George E. Barkley Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1042-1043 in "History of Dakota 
	Territory" by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. IV (1915) and was 
	scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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				GEORGE E. BARKLEY.  

	George E. Barkley, residing on section 6, Sioux Falls township, 
Minnehaha county, is widely known as a breeder of registered shorthorn 
cattle and Duroc-Jersey hogs and owns a tract of one hundred and twenty 
acres comprising one of the most fertile and most valuable farms in 
South Dakota. His birth occurred in Boone county, Iowa, on the 16th of 
February, 1879, his parents being M. C. and Mary E. (Smith) Barkley, 
the former a native of Iowa and the latter of Ohio. James Barkley, the 
paternal grandfather of our subject, removed to Iowa from Indiana in 
1842, taking up a homestead in Linn county, Iowa, before Mount Vernon 
was laid out. He was a carpenter by trade and helped to erect the first 
building of Cornell College at Mount Vernon. In 1856 he removed to 
Boone county, where M. C. Barkley was reared and married and where 
three children were born to him and his wife. In the spring of 1887 he 
took up his abode in Sac county, Iowa, purchasing his present home farm 
of eighty acres for seventeen dollars an acre. The land is now worth 
two hundred dollars an acre. M. C. Barkley enjoys an enviable 
reputation as one of the substantial and esteemed citizens of Sac 
county and has served in the various township offices, being elected as 
a candidate of the republican party.  

	George E. Barkley was reared under the parental roof and in the 
acquirement of an education attended the common schools and also the 
high schools of Odebolt and Boone. On his twenty-first birthday he 
started out as an agriculturist on his own account by renting land and 
for about ten years followed farming in Sac county, Iowa. In 1910 he 
came to south Dakota and took up his abode on the southeast quarter of 
section 30, Split Rock township, Minnehaha county, having purchased 
this farm in the fall of 1909. At the end of a year, however, he 
disposed of the property and purchased one hundred and sixty acres of 
land where he now resides. Two years later he sold forty acres of this 
farm, which at present comprises one hundred and twenty acres and which 
is situated just outside the city limits of Sioux Falls, lying in the 
Big Sioux bottoms and being therefore one of the most fertile and most 
valuable tracts in South Dakota. Mr. Barkley is engaged in the breeding 
of registered shorthorn cattle and Duroc-Jersey hogs, shipping his 
stock as far west as the Pacific coast. He is becoming widely known as 
a successful breeder and on the 23d of January, 1914, sold twenty-five 
head of hogs and sixteen head of cattle for four thousand one hundred 
and fifty-two dollars. He has almost his entire farm seeded to grass 
and rents outside land for farming purposes. His is one of the best 
improved properties of Minnehaha county and in its able management he 
has won prosperity.  

	In September, 1904, Mr. Barkley was united in marriage to Miss 
Caroline Hanson, of Sac county, Iowa, who is a native of Long Island, 
New York. They have three children: Ralph Wallace, Edna May and Flora 
Belle. Mr. Barkley gives his political allegiance to the republican 
party and is identified fraternally with the Masons, belonging to Unity 
Lodge, No. 130, of Sioux Falls. He is also connected with the Modern 
Woodmen of America, while his religious faith is indicated by his 
membership in the First Methodist Episcopal church of Sioux Falls, to 
which his wife likewise belongs. He is a young man of force, ambition 
and enterprise and he stands high in the esteem and confidence of his 
fellow citizens.