John Thompson Barker 1840-1911
2010
John Thompson Barker was born in England to Thomas Barker and Elizabeth Thompson. He was the eighth of thirteen children which were seven girls and six boys. Five of the children died in infancy and one, a brother died at the age of twenty-seven. In 1856, at the age of 18, John and his family heard the gospel from the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints. All of the family who were above the eligible age of eight were baptized except for John’s father who was the last to be baptized. John emigrated from England to America in 1861 along with 620 other new converts to the Church. He arrived in Salt Lake City in 1862. He first worked on construction of the Salt Lake Temple by hauling granite from Little Cottonwood Canyon by wagon. Then, he worked in Tooele, Utah where he met his future wife Jane Pickett. They met at a dance and after a courtship of six years were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.
John and his wife Jane were among those asked to colonize the Bear Lake Valley along with Charles C. Rich. They cleared sagebrush and began their lives in the town of St. Charles, Idaho which is about eight miles from the Utah-Idaho border. John saved his money and was able to send it to his family in England. Only one sibling had come to America to date. That was his older sister Mary Ann, whose husband and young daughter died on the crossing from England to America. He paid for the emigration of his parents, five sisters and a brother. They all settled in the area of St. Charles, Idaho where the family farmed and worked and paid the money back to John.
John and Jane were the parents of eleven children. Six girls and five boys. The youngest daughter Clara Lzina Barker is our direct ancestor. She married Justin Gerald Pugmire who was also among the early colonizing families of the Bear Lake Valley in the town of Fish Haven, Idaho. The children of John Thompson Barker who have talked and written about him agree that he was a kind, hard-working and faithful man. John and his wife Jane are buried in the St. Charles Cemetery in St. Charles, Idaho.
The migration of John Thompson Barker
England to Utah to Idaho