Butte County
Biographies
JOSEPH L. BARNES
JOSEPH L. BARNES.—A justice of the peace who renders decisions regardless of his personal inclinations or bias, and of whom, therefore, Chico is naturally proud, is Joseph L. Barnes, who was born at Silveyville, Solano County, May 5, 1869. His father was the Rev. J. E. Barnes, a native of Louisville, Ky., who crossed the plains in 1852 with two brothers and the usual ox-team outfit. He was a graduate of the Baptist Seminary at Greenville, South Carolina; and when he tried his fortune at mining at Coloma, he preached to the miners on Sundays. After that, he became the pastor of different churches, and in time was pastor of the Baptist Church at Dixon, Solano County, residing at Silveyville. About 1873 he located at Vacaville, but continued his pastorate at Dixon. In 1881, he removed to Chico, and here he was the Baptist minister for many years or until he retired on account of old age. He died at Chico in March, 1896.
The wife of the Rev. J. E. Barnes was popular in old Virginia in her youth as Miss Lucy Pockman. She was first married to E. T. Lampton, and crossed the continent in the fifties with her husband and her brothers, Mat, Jeff, Henry, and Thomas, settling with them at Cacheville, now Yolo. After the death of her husband she married Mr. Barnes. She died at Oakland in 1915, in her eighty-seventh year. Six children blessed this marriage, and all are now living.
The youngest member of this family, Joseph L. Barnes, was brought up at Vacaville until he was ten years old. Then he went to Yolo, and in 1881 came to Chico. Here he attended the public school and also the Woodman Academy. When eighteen years old, he struck out for himself and became a clerk in J. H. Harlan’s store at Winters. At the end of two years, however, he returned to Chico, where he learned the printer’s trade. He worked on the old Chico Chronicle and the Chico Enterprise, setting type, later serving as foreman, when Mr. Chalmers was owner and editor of the Enterprise; but when, in 1907, the latter paper was sold, he was appointed constable of Chico.
In the fall of 1910 after finishing his term of public service with an enviable record, Mr. Barnes was elected justice of the peace of Chico Township, and assumed office the following January; and in 1914 he was reelected, to the satisfaction of everybody, his term to expire on January 1, 1919.
When Judge Barnes was married, he chose as his bride Miss Anna Harvey, a native of Illinois, who came when a child with her parents to Butte County, and who was educated at the State Normal, and later engaged in teaching. One son, Joseph Barnes, Jr., was born of this marriage.
Politically, Mr. Barnes is a Democrat, and a member of the County Democratic Central Committee. He belongs to Chico Lodge, B. P. O. Elks, and to eh Woodmen of the World.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1222-1223, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies