The English Boarding Student

[For the July 15th Carnival of Genealogy. The theme is Age.]

David Barnett was about nine or ten years old when he was sent away from his family to boarding school. This must have been in late 1848 or 1849. The Barnetts emigrated to the US from England in 1848. They were not a wealthy family in which boarding school was the norm. This was so unusual, in fact, that I had given up on finding David in the 1850 census.

Mary Barnett and her children Rachel, Betsey, Polly (my great great grandmother), Leah and David were well settled in Brooklyn in 1849, the year in which Rachel, age 19, married Garrett Van Duyne of Brooklyn. David was the baby of the family, born in 1839-40 (he usually shaved a year off in the later censuses). David had attended two schools in Brooklyn between his arrival in 1848 and his departure for boarding school (which took place in 1849 or early in 1850, as he was enumerated in manchester, Vermont as a student in October 1850).

The 1850 census shows the young Van Duynes living in the 11th Ward of Brooklyn with Mary Barnett and her daughters Betsey and Mary. Leah age 13 was living with the family of Christopher Swem, whose son dwn se would marry a decade later. I believe that Leah was informally adopted by the Swems - or worked as their servant (though she is not listed as a servant in either the 1850 or 1860 census in their household). But where in the world was David in 1850?

The only David Barrett/Barnett/Burnett of about ten, born in England, that I could find in 1850 was at boarding school in Vermont. And of course I didn't think that this could be David, a recent immigrant whose family was firmly planted in Brooklyn. However, one of the obituaries for David in 1899 outlined his schooling and had this to say:

David Barnett was born in Brooklyn in 1841 [sic] and was identified with much of the important litigation in the courts of this state for the last thirty-five years. He was also prominent in the social, charitable and educational life of the city. He was the son of the late James Barnett and would have been 58 years old on August 27 next. He was first sent to school to old No 1, on Duffield Street, and afterward at Kingsley's Academy here. He passed the last year or two of his studies at Wickham's Seminary, at Manchester, Vt. At the age of 16 [i.e. abt 1857, acc. to the birthdate of 1841] he began the study of law in the offices of Waring and Sidell, and in 1862 was admitted to the bar, remaining a managing clerk of the firm with whom he had studied law. [See NOTE at end of this post]

And so the David in Vermont in 1850 was indeed my great granduncle.

How difficult it must have been to be only ten or eleven years old, newly arrived in a strange country only to then be send hundreds of miles away to an even stranger place - rural Vermont. David was from the East End of London, specifically from Shadwell, a crowded area near the docks. How strange it must have been to find himself boarding at the Rev. James Anderson's house, and at a school which trained boys for the ministry. Rev. James Anderson, at whose house David and another boy boarded, was the minister of the First Congregational Church in Manchester.
Burr and Burton Academy was chartered in 1829 and opened as a school four years later. In 1849 it admitted girls for the first time, and six years later girls were admitted as completely equal students. In 1860 the name of the school was chnaged to Burr and Burton, to honor the founding trustee Josiah K. Burton. The Eagle called the school Wickham's Academy, since the former New Yorker, Rev. Joseph Dresser Wickham, had been the head of Burr and Burton during David Barnett's tenure there.

David eventually returned to Brooklyn and took up the study of law. By the early age of 21 he was not only a practising lawyer but had also been appointed one of the city Commissioners of Deeds. He was evidently a young man with no time to lose, hard working and talented. His early upheavals and changes made him a stronger person.

Image of David Barnett from the Eagle article cited below. Image of Manchester, dated about 1870, from Wikimedia Commons.

NOTE: Admittedly there are several errors in this obituary: his father was English-born, as was David. His father was Joseph, not James. David was probably born in 1839, not 1841. There is a reason, I think, for these errors. I think that they were deliberate on David's or his family's part (that is to say, I don't believe that the Eagle got this information out of a hat). I also think I know the reason for this trail of misinformation, but that will have to wait for a series I am working on, called "David Barnett's Secret."

SOURCES

James Anderson [Andrews in original] household, 1850 U.S. Census, Manchester, Bennington Co, Vermont, p. 131, #1065/1085, Film # 27447, Image # 00261. On same page as "Burr Seminary," headed by J.D. Wickham.

"Obituary: Joseph Dresser Wickham," New York Times, May 14, 1891, p. 5.

"David Barnett's Death," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 25, 1899, p. 6.

Burr and Burton Academy website

First Congregational Church, Manchester, Vermont, website