HER ANCESTRY
The Bartons of America are descended from a number of immigrant
ancestors, who have come to this country from England, Scotland, and
Ireland. The name, however, is neither Scotch nor Irish, but English.
While the several families in Great Britain have not as yet traced
their ancestry to a single source, there appears to have been such
a source. The ancestral home of the Barton family is Lancashire.
The family is of Norman stock, and came to England with William
the Conqueror, deriving their English surname from Barton Manor in
Lancashire. From 1086, when the name was recorded in the Doomsday Book,
it is found in the records of Lancashire.
The derivation of the name is disputed. It is said that originally
it was derived from the Saxon _bere_, barley, and _tun_, a
field, and to mean the enclosed lands immediately adjacent to a manor;
but most English names that end with “ton” are derived from “town”
with a prefix, and it is claimed that _bar_, or defense, and
_ton_, or town, once meant a defended or enclosed town, or one who
protects a town. The name is held to mean “defender of the town.”
In the time of Henry I, Sir Leysing de Barton, Knight, was mentioned
as a feudal vassal of lands between the rivers Ribbe and Mersey,
under Stephen, Count of Mortagne, grandson of William the Conqueror,
who later became King Stephen of England. Sir Leysing de Barton
was the father of Matthew de Barton, and the grandfather of several
granddaughters, one of whom was Editha de Barton, Lady of Barton Manor.
She inherited the great estate, and was a woman of note in her day. She
married Augustine de Barton, possibly a cousin, by whom she had two
children, John de Barton, who died before his mother, and a daughter
Cecilly.
After the death of Augustine de Barton, his widow, Lady Editha, married
Gilbert de Notton, a landed proprietor of Lincolnshire, who also
had possessions in Yorkshire and Lancashire. He had three sons by a
previous marriage, one of whom, William, married Cecilly de Barton,
daughter of Editha and her first husband Augustine. Their son, named
for his uncle, Gilbert de Notton, inherited the Barton Manor and
assumed the surname Barton.
The Barton estate was large, containing several villages and
settlements. The homestead was at Barton-on-Irwell, now in the
municipality of Eccles, near the city of Manchester.
Other Barton families in England are quite possibly descended from
younger sons of the original Barton line.
The arms of the Bartons of Barton were, _Argent_, _three boars’
heads_, _armed_, _or_.
In the Wars of the Roses the Bartons were with the house of Lancaster,
and the Red Rose is the traditional flower of the Barton family. Clara
Barton, when she wore flowers, habitually wore red roses; and whatever
her attire there was almost invariably about it somewhere a touch
of red, “her color,” she called it, as it had been the color of her
ancestors for many generations.
In the seventeenth century there were several families of Bartons
in the American colonies. The name is found early in Virginia, in
Pennsylvania, in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and other
colonies.
Salem had two families of Bartons, probably related,--those of Dr.
John Barton, physician and chirurgeon, who came from Huntingdonshire,
England, in 1672, and was prominent in the early life of Salem, and
Edward Barton, who arrived thirty-two years earlier, but, receiving a
grant of land on the Piscataqua, removed to Portsmouth, and about 1666
to Cape Porpoise, Maine. On account of Indian troubles, the homestead
was deserted for some years, but Cape Porpoise continued to be the
traditional home of this branch of the Barton family.
Edward’s eldest son, Matthew, returned to Salem, and lived there, at
Portsmouth, and at Cape Porpoise. His eldest son, born probably at
Salem in or about 1664, was Samuel Barton, founder of the Barton family
of Oxford.
Not long after the pathetic witchcraft delusion of Salem, a number of
enterprising families migrated from Salem to Framingham, among them the
family of Samuel Barton. On July 19, 1716, as recorded in the Suffolk
County Registry of Deeds in Boston, Jonathan Provender, husbandman, of
Oxford, sold to Samuel Barton, Sr., husbandman, of Framingham, a tract
of land including about one-thirtieth of the village of Oxford, as well
as a fourth interest in two mills, a sawmill and a gristmill.
In 1720, Samuel Barton and a few of his neighbors met at the home
of John Towne, where, after prayer, “they mutually considered their
obligations to promote the kingdom of their Lord and Saviour, Jesus
Christ,” and covenanted together to seek to establish and build a
church of Christ in Oxford. On January 3, 1721, the church was formally
constituted, Samuel Barton and his wife bringing their letters of
dismission from the church in Framingham of which both were members,
and uniting as charter members of the new church in Oxford. The
Reverend John Campbell was their first pastor. For over forty years he
led his people, and his name lives in the history of that town as a man
of learning, piety, and rare capacity for spiritual leadership. Long
after his death, it was discovered that he was Colonel John Campbell,
of Scotland, heir to the earldom of Loudon, who had fled from Scotland
for political reasons, and who became a soldier of Christ in the new
world.
Samuel Barton, son of Edward and Martha Barton, and grandson of Edward
and Elizabeth Barton, died in Oxford September 12, 1732. His wife,
Hannah Bridges, died there March 13, 1737. From them sprang the family
of the Oxford Bartons, whose most illustrious representative was Clara
Barton.
The maternal side of this line, that of Bridges, began in America
with Edmund Bridges, who came to Massachusetts from England in 1635,
and lived successively at Lynn, Rowley, and Ipswich. His eldest son,
Edmund, Jr., was born about 1637, married Sarah Towne in 1659, lived
in Topsfield and Salem, and died in 1682. The fourth of their five
children was a daughter, Hannah, who, probably at Salem about 1690,
married Samuel Barton, progenitor of the Bartons of Oxford, to which
town he removed from Framingham in 1716.
Edmund, youngest son of Samuel and Hannah Barton, was born in
Framingham, August 15, 1715. He married, April 9, 1739, Anna Flint,
of Salem. She was born June 9, 1718, eldest daughter of Stephen Flint
and his wife, Hannah Moulton. Anna Flint was the granddaughter of John
Flint, of Salem Village (Danvers), and great-granddaughter of Thomas
Flint, who came to Salem before 1650.
Edmund settled in Sutton, and owned lands there and in Oxford. He
and his wife became members of the First Church in Sutton, and later
transferred their membership to the Second Church in Sutton, which
subsequently became the First Church in Millbury. He served in the
French War, and was at Fort Edward in 1753. He died December 13, 1799,
and Anna, his wife, died March 20, 1795.
The eldest son of Edmund and Anna Barton was Stephen Barton, born June
10, 1740, at Sutton. He studied medicine with Dr. Green, of Leicester,
and practiced his profession in Oxford and in Maine. He had unusual
professional skill, as well as great sympathy and charity. He married
at Oxford, May 28, 1765, Dorothy Moore, who was born at Oxford, April
12, 1747, daughter of Elijah Moore and Dorothy Learned. On her father’s
side she was the granddaughter of Richard, great-granddaughter of
Jacob, and great-great-granddaughter of John Moore. John Moore and his
wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Philemon Whale, bought a home in Sudbury
in 1642. Their son, Jacob, married Elizabeth Looker, daughter of Henry
Looker, of Sudbury, and lived in Sudbury. Their son Richard, born in
Sudbury in 1670, married Mary Collins, daughter of Samuel Collins,
of Middletown, Connecticut, and granddaughter of Edward Collins, of
Cambridge. Richard Moore was one of the most capable and trusted
men in early Oxford. Dorothy Learned, wife of Elijah Moore, was the
daughter of Colonel Ebenezer Learned, the largest landowner in Oxford,
one of the original thirty proprietors. He was a man of superior
personality, for thirty-two years one of the selectmen, for many years
chairman of that body, and moderator of town meetings, a justice of the
peace, a representative in the Great and General Court, and an officer
in the militia from 1718 to 1750, beginning as Ensign and reaching the
rank of Colonel. He was active in the affairs of the town, the church,
and the military organization during his long and useful life. His
wife was Deborah Haynes, daughter of John Haynes, of Sudbury. He was
the son of Isaac Learned, Jr., of Framingham, who had been a soldier
in the Narraganset War, and his wife, Sarah Bigelow, daughter of John
Bigelow, of Watertown. Isaac Learned was the son of Isaac Learned, Sr.,
of Woburn and Chelmsford, and his wife, Mary Stearns, daughter of Isaac
Stearns, of Watertown. The parents of Isaac Learned, Sr., were William
and Goditha Learned, members of the Charlestown Church in 1632, and of
Woburn Church in 1642.
The Learned family shared with the Barton family in the formation
of the English settlement in Oxford, and were intimately related by
intermarriage and many mutual interests. Brigadier-General Ebenezer
Learned, a distinguished officer in the Revolution, was a brother of
Dorothy Learned Moore, the great-grandmother of Clara Barton.
Dr. Stephen Barton and his wife, Dorothy Moore, had thirteen children.
Their sons were Elijah Moore, born October 12, 1765, and died June 13,
1769; Gideon, born March 29, 1767, and died October 27, 1770; Stephen,
born August 18, 1774; Elijah Moore, born August 10, 1784; Gideon, born
June 18, 1786; and Luke, born September 3, 1791. The first two sons
died at an early age; the four remaining sons lived to marry, and
three of them lived in Maine. The daughters of Dr. Stephen Barton and
Dorothy, his wife, were Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, Hannah, Parthena,
Polly, and Dolly.
It is interesting to note in the names of these daughters a departure
from the common New England custom of seeking Bible names, and the
naming of the first two daughters after the two principal heroines of
Samuel Richardson.
Of this family, the third son, and the eldest to survive, was Stephen
Barton, Jr., known as Captain Stephen Barton, father of Clara Barton.