BIOGRAPHY: Charles L. LeBarron Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by jimblackblack@netscape.net Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ________________________________________________________ NOTE: For more information on Page County, Iowa Please visit the Page County, IAGenWeb page at http://iagenweb.org/page/ ________________________________________________________ I've enclosed a lengthy article from the Shenandoah Sentinel for Wednesday, February 18, 1903. It gives the life story of Charles Lathrop LeBarron (b. 1835 d. 1905) who was born in eastern NY and became one of the first settlers in the area. Charles was still living and acting as Justice of the Peace at the time of publication. The Evening Sentinel, Shenandoah, Iowa Wednesday, February 18, 1903 CHARLES L. LEBARRON, PIONEER EARLY TRIALS AND HARDSHIPS Among the few men still living in Shenandoah whose lives were identified with the earliest history of this community Charles Lathrop LeBarron, present justice of the peace, holds a prominent place in that history, having farmed in this vicinity long before Shenandoah was thought of, and afterwards owned land now occupied as our beautiful Rose Hill Cemetery. He was the pioneer liveryman in Shenandoah and was one of the first stock buyers. His life has been a checkered one, with its ups and downs and filled all the way along with incidents of historical and romantic interest, many of them tragic. Mr. LeBarron was born at Hoosic Falls, Rensseaer County, New York, November 27, 1835. The following spring his father, Lathrop LeBarron and his grandfather decided to "go west" and traveled across country to Cattaraugus County in western New York where they bought land and began to clear off the forest. They were thirty-one miles from Buffalo. The mother and baby Charles followed them a few months later. In July Charles' father was killed by a tree, which fell on him. It was crooked and in falling it went in a different direction from what was expected, striking another tree in its decent and throwing the trunk around and upon him, killing him instantly. Later Mrs. LeBarron married her husband's brother and by him had two more children, Julia M. and Joseph O. The first named is a resident of Shenandoah and widow of the late Moses Barce. Joseph resides in Cushing, Ida County, this state. By a remarkable coincidence Mrs. LeBarron's second husband and brother of the first was killed in a similar way by the falling of a tree within eighty rods of where the first was killed. A large limb broke from a falling tree and flying back struck him on the side so that he died in a few hours. Charles was then ten years of age. His mother continued to reside in that locality and he remained with her until he was within three days of eleven years old when he left home and from that time continued to make his own living. He went to work first for a rich farmer named Ralph Johnson and lived with him eighteen months, working part of the time on the farm and part of the time in the curry-house and tannery owned by the same man. Johnson was quick tempered and had considerable trouble with his men, but young LeBarron would take nothing off from him and "sassed back" whenever he felt like it. After leaving Johnson he continued to work in that locality, going to school a few weeks each winter and working the balance of the time. For two or three years he worked for a man named Joshua Markham who had a shingle machine and Charles manipulated that part of the time. Then he worked for a fine religious man named Dan Brown. LeBarron was taken sick there and Brown took care of him very kindly and waited for him to recover, but he did not get so he could work much and finally gave up and concluded to go west to see that country. In the spring of 1854 he landed in Kankakee, Illinois. An aunt named Eliza Berzee lived in Kankakee. (Her daughter taught kindergarten school in Shenandoah last year.) Markham for who LeBarron had worked in New York had moved to Illinois and owned a farm twelve miles southwest of Kankakee and LeBarron went to work for him, doing light work at first. By harvest time he was made a full hand. In the fall he got the ague and had it good and hard but he stayed there that year and next until fall. During that time he made a visit to New York and brought his mother to Illinois, where she met and married Samuel Chapman, and then in the fall of 1855 Charles went to work for Chapman. During the years of his mother's widowhood Charles had contributed to her support and also spent money doctoring his sister's eyes. After his mother was married, Charles married his stepsister, Martha Chapman, August 3, 1856. October 23, that year he and his bride started with a team of oxen and an old wagon and drove across the country and reached his wife's brother's home on Tarkio Creek the day before Charles was twenty- one years of age. The brother was Ralph Chapman, well known in Page County, who had located on Tarkio a year previous. C. L. left his wife at the Chapman home and he and Ralph came over to Fischer's Grove, afterwards called Manti, and rented a house of J.F. Durfey on the John McComb hill, but they did not like it and only stayed a few days. Charles then went to Edmund Fisher and rented of him a room occupying a space between two log cabins on what was afterwards the John Meyers place. LeBarron and his wife had only been there three days when a terrible snowstorm set in, more severe than any that had taken place since. It was the biggest snow LeBarron ever saw in Iowa, four feet deep on a level. The wolves that winter killed about all the deer in this country. LeBarron worked for Fisher that winter hauling logs and wood. The village was cut off for weeks from all communication with the outside world. The stage route from Clarinda to Sydney was closed for a month. When Phil Banks finally got through with the mail it took him two days to reach Manti. The following February LeBarron and his wife moved to Hickory Grove on Buck Creek in Lincoln Township and he hired out to his brother-in-law, Ralph Chapman, and that summer split rails, built fence and broke up sod. He bought a land warrant of Chapman for $1.20 per acre, saving five cents per acre by the transaction as government land was sold for $1.25 per acre. He also pre-empted some land. He proved up and paid for his land 123 11/100 acres that is now known as the Barnhill farm in Grant Township, land now worth $125.00 per acre, 100 times what it cost then. But he was unable to build on it or to get the breaking done so he could farm it. That fall he moved to Manti again and spent the winter of 1857-8 in a little cabin belonging to Nicholas Taylor on what afterwards became the Call farm. In the spring of '58 he rented some land of Almond Sherman and put in a crop. After the crop was in LeBarron and wife and their baby, Asa, and Ralph Chapman all drove back to Illinois and LeBarron went on to New York and stayed three months. They spent the following winter in Illinois and then drove back to Manti where LeBarron farmed some land for Fisher and lived in a house belonging to D. S. Brown where J. M. Sinclair now resides. Here their second child, Lydia, was born. During the fall of 1859 they bought a log house in Manti and lived in it that winter, but the next spring they built a cabin on their own land, tearing the other to pieces and using it to build a stable and some cribs. That summer LeBarron got a little breaking done on his own land and raised some wheat but also rented land of Mr. Fisher. He continued to rent of Fisher in 1861, and in 1862 he rented of a Missourian named Rudisill who got into disrepute as a rebel, and LeBarron got all of the crop that year. Stirring events came on about that time and LeBarron remembers a band of soldiers following some horse raiders past his place; also the soldiers bringing a rebel past his place and hanging him somewhere near McKissick's Grove. LeBarron became a member of the Manti Home Guard, a squad of ten men. The government furnished them guns and ammunition but they had to furnish their own horses and went to Sydney to drill. They made two trips to the Missouri line in search of "the enemy" but did not have any fighting. Dr. Whiting, S. S. Wilcox, Louis Whiting and Jed Anderson were other members of this same home guard. There was considerable rebel sentiment in the vicinity of Sydney at that time but it did not manifest itself in any overt acts and LeBarron was not called upon to show his valor under fire. In the fall of 1862 he drove across the country to Illinois for a visit and was taken sick shortly after he started on the return trip, and then he retraced his steps to the home of his stepfather where he underwent a long siege of sickness. Then the stepfather died and soon after his mother died. LeBarron and his wife remained there and settled up the business of the estate and sold the wife's interest in it and finally returned to Manti about the close of the war. His brother and sister came with them. LeBarron went onto his own farm and remained there several years improving it and getting on his feet financially. He built a good house and got along nicely. When the railroad came through in 1870 he and Lyman Fisher bought a machine and cut hay and sold it to the graders at a good price. When the town started LeBarron owned forty acres of land part of which is now inside the corporation and is used for the cemetery and brickyard. He sold it to the town company for $800.00. In the spring of 1871 he built a livery barn where the seed house of J. B. Armstrong now stands, and engaged in the livery business, the first liveryman in Shenandoah. The barn was built by Covertson & Dillingham, their first contract in Shenandoah. It was a regular old fashioned eastern barn, well built with 8x8 sill and 6x6 posts, all well braced, as you will find in most of the barns built forty years ago. LeBarron had a monopoly of the business then and made some money; made more than the liverymen of today make. He got four dollars a day for rigs and a dollar a day for taking care of a team; fifty cents for a feed. He ran the business over one year alone and then sold half interest to Charles Cox. One day Charles Cox made him an offer and he took it up. He was unloading a load of hay at the time and he got right off the load with half of it there and turned the business over to Cox. Sometime after this, Cox sold out to Capt. McGogy and while the barn was being moved to another site it was burned. After he sold his livery business LeBarron engaged in the stock shipping business and continued at it for five and one-half years. Benj. Carey and John X. Griffith were in the business at that time, also. Times were against the shippers and the Grange movement came up when the farmers concluded to dispose of the middle-man, and in common with hundreds of others, LeBarron failed. He lost his money and his farm and was practically cleaned out of everything. W. E. Webster got the farm, but he permitted LeBarron to live on it for a time. Then he came to town and got a job as city Marshall and served for five or six years. One year he ran a dray. In 1885 he went to Rawlins County, Kansas, and took up a homestead of 160 acres and remained there until he got a deed for it. He also took a timber claim but lost that through some defect in the papers. In 1890 her returned to Shenandoah to the same house he left. He traded his Kansas land to Jeff Williams for 15 1/2 acres just southwest of town which he still owns. Of his history since his return most of our readers are familiar. The first year he worked at any odd job he could get. The second year he was put in as street commissioner and Marshall, then out a year and in again. He was elected as constable for two or three terms and then as justice of the peace and is now serving his third term as justice very acceptably. Mr. LeBarron was the first constable of Grant Township and has served as constable in all 28 or 29 years. He was deputy sheriff five years when Isaac Damewood was Sheriff. He was the third man to take the degree of Masonry in Shenandoah shortly after the organization of Tri-Centum Lodge in 1871, Thomas Warren and O. A. Rogers going in just ahead of him. Mr. and Mrs. LeBarron have had nine children, all of them living but one. Asa was born in Manti in 1857, Lydia on the Sinclair place in 1859, and died when nineteen years old. C. B. was worn on Barnhill farm in this township February 5, 1862, and it is thought he is the oldest native of Grant Township, having lived here from his birth, over 41 years. The other children are Etta M. McConnoughey, Ed C., Eugene S., Mattie, Will and Sam. The greater portion of the life of C. L. LeBarron has been spent in a struggle with poverty and misfortune or disaster, but through it all he never lost or gave up the struggle. He always kept going. He was industrious and honest, a good citizen through it all. He is of sturdy independence, frugal habits, of good judgement, well adapted to the position of justice of the peace which he holds. He is usually of jovial disposition, quick to appreciate a good joke or story. At the same time he has many of the qualities of the old stoic philosophers, accepting calmly whatever the fates of life have in store for him from year to year, whether the fortune be good or ill. While his life has not been marked by the great successes in fame or fortune that we might write of some others, it has been a life of peaceful industry and resignation. Note: Family history says that Charlotte Dunn LeBarron made a wooden butter box from the tree that killed her first husband, Lathrop, and a butter paddle from the tree that killed her second husband, (Joseph?). I have both items L165 LeBarron, Charles, b 27 Nov 1835 Hoosic Falls, Renssaler co, NY; d Shen, apoplexy; wed 03 Aug 1856 Martha Chapman; f Lathrop LeBarron. SW 28 Apr 1905, SW 21 Apr 1905