Family

Bernard Barton was born at Carlisle

City of Carlisle

The City of Carlisle is a local government district of Cumbria, England, with the status of a city and non-metropolitan district. It is named after its largest settlement, Carlisle, but covers a far larger area which includes the towns of Brampton and Longtown, as well as outlying villages...

 on 31 January 1784, the son of Quaker parents, John Barton (1755–1789) and his wife, Mary, née Done (1752–1784). His mother died, and while he was still an infant, his father, a manufacturer, married Elizabeth Horne (1760–1833), moved to London, and then engaged in the malting business at Hertford

Hertford

Hertford is the county town of Hertfordshire, England, and is also a civil parish in the East Hertfordshire district of the county. Forming a civil parish, the 2001 census put the population of Hertford at about 24,180. Recent estimates are that it is now around 28,000...

. The widow and stepchildren then moved to Tottenham

Tottenham

Tottenham is an area of the London Borough of Haringey, England, situated north north east of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:Tottenham is believed to have been named after Tota, a farmer, whose hamlet was mentioned in the Domesday Book; hence Tota's hamlet became Tottenham...

. His sister was the educational writer Maria Hack

Maria Hack

-Life and family:Maria was born to John Barton and his wife Maria Done in Carlisle on 16 February 1777. Both her parents were Quakers. The family moved to London before Maria's mother died. Her father married again to Elizabeth Horne of Tottenham, with whose family Mary lived after her father's...

 and his half-brother John Barton, an economist. He was educated at a Quaker school in Ipswich

Ipswich

Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...

.

Barton was apprenticed at the age of 14 to a shopkeeper in Halstead

Halstead

Halstead is a town and civil parish located in Braintree District of Essex, England, near Colchester and Sudbury. It has a population of 11,053. The town is situated in the Colne Valley, and originally developed on the hill to the north of the river...

, Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

, whose daughter, Lucy Jesup (1781–1808), he married in 1807. His wife died at the end of their first year of marriage, while giving birth to their daughter Lucy. After a year as a tutor in Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, Barton spent the rest of his life at Woodbridge, Suffolk

Woodbridge, Suffolk

Woodbridge is a town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. It is in the East of England, not far from the coast. It lies along the River Deben, with a population of about 7,480. The town is served by Woodbridge railway station on the Ipswich-Lowestoft East Suffolk Line. Woodbridge is twinned with...

, for the most part as a clerk in Messrs Alexander's Bank.

Works and friendships

Barton became the friend of Southey

Robert Southey

Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...

, Lamb, and other men and women of letters, including the local children's writer Anne Knight

Anne Knight (children's writer)

For this author's namesake, the social reformer, see Anne Knight.Anne Knight was a Quaker children's writer and educationalist.-Life:...

, with whom he lodged, and to whom he provided poems for some of her books. His chief works are The Convict's Appeal published in 1818

1818 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-John Keats:* In December, Keats is invited by his friend, Charles Armitage Brown, to move into Brown's home at Wentworth Place, in Hampstead, then a pastoral suburb north of London...

, a protest against the death penalty and general severity of the criminal code, and Household Verses published 1845

1845 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 10—Robert Browning, 32, and Elizabeth Barrett, 38, begin their correspondence when she receives a note declaring "I love you" from Browning, a little-known poet whose verses she had...

, which came to the notice of Sir R. Peel

Robert Peel

Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...

, through whom he obtained a pension of £100 a year.

With the exception of some hymns, his works are now nearly forgotten, but he was described as a most amiable and estimable man—simple and sympathetic. His best known hymns are 'Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace', 'Walk in the light, so shalt thou know', 'Fear not, Zion's sons and daughters', 'Hath the invitation ended?', 'See we not beyond the portal?' and 'Those who live in love shall know'.

Lucy published a selection of her father's poems and letters, to which Edward Fitzgerald

Edward FitzGerald (poet)

Edward FitzGerald was an English writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The spelling of his name as both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald is seen...

, translator of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám , a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer...

and her future husband, prefixed a biographical introduction.

External links

• Bernard Barton at Find-A-Grave