Reunion

Mamie Barker Image courtesy of KR Krager

When Hannah West Barker died in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1867 at the age of thirty-six, her children were ten (Libby), nine (Hannah), five (John Jr.) and one (Mamie). Their father, John Gue Barker, Sr., had already lost one wife, Margarette, who died in childbirth in 1852. The baby survived and John bundled her off to be raised by her maternal grandmother in Connecticut. Sadly for John, Hannah's parents predeceased her, but he was apparently able to prevail upon her brother, Theodore West, to take their four children in, at least for a time, as Libby, Hannah, John Jr. and Mamie were enumerated with that family in the 1870 census of Brooklyn.

While I appreciate that John presumably needed to work to support his children and thus didn't have time to actively parent them, he did seem to make something of a habit of immediately pawning them off for someone else to raise as soon as he found himself without a wife. By the 1880 census, John had married again, yet even Mamie, only 14, did not return to live with him.

For the eighteen years, from that 1870 census until Mamie's wedding in 1888, I don't know for sure where the children were; I don't think it was a fun time for them. I have found no trace of young Hannah after that 1870 census and believe that she died somewhere in that interval.

Here's what I do know:

• In the 1875 state census, 13-year-old John and and 9-year-old Mary were living with a Mrs. Sarah Bergan and were given the status of "adopted child." Mrs. Bergan was born in England. Descendants of Mary Jane Barker, who was called Mamie, had heard that she was "raised by English Aunts," and, although I haven't found Mrs. Bergan to be a relative, perhaps that's at least part of where that story originated. Or perhaps these aren't the right children at all.

• On June 3, 1877, according to the birth record, 21-year-old Libby Barker gave birth to a baby girl, Alma, at a pioneering maternity hospital devoted to caring for poor women "of good character." The father, a 37-year-old engineer and inventor, is named on the birth record but I find no evidence that the two married. Somehow, the baby ended up in Michigan and renamed "Wilhelmina." I know from the matching DNA relationships that this was my great-grandmother, but I have so many questions around what really happened.

• In the 1880 census, 18-year-old John Jr. is working as a clerk in a store in Brooklyn. According to a later biography, he had "completed the New York City High School course and entered the wholesale business."

• About 1881, 24-year-old Libby married 31-year-old German immigrant and patent medicine mogul Carl David Salfield of San Francisco. An 1883 newspaper mention indicates that the couple was visiting in New York City.

• According to the 1921 biography of John Jr., "in 1887, he came to San Francisco and engaged in the realty and hotel business. He owned different hotels..."

• On October 27, 1887, John Gue Barker, Sr., made out a will that left everything to his third wife, Margaret.

Frederick Augustus Weed imaged courtesy of KR Krager

What I can say for certain is that on March 8, 1888, 21-year-old Mary Jane Barker wed 23-year-old Frederick Augustus Weed in the San Francisco home of the bride's sister, Mrs. Libby Salfield. Libby's husband, Carl, and John Gue Barker Jr. were the only others in attendance. According to a newspaper article about their 50th wedding anniversary, Mamie and Fred met when she was living in Fred's hometown of Glens Falls, in far upstate New York.

Following the wedding, Fred and Mamie toured "points of interest in the west" -- an expedition that sounds like an incredible odyssey all on its own, but can you imagine seeing the California redwoods and Yosemite by horse and wagon in 1888? -- before returning to Potsdam, New York, where Frederick was in the lumber business and where they lived the rest of their lives. Fred had traveled across the continent -- no easy feat in 1888! -- to woo and wed Mamie. That must have been a wonderful reunion, indeed.

But, to me, Libby's gathering of her brother and sister to her, from New York to San Francisco, seems like an even greater reunion. It had been some time since the three of them had lived together as a family; Libby had lived on the other side of the country from John and Mamie for at least six years. Their father did not die until March of 1889, over a year after making out his will. Was his 1887 will, perhaps, part of an agreement to give a portion of his assets to his two youngest children, to help them make their way west and set up a stake there? And surely Libby's husband, Carl, helped pay for the travel as well as perhaps funding Mamie's trousseau and supporting John Jr's introduction into the California business community. Can you see the dapper and brash 25-year-old John Jr. at the train station, grinning amidst vigorous back slaps and hearty handshakes from friends who are both sad and envious over his departure? Meanwhile, 21-year-old Mamie, who has already made a private leave-taking from her beau, desperately begs Libby "But what if I never see him again? I love him!" and Libby responds, serenely but implacably, "If he is worthy of you, you will see him again." Carl holds up his pocket watch, then helps the sisters across the platform before going to collect his brother-in-law. He smiles fondly to see his wife put one arm around each sibling, content to have her brother and sister once again at her side, reunited at last.

The New York Public Library. "Street scene, New York City" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1893