Robert Barber
| Date of Interment or Death | 02/05/1959 |
|---|---|
| Location | Old Fairview |
| Section | C |
| Block-Lot-Grave | 3-1-3 |
Obituary
R. T. Barber Dies in Sleep in Pittsburg
Funeral services will be held in a Presbyterian church in Pittsburg, Pa., Saturday for R. T. Barber, longtime Wahpeton resident, former banker and landowner in the county, who died in his sleep Wednesday. He made his home with his daughter Mrs. Harry Flynn.
Interment will take place in Fairview Cemetery, Wahpeton, probably in June. At that time there will be services here. The family requests that memorials be made to the church.
Robert Truman Barber was born November 4, 1871 in Mentor, Ohio, son of Truman P. and Eunice Daniels Barber. Their forbears came to their country in 1635 from England, setting first in Windsor Conn., and in 1815 going from there to the Western Reserve in northern Ohio.
Robert Barber’s father had been railroad agent in Mentor, Ohio, from 1852, the second year of operation of a railroad in northern Ohio, until his death in 1883. He had been a victim of asthma for many years and at his death, Mrs. Barber felt it a chance to get out of the damp Ohio climate and perhaps with a good deal of pioneer spirt of her forbears, chose to move to Dakota territory at the time the development of the Red River Valley.
In 1884, Mrs. Barber and Robert, then twelve, came to North Dakota. Edgar Barber, 18, had come the years before with Ohio friends who were then in business in North Dakota. Mr. Barber often recalled that he carried a medical case such as Doctors of that day used in the practice of their profession. Instead of medicine he carried a pair of male white rats, which he had kept as pets for a considerable time.
One of the Barber’s Ohio friends and neighbors, who had come from Ohio to help organize the town of Wahpeton was O.L. Loomis, a carpenter and builder. He had decided to return to Mentor and traded his home on Fourth Street to the widowed Mrs. And her two sons, for their home in Mentor. In 1887, the barbers moved to 219 Sixth Street North, which was their home until 1951 when it was purchased by Dr. Walter Fleenor.
In 1888 Robert Barber entered the Curtis Business College in Minneapolis for a short business course. On coming home, he obtained a position with the People’s State Ban which was located where the Farmer Globe office now is. Mr. Barber’s connection with the bank last for thirty years until it combined with the Citizens National Bank of Wahpeton in 1919. In his bank work, Mr. Barber was most closely associated with W. D. Henry, a man whom he always spoke of as a prime business integrity. Another bank interest of Mr. Barber’s was the First National Bank of Mooreton, which the Peoples State Bank operated successfully until it went into voluntary liquidation, paying off depositors in full.
On June 30, 1897, Robert Barber married Lucy Purdon of Alexandria, Minn. They had been married just short of 58 years when Mrs. Barber died on June 3, 1955, at the home of her daughter in Pittsburgh.
Mr. Barber was a man of wide interests. He had great pride in the state of North Dakota and in the town of Wahpeton and his part in its growth Until the summer of 1954 he owned farm land in Richland county and was very much interest in its development, riding into the country almost daily during the growing season to “see how the crops were coming.” He was a stamp collect, a bird lover, and was keenly interested in national affairs. In his younger years Mr. Barber was tennis player and played in local matches.
In Wahpeton he was active in the old Commercial Club, serving as one of the early directors. He was for a number of years a member of the Rotary club and one of its directors. For thirty-seer years he was treasurer of the First Congregational church; for twenty-five years he was on the Board of the Leach Public Library; for nine years was on the City Council. In spite of this wide range of public work, Mr. Barber was a man of considerable modesty, never seeking public distinction, but available for public service when called.
In later years, Mr. and Mrs. Barber had been free to travel and spent winters in California and Arizona, and twelve years in Bradenton, Fla., until Ms. Barber’s health failed to the point where travel was no longer possible.
Mr.Barber is survived by two daughters, Mrs. Marian Brittain, of Glendale, Calif., and Mrs. Harry Flynn of Pittsburgh, Pa., five grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
Headstone photograph(s)
Location
Old Fairview is located on the southern half of the cemetery grounds.