Gilbert, Frank T.  "Historic Sketches of Walla Walla, Whitman, Columbia and
Garfield Counties, Washington Territory; and Umatilla County, Oregon."
Portland, OR: Print & Lithographing House of A. G. Walling, 1882. p. a5.
 
WM. T. BARNES

     is one of those who crossed the plains in 1852, the year that tried the
souls of men upon the emigrant road. Cholera and famine walked side by side
along the trail, and claimed their victims from the plains to the ocean. Those
numerous graves, scattered for a thousand miles from the Dalles to the eastward,
could they speak, would tell tales of anguish and despair that would moisten the
eye and rend the feelings of any but a heart of stone. Thousands of cattle died;
hundreds of emigrants perished; and few now live, who traveled the route that
year, but carry in their memory scenes and events painful to recollect and
sadder than tears. The arrival, in Oregon, did not end their trials, for nearly
all were poor and provisions were scarce. That winter potatoes were sold for $8
per bushel, while poor flour was eagerly taken at $25 a hundred. Families
subsisted on what they could get,and the frost-bitten, outside leaves of a
cabbage were a vegetable morsel not to be despised; bran, no longer fed to the
fortunate cow, was kept to subsist the human kind. To such privations and
through such a gauntlet, the subject of this brief sketch reached Oregon in
1852, after burying one of his children at the Dalles, on the way.
     Mr. Barnes is a native of Fayette, Howard Co.,Mo., where he was born
December 14, 1829, and, before his sixth birthday had arrived, he was left an
orphan. The years of his boyhood that followed have no silver lining to the
cloud. His father was considered wealthy at his death and the children, five of
then, all girls but one, were deemed heirs to a reasonable competency. The Court
appointed a guardian for the little boy and the guardian farmed him out, when
eight years old, to one of his sons, who treated the child as though he was a
plantation negro. Let those, who have kind parents, thank God that it is not
their fortune to be thrust from the protecting love of a fond mother, out, when
a child, into the world to the unloved association and treatment of a plantation
slave. Six years wore their tedious, dismal length away, and then the boy that
could remember little in his past to be thankful for, fled from his master to
find a home among strangers. He was but fourteen years of age, at the time, when
misfortune thus forced the necessity of commencing the struggle of life's
experiment. At sixteen, the laws of Missouri permitted a minor to choose his own
guardian, which young Barnes did, and then he returned to the scene of his
earlier life. He found that there was nothing left of the property that had been
left him, as those who had taken it in charge, had squandered all and taken the
benefit of the bankrupt law. This left him with no resource for success in the
future, except his own ability to wrest it from the hand of fortune, and the
result has demonstrated his possession of such faculties. In 1847, he went as a
government teamster to Mexico and returned in a year. In 1849, September 12, he
married Sarah A. Blain of St. Joseph, Missouri, and, in 1850, male a six month
trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. He then, from his accumulated funds, purchased
land and became a farmer in Holt Co., Missouri, where he remained until coming
to Oregon in 1852. Upon his arrival in the Willamette, he took up a farm and
retrained a resident of Washington Co., Oregon, until 1864; when he came to
Walla Walla County and settled on Dry creek, twelve miles east of Walla Walla
City, upon the farm that is now his home˜see view of the same in this work
     He was the first man to try the productiveness of the hill lands in the
country, the experiment being made by him in 1865. He plowed and sowed forty
acres, to commence with, and the people were reminded, by his folly, of the
remarks, of, some ante-diluvian fossil, in regard to a fool and his money
parting company. The result, at harvest, showed a yield of 40 bushels of wheat
to the acre, and the people baptized their former opinion of his experiment and
gave it a new name.
     The children of Mrs. and Mr. Barnes, now living, were born and are named as
follows: John A., November 9, 1853; Laura E., March 13, 1857; Mary E., August
25, 1864; William B., October 4, 1866; Demas, February 25, 1871; Ambrose H.:
July 8, 1873; Minnie M., May 13, 1875; Eva A., August 13, 1877.
     In politics, Mr. Barnes is a Democrat and both he and Mrs. Barnes are
members of the Christian church. Their joint labors have given them a home
containing 680 acres of land, 400 acres of which are inclosed and 300 under
cultivation. The surroundings and rough experience that shadowed the early years
of Mr. Barnes were such as would have naturally driven a weak character or a
vicious one directly to moral ruin. That such was not the result is evidence
conclusive of moral and intellectual strength in the boy, developed in the man.
That such is the estimate of his character, given by those who know him, is
evidenced from the fact that twice they have elected him as County Commissioner,
and in 1876, to the Territorial Legislature.

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Submitted to the WA. Bios Project in February 2007 by Diana Smith.

Notice: These biographies were transcribed for the Washington Biographies
Project. Unless otherwise stated, no further information is available on the
individual featured in the biographies.