Also Mary, Margaret, Mark, and Lydia Barker Hunter. I have a copy of the will. I also have found a copy of Zachariah Barker's will. There are some interesting congruences, and one surprise. Zachariah mentions a brother, William C. Barker. Researchers have been of two minds I think on whether to actually include William C among the children of Burwell. I have decided to make the leap, and to hope for greater clarity someday. There is a good bit of information about William C Barker. William C Barker married Elizabeth Hurtt Roberts. She was the

Oldest child of William F and Martha Barden Hurt, she married James D Roberts in Halifax Co, NC on Oct 24, 1857 and had a daughter, Almedia Robert, born Jul, 1858. after death of James Roberts (war casualty), she married William C Barker on Apr 27, 1865 in Raleigh, Wake, NC and had two sons, John Quenton Barker and William Barker. Her second husband died in 1871. By 1880, she migrated to Forest Hill, Summers Co, WV with brother John Thomas and her mother, Martha Barden Hurt. 

It would seem then that some time after the death of William C Barker, Elizabeth (Betsy) moved to where others of her family were living in West Virginia. By that time she had two sons of William C in addition to her own daughter from her first marriage. This is where the story gets more interesting, because there is a great deal of information on one of the sons, John Quinton Barker. It is he and his family that I have been researching this weekend.

John Quinton Barker (Quenton) according to a newspaper article of 1934 was born in Wake County and moved to WV with his family. (I have discovered that some of the facts in the newspaper article are a bit jumbled.) He attended "Athens College in Hinton, WV." That was probably Concord College in a town once known as Concord, but which changed names in 1896 to Athens. It is indeed about 20 miles from the town of Hinton, WV. John Quinton Barker moved to Andrews, NC in 1897 and established a lumber business. He was also instrumental in the incorporation of the town, the establishment of its road system, a school, and in building a short railway to move lumber from the forests to the mill. He was such a key figure in the history of Andrews, NC that in 1934 a portrait of him was placed in a new gymnasium at the Andrews High School (along with a portrait of DS Russell).

John Quinton Barker had eleven children with Deborah Keeney. I'll go into more detail about his family in another post. He resided in Andrews until 1912 when he joined the business interests of EW Grove (of Grove Park Inn, Grovemont, and Grovestone fame). He managed Grove's affairs in Florida living the remainder of his life in Gainesville.

Since railroads were such a vital part of the history and economic development of the region, there is a fair amount of information about the Snowbird Railway. You can read a summary about it here. Notice the name of the organization's treasurer, William Lewin. John Quinton Barker named one of his sons John Lewin, no doubt honoring his business partner.

I came across some of this information a few years ago, but never did much with it, as my own family line breaks with this one in William C Barker's generation (my own line descends from his brother Mark). But one wonders if there is family around wherever one is, so I have pursued this a bit further to this point because of the local connection.There is a family of Barkers who live in Montreat, NC, near us, and I am often asked if we are related. That family, I believe, moved to the area with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, perhaps from the upper mid-west. So I do not think we are directly related. But you never know. My goal in life now is to try to find an image of the portrait that was hung in the high school of John Quinton Barker.