Santa
Clara County
Biographies
REUBIN SEELEY BARBER
R. S. Barber was born in Warren county, N. Y., in January, 1828. He comes from Revolutionary
stock, his paternal grandmother being a niece of Roger Sherman, one of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence. His grandfather, David Barber, a
native of Connecticut, moved to New York in early life and was a soldier in the
Revolutionary war.
Many of the localities made
memorable by the events of the war were familiar to Mr. Barber in his boyhood.
He often heard his grandfather tell stories of the war. The old soldier was
very bitter against the cow-boys of those days. These cow-boys were very
different characters from the cow-boys of the present day, having none of their
bravery or daring, but on the contrary, were essentially sneak thieves,
sympathizing with Great Britian [sic] during the
struggle. At the beginning of hostilities, they went to Canada, only coming
back in the absence of the soldiers, to commit depredations upon their homes
and property. They always stole cattle on these raids, hence the name
“cow-boys.”
One of the stories handed down from
the war was of a cow-boy who came back with a band of Indians on one of these
raids, to the neighborhood where Mr. Barber was later born. Here they
encountered an old acquaintance of the cow-boy, a soldier home on furlough.
They scalped him and left him for dead, but as he was not fatally hurt he
afterward revived.
The war being ended, this same
cow-boy returned to his old neighborhood. The soldier supposed to be dead,
hearing of his return, took his gun and sought an interview with him. Just what
happened no one ever knew, but the cow-boy was never seen again, and no
investigation as to his fate was made.
Mr. Barber lived in New York till
1846, when his father moved his family of six children to Wisconsin, the mother
having died in 1839. The first year the family lived in Southport Wis., now
called Kenosha. In the fall of 1846, Mr. Barber and an older brother went to
Dodge county, where their father then owned a large
tract of land. With the help of a hired man they erected a log house suitable
for a tenant. Late in the fall they returned to Southport and that winter
attended a private school. In the spring of 1847 they returned to Dodge county, and cut the timber to build a house and barn. In the
summer of that year their father erected a large house and barn, while Mr.
Barber and his brother broke up the land adjacent to the buildings. In the fall
he went back to the state of New York, where he remained till the spring of
1849, most of the time attending school. He then returned to Wisconsin, when he
and his brother rented the farm owned by their father in Dodge county. For three years they worked the farm, raising wheat
and barley. It was necessary in order to market this grain, to haul it by teams
to Milwaukee, fifty miles east. The price of wheat was fifty cents per bushel,
and barley something less. The business was not lucrative,
therefore he decided to try his luck in California. In April, 1852, he left,
coming overland and reaching Placerville, then called Hangtown,
August 7th. He prospected and worked in the mines with indifferent
success till late in the fall. The miner’s life not being altogether to his
liking, he decided to try the farming district. He came to San Jose in November
of that year, where he worked as a farm hand. There, in company with W. S.
Alexander, he bought one hundred and sixty acres in the Tularcitus
[sic] grant. They worked this land till 1856, when he sold his half interest to
Mr. Alexander. In the next two years Mr. Barber found employment in one of the
nurseries then existing in what is now within the city limits of San Jose. In
1858 he rented land and returned to farming again. In 1861 he bought a hundred
acres in the Tularcitus [sic] grant, which he worked
until the memorable dry year of 1864. Fortunately he sold out that spring
before putting in a crop. For the next two years he was engaged in no
particular business. In 1866 he decided to return to his people in Wisconsin
and remained there till 1867. His father was then connected with a firm who
were manufacturing agricultural implements, and that fall Mr. Barber went to
Omaha and opened a store for the sale of the machinery made by his father’s
firm, remaining in this business till 1871. He then visited California and was
married to Sarah C. Evans, daughter of Josiah Evans, a widely respected pioneer
of Santa Clara county. The couple then returned to
Wisconsin. His father at this time owning the entire manufacturing
establishment, Mr. Barber assisted him in the business until the spring of
1873, when he and D. C. Van Brent bought the business from his father. They
manufactured agricultural implements, till the spring of 1880, when he sold his
entire interest in the business to his partner and moved to California with his
family which consisted of wife and two children, Laurence and Alice. He bought a
ranch near Tularcitus [sic], which he had cultivated
and improved until it ranks among the good ranches of Santa Clara county. Mr. Barber has been a lifelong Republican. With a
practical knowledge of various kinds of manual labor, he is in full sympathy
with honest labor in its demands for just and generous compensation, for
faithful honest service, but none whatever for vicious idleness which, with
club in hand, demands unreasonable pay for indifferent service.
Transcribed By: Cecelia M. Setty.
Source: History of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast
Counties, California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages 1296-1299. The
Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2016 Cecelia M. Setty.