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Memoir of Mrs. Mary Barr
Printed for Private Distribution
Cincinnati: Cincinnati Gazette Company Print
January, 1863
(Found at the Cincinnati Historical Society)
Mrs. Mary Barr, one of the early settlers of Cincinnati, departed this life on 26th of January, 1863, in the 80th year of her age. She was born on the 26th of April, 1783, and had reached within three months of her 80th birthday, at the time of her death.
The family of Barr of Scotch origin, took their name from a place in Scotland, whence a branch of the family removed to the south ("south" interlined - "north" inserted - JRS) of Ireland, at the time of the great emigration thither; carrying with them, the religious forms and faith of the Scotch Presbyterian church. Some members of this family came to Pennsylvania at the time of the first Scotch-Irish emigration, and the subject of this notice, the eldest child of William Barr and Mary McKnight, was born at Shippensburgh on the 26th of April, 1783.
William Barr, Senior, as he was called, her father, was one of seven children that grew to maturity; five of them sons, William, John, Robert, Samuel, and Andrew, and two daughters, Jane, who married a McWhorter, and Sarah, who married a Grafton, all of whom, but Robert, had families.
William Barr married Mary McKnight, January 8th, 1782. She was a sister of the Rev. Dr. McKnight, a distinguished divine of the Presbyterian Church of Pennsylvania.
Mary McKnight was a woman of eminent piety, and of uncommon talent. They had six children, four of whom reached maturity and had families, viz: Mary, the subject of this notice, born April 26, 1783; John M., born Feb. 14, 1787, and who died August 10, 1820; Jane, born Jan. 20, 1789, and who married James Keys, and died Dec. 28, 1857; Susan, born Feb. 4, 1794, who married John B. Enness, and died June 5, 1826.
William Barr, Senior, with his wife and family, removed from Shippensburgh to Cincinnati, where he died at the venerable age of 75. He was a man of ardent piety, and is still remembered in Cincinnati for his tall upright figure and his long white flowing hair. He had been a successful merchant in Shippensburgh, and was a man of independent fortune to the end of his life; and his will, recorded in Hamilton County Records, shows his characteristic caution, in the disposal of his estate, and his abundant provision for his wife. He died May 15th, 1816. His wife, Mary McKnight, died July 16, 1818, at the age of 63.
Samuel Barr, brother of William Barr, Senior, married Margaret Robinson, and removed to the West at an early day. He had five children that grew to maturity; William, who married his cousin Mary, the subject of this notice; Mary, who married a Robinson; Anne, who married John Ellison; John T., many years a distinguished merchant of Baltimore, and afterwards of New York City; and Margaret, who married John F. Keys, formerly of Baltimore, but now of Glendale, near Cincinnati. Samuel Barr was killed by the Indians in the neighborhood of Maysville, Kentucky, about the year 1790 or 1791.
William Barr, his eldest son, went to Shippensburgh, into the employ of his uncle William Barr, Sr., when quite young, and afterwards established himself in Baltimore. On the 5th of Oct., 1801, he married Mary, the subject of this notice. They remained in Baltimore till 1809, when they removed to Cincinnati, traveling all the way by land, with their family and effects, spending three weeks time in accomplishing their journey between the two cities. They first settled in the eastern part of the city, on Main street, where they resided till 1814 or 1815. But the sale of the estate of Israel Ludlow, Major Barr bought 60 acres of land lying between 5th and 8th streets, and west of Western Row, then occupied by a solitary small brick house, and principally covered with a dense original forest growth. Included in this purchase was the large and beautiful Mound, situated near what is now the corner of Mound and Fifth streets, which has since been entirely removed. Major Barr proposed to convey this Mound, then covered with trees, with a surrounding lot, to the corporation of Cincinnati, on condition that they should enclose it with a permanent fence and preserve it. But the offer was not accepted, and the Mound has passed away, and nothing remains of it, but the small hieroglyphic stone found in its centre, and some remains of human bones, which are still preserved.
In 1816, Major Barr commenced the erection of his Mansion House, now known as 61 Mound street, which was a front adjoined to the house they previously occupied. This house was finished in 1817, and is about the only property in Cincinnati that has remained unchanged in the last 46 years. With the house, is now included the entire square between Barr and George streets, including 15 lots as laid down on the plan of the "Barr estate," which is the foundation of title, for a vast amount of property now occupied by buildings, many of them the finest residences in the city.
Major Barr was a man of iron will and unbounded courage. After he had improved the property known as the Ludlow purchase, and it had become valuable, some of the heirs of Israel Ludlow attempted to recover the property of him, on the ground of some informality in the administrator's sale. Some of the purchasers of other parts of the Ludlow estate were induced to compromise, and give up a portion of it, for the sake of quieting their title. But Major Barr, indignant at this attempt to increase their large estate by such forced levy on the part of the Ludlow heirs, refused all proposals for compromise, and finally established his title to the property, against repeated and protracted suits, extending over eighteen years, on the part of the Ludlow heirs. This controversy illustrates his peculiar traits of character. Generous to a fault, he would never yield his convictions of right, for any temporary or personal advantage. He was everywhere regarded among his fellow men as a leader, both from his extraordinary ability, and great physical power and energy. He was over six feet in hight, and the bust of him, taken by moulding after death, shows him to have been a man of great will, and of extraordinary mental power. He was always distinguished for courage and enterprise. He organized and led a band of mounted men who broke up the dens of horse thieves that at one time infested the country around Cincinnati, regardless of all personal danger. He was a thorough merchant, and always a man of wealth, from and before the time he left Baltimore, in 1809. He became surety and indorser for a younger brother in later years, who failed in the revulsions of 1836- 7, and at his death his estate was encumbered by this means for more that $200,000. He died March 18, 1837, in the belief that the indorsements for his brother would sweep away his entire estate, so great was the depreciation in the value of the property. But it proved otherwise, through the ability, sagacity and prudence of his son-in-law, William J. Van Horne, his partner, who administered upon his estate, who laid off this sixty acres into building lots, and from the sale of which, and of his other estate, all his debts were paid in full, with a residue over to his children, the largest estate that had at that time been divided among heirs in Cincinnati.
Major Barr was buried with military honors, full accounts of which were published in the city papers of the time.
Mrs. Mary Barr lived a widow at the old family mansion for more than twenty-five years, and with somewhat of the open and generous hospitality of former days. No house in Cincinnati was the home of more of domestic felicity in the lifetime of this honored couple, or of social enjoyment since, with the numerous family circle that gathered here around its honored head, whose ample means made liberal provision for their many friends. This home was the resort of the most enterprising spirits of the west in Major Barr's lifetime. After his death the home of Mrs. Barr was the nucleus around which, and in which, gathered a wide family circle, which is now broken up, for with her death, the old brick mansion, the last of the old unchanged dwellings of forty years ago, with the venerable old trees that stand as witnesses around it, gives place to the more ambitious structures of modern times.
Mrs. Barr was a woman of uncommon talent, and rare virtues. Trained in the religion of her fathers, she inherited also that deep spiritual life of religion, that subordinated all her actions to a sense of duty. She was an intelligent and devout Christian, and regulated her life upon the truest perceptions of the principles of the Divine Law. She was a child of deep sensibility, a wife of the most devoted affection, and a mother of the rarest graces and virtues. Of eleven children, six of them, four daughters and two sons, grew to maturity, five of them having families. Five of them survive her.
Mrs. Barr became interested in religion in early life, and united herself at an early age with the First Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, under the pastoral charge of the Rev. Dr. Joshua L. Wilson. She continued her connection with the First Church after her removal to the western end of the city, and was a constant attendant upon all its services. But the city grew westward, and on the organization of the Central Church she united with that, and when their new church edifice was placed on Barr street, adjoining her own residence, it gave her great joy to be enabled in her latest days, constantly to meet there, in the worship of God, with his church and people.
Her religion was not that of formality and outward display, for she was humble and unpretending in her walk, ever watchful and thoughtful over herself. She shared the sentiment of her husband in his generous bestowal of wise charities, giving freely to those whose exertions merited favor, and encouragement to such as needed friendly counsel and assistance. During the long period of her widowhood, Mrs. Barr carefully attended to the management of her household and her business affairs. Prudent and sagacious, she husbanded her means so as to be in advance of any demand upon her, and never allowed any debt to lie over for a day. Within a few months of her death, she executed papers affecting important business interests, with as clear an understanding of their full bearing and import as in her earlier days. She exhibited a discriminating judgment, and an intimate knowledge of the obligations of law, equal to one in the full strength of youth, or of ripest age.
Though having an exceedingly delicate and sensitive constitution, with apparently less hold on life than any one of her companions, she outlived them all, perhaps from the fact that this frailty of constitution made her the more watchful and careful over herself. She gave way to no excess of joy or sorrow, was never greatly depressed by misfortune, or elated by success.
In all respects, Mrs. Barr was a representative woman; in her family, in society, in the church, and in the world. Though more and more withdrawn from the world year by year, she retained to the last her interest in public affairs. She was a connecting link between the past and present generation, for her memory went back to the days of Washington, and was kept vividly alive to within a week of her death. She recollected Washington while she was a school girl in Baltimore, and was able to relate the chief of public events from his day to this. She never visited the Atlantic States but once after her removal West, but all that had occurred in Cincinnati, and the Ohio valley, were as familiar to her as household words. The great earthquake of 1811, the events of the war of 1812, the introduction of steamboats on the western rivers, the advent of railways to Cincinnati, and all matters of public interest, were fully remembered. She read daily, or had read to her, the morning and the evening papers of the city, from the time of their first publication in Cincinnati, and comprehended clearly the origin, events and circumstances of the present war.
Her sensitiveness was so remarkable, that her character almost partook of secretiveness. Conscious of her growing infirmities, and constantly admonished of her feeble hold on life, she rarely alluded to her probable departure, and never except in reply to the remarks of others, while for years she had in her own mind arranged all her plans, with that view, yet so quietly, that no one was ever annoyed or made unahppy by any reference to them. In quiet, unostentatious seclusion, her later years were spent, and her life thus ran on till, on Wesnesday the 21st of January, 1863, she awoke at 6 o'clock in the morning with an acute pain in the head, which soon ended in a partial congestion of the brain, and she sank into unconsciousness. Her daughter from a distant home was summoned by telegraph, and reached her on Sunday morning, January 25th, in season to receiver her last recognition. She had been, for a day or two, partially conscious at times, so as to know her daughters and other friends around her. Her only surviving son, distant in the service of his country in the army of the South ["South" interlined - "North" inserted - JRS], for whose comfort her last efforts on earth were bestowed, was constantly in her thoughts. She had prayed earnestly and constantly for his welfare, and a day or two before her final attack, received a letter from him full of assurances of affectionate remembrance, which seemed to give to her much joy and peace, so that when the summons of death came she calmly resigned her life, as one that lies down to peaceful dreams. Her mission on earth was completed, and at 2 o'clock A.M., on Monday January 26, 1863, her immortal spirit was set free.
Her funeral took place from her former residence, on the forenoon of Wednesday January 28, 1863, in the presence of a large concourse of friends and acquaintance -- the Rev. Dr. Grundy, the new pastor elect of the Central Church officiating on the occasion. After a brief and eloquent exposition of the hopes of the Christian, founded on an appreciation and an acceptance of the gospel plan of salvation, he gave a sketch of the life and character of Mrs. Barr, bringing to view the leading events of her life, and the distinguishing traits of her religious character.