Allen Duthrage Barnard

Allen Duthrage Barnard (1834-1928)

From “Genealogy of Samuel Barnard and Descendants,” by Noble E. Nay

Edited by Deanna Horton Mitts

dmitts@earthlink.net

The seventh offspring of Samuel and Nancy Barnard was Allen D. Barnard, born in Tennessee on May 18, 1834. He came to Missouri in 1844 when he was ten years old.

He was married November 10, 1859 to Letha Jane Ewing. Letha was born in Missouri on November 24, 1843. She was two weeks short of her sixteenth birthday when they married, he was twenty-five.

Allen and Letha set up housekeeping in Arkansas where their first child was born. After several years in Arkansas they moved back to Missouri where they raised their children. According to the census² of 1900, Letha was the mother of 11, of which ten were living, but Noble Nay’s research accounted for only nine children.

On October 12, 1904 Allen was appointed Administrator of the estate of Dudley Jolly Barnard by the Probate Court. On that date he gave a list of heirs of Dudley and lists himself as a brother. He settled the estate and on the 14th of February, 1907 he gave an administrator’s deed of the property to Fountain Frazier. On June 27, 1912 Allen and Letha were given a special warrantee deed to the home by Fountain Frazier.

Allen was a cabinet maker and a carpenter. He was a fine workman and had a cabinet shop where he made furniture of all kinds, including porch columns and coffins. He made all the coffins used in that part of the country. He taught his son, Joe, the carpentry trade, and Allen worked at the trade all his life, He also built and set up several mills.

He was a quiet, unassuming man, and a firm believer in the Primitive Baptist faith, although he never united with any church. He was noted as a very diligent reader of the Bible, and it is said he read through it on several occasions.

Allen’s middle name, Duthrage, no doubt was a misspelling of the name Deatherage, of which there were many in Tennessee. The store book¹ accounts in Tennessee show many Deatherages. Nancy had four siblings that married Deatherages, so the two names are probably one and the same.

Allen D. Barnard died in 1928 at the age of 94. His wife Letha died in 1930. Both are buried in the Panther Valley Cemetery.

¹ When speaking of the “store book” Noble Nay is referring to the books of “Barnard and Bottom” a country general store operated by Samuel Barnard and Charles I. Bottom. Noble Nay states, “the author has in his possession two books of the daily sales records of that firm…Many interesting and unusual items appear in these records, and from which we have received untold data that could not have been secured from any other source.”

²West Dallas Twp., Webster Co., MO, E.D. 133, Sheet 10B, Family No. 216