Ancestors

Elias Barker

1824-1873 · Rochester IL
Born 1824, Illinois
Died 1873
Mother: Mary "Polly" Williams
Children include George

Elias Barker was born on 14 October 1824 in Sangamon County, Illinois, the only child of Richard E. Barker and Mary Williams, and he was about three when his father disappeared. He was brought up in Rochester township among his mother's people, the Williamses, who had settled the place, and alongside three younger half brothers named Johnson whose father built the mill on the South Fork.

On 21 July 1848 he married Dorothea Bound in Sangamon County. The county clerk wrote her into the register as Doretha Ann Ballaner, which is a fair phonetic try; Power's history and her own daughters' death certificates say Bound or Bounds, and the 1870 census gives her birthplace as Maryland, which fits a Maryland surname.

He farmed around Rochester and Cooper township for the rest of his life and appears in the censuses of 1860, of the Illinois state count of 1865, and of 1870, the last of which finds the household whole: Elias and Dolly with six daughters and one son, an eight-year-old boy the enumerator wrote down as Branton. He died on 1 April 1873 at forty-eight, and is buried in the old graveyard at Mottarville Cemetery in Rochester, row three. Power's history, printed three years later, says March rather than April and reports his widow and children living near Clarksville.

Seven of his children are known by name and an eighth, Susan Jane, is known only through her own death certificate. His single son carried the line, and every Barker of this family afterwards descends from that eight-year-old Branton.

Sources

Find a Grave memorial 114936230, Mottarville Cemetery, Rochester, Sangamon County, Illinois, photograph
Find a Grave 114936230; Power, History of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County (1876); Illinois County Marriages (FS ark 1:1:Q28G-FSKD); censuses 1850 (USGenWeb transcription), 1860, 1865 and 1870 (FS ark 1:1:M6WJ-HNT), Sangamon County

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Cite: Heirology, "Elias Barker (1824-1873)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/elias-barker-1824-1873-946670.