grave import

Obituary

Mr. Charles I. Barker, the veteran newspaperman, died at St. Francis hospital at four o’clock yesterday afternoon (October 6, 1904). He had been spending the summer with his daughters in Chicago and had just arrived in the city. He was returning from the cemetery shortly after three o’clock when he was taken ill in front of the Leopold Desk company’s plant on Osborn Street. He was given such care as was possible there and then taken to the hospital, expiring a few minutes after he had been taken to the room that had been assigned to him. Undertaker Fred L. Unterkircher took charge of the remains.
Mr. Barker was born June 4, 1826, at Westmoreland, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, and was the youngest of thirteen children. His father died when young Charles was but three years of age. In1845 the young man left the homestead, entering an academy to improve the education that he had received in the old school district. In the winter of 1845-1846, he taught school and the following spring he entered a printing office in Keene, N.H., where he was initiated into the mysteries of the craft. As a printer he traveled about the country, as was the custom in earlier times, working in many cities both in the east and the west. In 1852 he became a foreman of the Cincinnati Gazette. The following year he acquired an interest in a paper in Hamilton, Ohio. Later he published papers in Bloomington, Ill., was state printer of Indiana in 1856 and conducted a paper at Anderson, Ind., until 1863. Then he went into the boot and shoe trade but not finding it to his liking sold out and purchased a big flock of sheep, which he brought into Iowa in 1864, engaging in the real estate business in Des Moines. In 1865, he went to Memphis, Tenn., where he engaged in the newspaper business, remaining there for two years, and in 1867, he came to Burlington, making this city his permanent home. He went into the Gazette office as part-owner, soon acquiring complete control of the paper, which remained under his charge until 1874, when he went into the book and job printing business.
He had retired from active business a number of years ago but remained active with the pen, his last communication to the Hawk-Eye appearing these columns this morning. He had always been a democrat, and had served his party in the city council and in the state legislature but was not satisfied with the present ticket, platform and leadership and would probably have cast his vote for Roosevelt and Fairbanks next month. He was a familiar figure in democratic conventions for many years, and he was frequently heard upon the stump.
He played a prominent part in democratic politics before coming to Iowa. Thus in 1862, he was a candidate for the nomination of secretary of state in the democratic state convention of Indiana, receiving a very flattering vote. In 1872 he was a delegate from the first Iowa district to the Baltimore convention that nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency. During the eighties, he was a candidate for treasurer of the state of Iowa on the democratic ticket.
His friends knew him as a man who clung firmly to what he believed to be right. Until the end, he enjoyed good health and he did not age perceptibly during the past twenty years, looking no older when approaching the eightieth milestone on his journey through life than he did when at the sixtieth.
Mr. Barker was a devoted husband and father. On February 19, 1856, he married Hanna M. Bell, at Hamilton, Ohio, she was the daughter of Daniel S. Bell, formerly a prominent lawyer of Urbana, Ohio. The union proved a very happy one and was blessed with four children, two boys, and two girls, the former dying in infancy. The mother passed away some eight years ago. And husband never ceased to mourn her death, and he was probably returning from a visit to her grave when the summons reached him. The surviving members of the family are two daughters, Bell Corwin Barker and Abbie Florence Barker both born in this city and both now residents of Chicago. They were notified of their father’s sudden death last evening.
Funeral will be held at Unterkircher’s chapel at 4 o’clock Friday, October 7, 1904.