Isn't it
amazing that you can have a piece of information for years and suddenly see it
in a different light? That is the case
with the following newspaper ad for the new firm of Wells, Barner & Co. of Smithland, Kentucky. I knew these men were in business together. It is the date they
established the business that went right over my head. Sterling Barner was not on the 1840 Livingston County census or tax
list, but he does appear on the 1841 tax list. This newspaper ad, which is
dated 28 January 1841, tells me Sterling moved to Smithland after the tax list
was compiled in 1840 and before January 1841.
I did not realize the firm was organized shortly after Sterling Barner
arrived in Smithland. Let me explain,
but first some background.
Benjamin
Barner and Sterling M. Barner were brothers and Henry Wells was their
brother-in-law, having married (1) their sister, Mays Barner, 10 January 1830[1] and, after her death he married (2)
another sister, Martha Barner Egan, 5 March 1837.[2] Henry
Hand was younger than the other men and
did not remain in business with them very long. By 1843, he had moved to
Benton, Kentucky.[3]
Henry Wells
arrived in Smithland before the Barner brothers. By 1824, Wells had moved to
Smithland and that year purchased part of Lot #3, the same lot on which Bell
Tavern, later called the Gower House, was situated. [4] By 1827,
he also owned Lots #39 and #94.[5] He was
well established in Smithland by the time the first Barner brother arrived in
town.
Benjamin
Barner had been working with his brother, Sterling M. Barner, in the mercantile
business in Russellville, KY and later in the steamboat business in Nashville.
Benjamin was a clerk and his brother achieved fame as the pilot of the "second steamboat to reach Nashville, coming
up to the wharf on Thursday, February 10, 1820, under command of Captain
Sterling M. Barner, one of the best pilots of the early days."[6] Sterling
was also a personal friend of Andrew Jackson.
After Sterling
retired from steamboating, he moved to
Smithland. Two children were born to him and his wife, Sarah Jane, about this
time - Joseph in 1840 and Mary E. in 1842. Both children were born in Tennessee
so either Sarah Jane did not move to Smithland right away or she returned to Nashville to have the children. At any rate, Sterling M. Barner first appears
on the Livingston County tax list in 1841, the same year the new firm of Wells,
Barner & Co. was established.
The partners
in the new firm were commission merchants. They had a facility to
"receive, store and forward produce, merchandize ..." [7] The
location of Smithland at the confluence of two navigable rivers was ideal for
this business. Benjamin Barner, who had experience clerking in a store, had the
knowledge to handle merchandise efficiently and Sterling, as a former steamboat
captain, knew the idiosyncrasies of the rivers.
Not only did the Barners work together, they also
lived together in Benjamin's house on Lot #38 at
the end of Charlotte Street, just one block from where the Cumberland and Ohio
Rivers meet and merge. Did Sterling retire
and move to Smithland to go into business with his brother or did Benjamin
invite him to join the business after he moved to Smithland? Whichever it was, now we know it was probably
the latter half of 1840 when he arrived in Smithland.
Nashville Union, Monday, 31 May 1841, p. 3
Published 2 November 2016, Western Kentucky Genealogy Blog, http://wkygenealogy.blogspot.com/
[1]
Joyce M. Woodyard. Livingston County,
Kentucky Marriage Records, Vol. 1 (October 1799-July 1839), (Smithland, KY:
Smithland, 1992), p. 104.
[2]
Ibid. p. 150.
[3]
Kentucky Death Certificate #3592 (1921) of Felicia Hand Bethshares, daughter of
Henry M. Hand and Felicia Bogard. Felicia Bethshares was born 25 December 1843 Benton,
Kentucky.
[4]
Livingston County Deed Book AA:396, 22 September 1824, James McCawley to Henry
Wells.
[5]
1827 Livingston County Tax List,
[6]
Byard Douglas. Steamboatin' on the
Cumberland, (Nashville: Tennessee Book Company, 1961), 13.
[7]
"New Firm in Smithland, Kentucky ...," Nashville Union, Monday, 31 May 1841, page 3. The advertisement itself is
dated 28 January 1841.
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