What happened to Barclay Jarrett? In 1856, he left his wife, Sarah L.
Kirk, in Philadelphia for Iowa and the Dakota Territory.
The Jarretts had lived in Pennsylvania for over 100 years. They were descendants of some of the original
founders of Germantown, who had come to the new world to escape religious
persecution. They were members of the Religious
Society of Friends, who called themselves “friends of truth” but were also
known as “children of light” and Quakers.
William Penn had founded Pennsylvania for the Quakers in 1681 and many
found refuge there in the late 17th century.
Barclay Jarrett was born in 1814, the 6th generation of his
family to live in Pennsylvania. He was
the son of Isaac Jarrett and Mary Trump, who were both born in Bucks County
shortly after the Revolutionary War. Barclay
had 2 older sisters, Rebecca and Margaret, and 4 younger brothers, Jesse T, Edward,
George, and Richard.
Sarah Lukens Kirk’s family had been in Pennsylvania as long as the
Jarretts. Sarah’s father John was of the
4th generation of Kirks to live in the commonwealth, the original
John Kirk having immigrated from Derbyshire, England in 1687. Born in
1774, Sarah’s father was a farmer and limeburner in Abington Township of
Montgomery County. Like Bucks County, it
is just outside of Philadelphia. A limeburner was someone who baked lime
rock in a large kiln for use in plaster and mortar. It was difficult work but profitable, since
plaster and mortar were in demand. Sarah’s
mother, Tabitha Lukens, was also from an old Quaker Pennsylvania family, having
descended from Jan Luckens, one of the original “33 Dutchmen” of Germantown who
immigrated in 1683. Tabitha’s father, Seneca Lukens, was a well-known
clockmaker and her brother, Isaiah, made the clock for the steeple of
Independence Hall in 1828. Sarah was
born in 1817.
Sarah and Barclay married in 1837 and settled on a farm in Moorland Township
in Montgomery County. Over the next 20 years, they moved to Abington and
grew into a family of 4 sons and 3 daughters: Mary Anna Jarrett (1838), William H. Jarrett
(about 1841), Benjamin Franklin Jarrett (1843), Isaac Jarrett (1846), Tacie
Elizabeth Jarrett (1848), Elma J. Jarrett (1852), and Harvey Jarrett
(1856). Their farm was successful, with a value of $6000 in 1850.
They employed several laborers to help with the work.
While Barclay and Sarah were raising crops and children in Pennsylvania, Barclay’s
younger brother, Jesse T. Jarrett, had left for the frontier town of Dubuque,
Iowa. Arriving in 1846, Dubuque wouldn’t even have a courthouse or a jail
for another decade. There had been a
“lead rush” of new settlers and Jesse worked as a miner in the winter and a surveyor
in the summer. Lead was in demand for shot, used in muskets. Rich veins in crevasses near the surface were
easy to find and Jesse did well. In 1850 he was living at an inn.
The other men living at the inn were clerks, merchants, a bricklayer,
carpenter, confectioner, lawyer, and a physician. There were also a few women and children.
Jesse married Amanda Farwell in 1854 and they moved to their own place in
Julien Township, Dubuque County. At around this time, Jesse gave up
mining to survey full time. In 1856, Jesse’s
brothers, Ed and Barclay, joined him on the frontier. Barclay was
accompanied by his oldest two children, Mary Anna (age 18), and William H (age
15).
In May 1857, Jesse was appointed an agent of the Western Town Company.
Barclay was employed with him and together with 3 other men traveled almost 400
miles across Iowa to the Missouri River. There, they laid out 320 acres
for a town site by the Sioux waterfalls. This would become Sioux Falls,
South Dakota.
Jesse returned to Dubuque to Amanda where in 1860 he was appointed Deputy
Sheriff. He went on to serve in several
other political offices over the years.
He partnered with his brother, Ed, as a grain dealer and lived in
Dubuque the rest of his life.
Barclay became a farmer. He left to go off on his own and in 1860, was homesteading on 160
acres worth $300. Only 10 acres were farmed so far but he had 2 milk cows
worth $75 and had produced 40 bushels of wheat and 50 bushels of Indian corn.
Back in Pennsylvania, Sarah moved to Philadelphia in 1858. She worked
in lady’s fashions, listed in the 1859 city directory under “Trimmings
(Ladies') and Varieties”. By 1860, Mary Anna (21) had returned home from
Iowa and they lived in a boarding house with the younger children, Tacie
(12), Elma (8), and Harvey (4). Sarah was listed in the city directory
under “Gloves and Hosiery”, and her personal property was valued at
$1000. The boarding house was populated with clerks and salesladies and
some Kirk and Lukens cousins.
The boys were not living with their mother in 1860. William H. would have
been 19 but there is no evidence that he returned from Iowa. Kirk
family history says he died young without children but not where nor when.
Isaac (14) was living on a farm with a Jarrett cousin in Montgomery
County. Benjamin Franklin (17) appeared to be apprenticing as a mechanic
in Bucks County.
Philadelphia at this time was one of the largest cities in the United
States. The union was in danger of dissolution over slavery.
Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 and the first shots of the Civil
War were fired in January 1861. Barclay and Sarah's son, Benjamin, fought for the Union in the war. Some of the other brothers or Barclay may have also but the records have not been found.
Sarah was facing business changes during 1862. She retired from retail
and began work running a boarding house. The location of her boarding
house moved every year or two, over the next few years.
In July 1862, Sioux Falls was still considered the frontier. Mail was
delivered by horseback once a week. However, the people were organizing politically
and Barclay was involved as a Minnehaha County delegate to the Republican
Territorial Convention in Vermillion. The Republican Party was formed less
than a decade earlier for the express purpose of denying slavery in the new territories. The Vermillion Convention in 1862 endorsed
Lincoln’s policies, the fight for the Union, and the Homestead Law.
In August 1862, a general Indian war broke out between the Little Crow Sioux and
settlers in Minnesota. The Sioux, driven from Minnesota into Dakota,
separated into small war parties and descended on the Dakota settlements.
Sioux Falls was the site of the first fatal encounter, with the murder of a man
and his son while cutting hay. The other settlers in the area were
evacuated by the army to Fort Yankton. Barclay Jarrett was one of the 8
households evacuated. They stayed at the fort through the months of
September and October. Then, in November, Barclay and 5 other of the civilian
men were escorted by 12 soldiers back to their homes in Sioux Falls to retrieve
some of their personal belongings. When they arrived, there are 20 Sioux near the
settlement and there was a confrontation between them and the soldiers. One Sioux man was killed and the soldiers and
civilians withdrew. During the next six
years, Sioux Falls remained unoccupied by whites.
Barclay was forced to leave his 160 acres
in Sioux Falls at the end of 1862. Kirk family history tells us he died
in 1865. Back east, in the 1867 Philadelphia city directory, Sarah was
listed as a “widow”.
UPDATE: 12 Jan 2021 - Barclay moved to Yankton, SD in 1862, when white settlers were removed from Sioux Falls. He died March 25, 1865 after a fight in a saloon which he co-owned with Charles Presho in Yankton.
The years after the civil war were ones of growth for Sarah’s family.
In 1867, Benjamin married Elizabeth Childs Thomas, and Isaac married Helen
Prackett. Mary Anna married John Moore in 1868, and Tacie married Thomas
Elder in 1871. The younger siblings didn't marry for a while longer, Elma
to Robert William Davis in 1882 and Harvey to Gertrude Hughes, in 1887.
Mary Anna’s marriage was within the Society of Friends but Isaac’s to Helen
was in the Methodist Episcopal Church and Tacie’s to Thomas Elder was in the Presbyterian
Church. If Sarah was a practicing Friend, she did not attend the same
Meeting House as John Moore's family. Barclay was disowned by the Quakers for the first time when he was 14, later rejoined, and again was disowned in 1854.
Benjamin returned to the city, and apparently did not become a
mechanic. In 1866 he lived in his
mother’s boarding house, working as a salesman. He ended up a grocer in
Philadelphia for the rest of his career. [UPDATE 12 Jan 2021 - The grocer, BF Jarrett, may be a different man] He and Elizabeth had 4 children:
Emma James Jarrett, Jonathan Thomas Jarrett, Sara Jarrett, and Benjamin
Franklin Jarrett, Jr. Jonathan died at age 18 in 1889 but the others
married and most had children of their own.
Isaac brought his new wife to live at his mother’s boarding house on Vine
Street. According to the Philadelphia city directory, in 1868, they had
moved out and Isaac worked as a clerk. He and Helen lost their infant first
born child, William H, in 1868. Although in Philadelphia in 1870, they
had moved across the river to Woodbury, NJ by 1880. Isaac and Helen had 4
more children and ended up in Oakland, California. The children were Evelyn J. Jarrett, Harry
Barclay Jarrett, Alfred Jarrett, and Isaac Lewis Jarrett. The Kirk Family
history notes a second wife, Carrie Stuart, but it is unknown if she was the
mother of any of Isaac’s children.
Harvey, Barclay and Sarah’s youngest child, probably never knew his father,
being born the year that Barclay left for Iowa. Harvey grew up in his
mother’s boarding house. By 1880, he had moved to Clay County, Florida,
to be a farmer, and later a horticulturist. There he married Gertrude
Hughes, (who was his second wife) and they had 2 children, Grace Elivira Jarrett
and James Thomas Jarrett. Sometime
before 1920, the family moved to Miami where Harvey retired.
In 1880, Elma and her mother were living with a servant to help out at 525
Vine Street. This was the home where they had kept boarders for almost 20
years. It must have felt empty where a decade earlier, 14 had
lived. Elma’s British husband, Robert, was naturalized in 1880 and became
a lawyer. In 1920, they lived in Montgomery County. They had 2
children, Robert William Davis and Elizabeth J. Davis.
Barclay and Sarah's oldest child Mary Anna had likely helped raise her siblings while her mother was taking care of
the business. Tacie Elizabeth was 10 years younger. They both were living in Philadelphia with their new husbands in
1872 when Tacie was pregnant with her first child. Tragically, Mary Anna contracted typhoid
fever in the fall of 1872, and died at the age of 34, on 22 September. Five weeks later, Tacie gave birth to a
daughter. She named the child Mary Moore
Elder as a tribute to her sister. Mary Anna
(Jarrett) Moore didn't have any children of her own.
According to the Philadelphia City Directory, Sarah continued to keep
boarders on and off throughout the 1880s. However, by 1897 she had retired
to live with her son Benjamin’s family at 748 N 19th Street in Philadelphia.
Did Barclay abandon his wife and family for adventure in the west? It is interesting that he took Mary Anna and William H with him in 1856. It is very sad he left Sarah with newborn baby Harvey.
Sarah seems to have enjoyed living in the city. She would have had to be smart, strong,
and independent, to start and run her own businesses. Firmly in the
middle class, she probably had other options but preferred to stay in the
city. She lived the rest of her life in the heart of
Philadelphia, near her children, siblings, and cousins.
_______________________________________________________
Epilogue:
John Moore,
Mary Anna’s husband, moved back with his parents after his wife's death. He worked as a dry
goods merchant. He married Esther Aldrich in 1880; and they
moved to New York where they had 4 children.
Tacie died at the age of 85 in 1933 in Dayton Ohio. Descended from her daughter, Mary Moore
Elder, the author of this blog named her oldest daughter, Tacie Elizabeth.
Elma died at age 80, in 1932.
Harvey died in Miami, Florida at age 78, in 1934.
Sarah died at the age of 85 in
1901. She lived in Melrose Park on Stratford Avenue. However, she was not living with Benjamin or any other of her
children in 1900. She was buried in the West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Montgomery County Pennsylvania.
UPDATE: 12 Jan 2021
Barclay’s grave is elusive.
_____________________________________________________
Appendix A:
Who were Barclay Jarrett and Sarah Kirk and why do I care?
They were my great great great grandparents on my mother's Elder side of the family. See where they fit in the family tree starting with Robert Dickson Marshall III.
Appendix B:
Unanswered questions:
What
happened to William H Jarrett?
Appendix C:
Some avenues for further research might include:
Quaker
records – it is not apparent Sarah and her family are religious. There
were not found in any Quaker records on Ancestry.com except for Mary Anna’s
with her marriage to John Moore.
Census
records, I have not found the following:
Sarah – 1900
William H – 1860, 1870, …?
Benjamin Franklin – 1880
Isaac – 1900, 1910, …?
Elma – 1900, 1910
Harvey – 1910
Property
and tax records
Death certificates and obituaries (if they exist)
for Barclay, Sarah, William H, Isaac, and Elma.
Many records were indexed or misinterpreted the
name “Jarrett” as “Janett” so both should be investigated.
Appendix D:
There are
likely photos of Sarah, possibly Barclay, and their children. Maybe there
are old letters too. However, I do not
have any in my possession. I would love to get some high quality scans of
photos of this family. I’d also like to see what 525 Vine was like.
Appendix E:
Source documents
Much information came, with grateful thanks, from William H. Johnston's "Descendants of John and Tabitha Kirk"
Much information came, with grateful thanks, from William H. Johnston's "Descendants of John and Tabitha Kirk"
Census
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1840 US Census, Barclay Jarrett and Family, Montgomery County, PA
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| 1850 US Census, Barclay Jarrett and Family, Abington Twp, Montgomery County, PA, page 2 |
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| 1850 US Census, Isaac Jarrett and Family (Barclay's parents), Warminster Twp, Bucks County, PA |
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| 1850 US Territorial Census, Jesse Jarrett, Dubuque, IA |
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| 1856 US Territorial Census, Jesse and Amanda Jarrett with Ed, Barclay, William and Mary Anna, Dubuque, IA |
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| 1860 US Census, Sarah Jarrett and Family, Philadelphia, PA |
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| 1860 US Census, Barclay Jarrett, Sioux Falls, SD |
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| 1860 US Agricultural Census, Barclay Jarrett, Sioux Falls, SD |
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| 1860 US Census, Benjamin Franklin Jarrett, Warminster Twp, Bucks County, PA |
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| 1860 US Census, Isaac Jarrett, Horsham Twp, Montgomery County, PA |
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| 1860 US Census, Mary Trump Jarrett, Barclay's mother, Moreland Twp, Montgomery County, PA |
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| 1870 US Census June, Sarah Jarrett, Philadelphia, PA |
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| 1870 US Census November, Sarah Jarrett, Philadelphia, PA page 1 |
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| 1870 US Census November, Sarah Jarrett, Philadelphia, PA page 2 |
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| 1870 US Census, Benjamin Franklin Jarrett and Family, Philadelphia, PA |
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| 1870 US Census, John and Mary Moore, Philadelphia, PA |
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| 1870 US Territorial Census, Jesse and Amanda Jarrett, Dubuque, IA |
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| 1870 US Census, Isaac and Helen Jarrett and Family, Philadelphia, PA |
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| 1880 US Census, Isaac and Helen Jarrett and Family, Woodbury, NJ |
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| 1880 US Census, Thomas and Tacie Jarrett Elder, Philadelphia, PA |
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| 1880 US Territorial Census, Jesse and Amanda Jarrett, Dubuque, IA |
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| 1880 US Census, John Moore living with his parents, Philadelphia, PA |
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| 1885 US Territorial Census, Jesse and Amanda Jarrett, Dubuque, IA |
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1900 US Census, Benjamin Franklin Jarrett and Family, Philadelphia,PA
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| 1920 US Census, Robert and Elma Jarrett Davis and Family, Cheltenham Twp, Montgomery County, PA |
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| 1920 US Census, Harvey Jarrett and Family, Miami, FL |
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| 1930 US Census, Harvey Jarrett and Family, Miami, FL |
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| 1930 US Census, Thomas and Tacie Jarrett Elder, Dayton, OH |
Histories
Annals of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
History of Dakota Territory
Misc.
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| Tacie Elizabeth Jarrett Elder's Obituary, 1932 |
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| 1909 - Benjamin Franklin Jarrett's Death Certificate |
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| 1868 - William H Jarrett's death certificate, Isaac and Helen's baby |
Church Records
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| 1868-9 Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (Quaker) Notes: 1868,2,12. Mary Anna Jarrett recrq (received by request from another meeting house). 1869,1,20. Mary Anna rmt John Moore (reported married to) |
Philadelphia City Directories
