Eliam E. Barney
Eliam E. Barney, deceased, was born in Adams, Jefferson Co., N.Y., October 14, 1807. His parents were Benjamin Barney, a native of Guilford, Vt., and Nancy Potter of Conneticut. His father was a warm and active friend to education, and one of the principal movers in founding Union Academy, at Bellville, Jefferson Co., N.Y., having contributed for this object very liberally, both time and money. For more than fifty years, this academy has been a vigorous and prosperous institution of learning. Both parents were earnest, active members of the Baptist Church, from early life till death. Having received a common-school education and acquired some experience as a teacher in winter schools, our subject was prepared for college at Lawville Academy, Lewis Co., N.Y., and at Union Academy, Bellville, in the same state. He then entered the sophomore class, at Union College, Scheneetady, from which he graduated in 1831. After teaching for a brief period in a family boarding school at Sand Lake, N.Y., he became Principal of Lawville Academy, where he remained two years, meeting with great success. In the fall of 1833, he came to Ohio, and taught for six months in Granville College (now Dennison University), filling the place of Prof. Drury, who had been elected, but had not yet arrived. In the spring of 1834, he came to Dayton and was Principal of the Dayton Academy from 1834 to 1838. The two succeeding years, he taught a private school for both sexes. His health failing, he relinquished teaching, and during four years engaged in widely different pursuits. His teaching from first to last was attended with great success, and the occupation being one for which he seemed peculiarly fitted, in it he attained a hight reputaion. His education and the range of his information were ample, and he possessed the rare faculty of communicating knowledge to his pupils. He seemed without difficulty to reach the understanding and compel a ready apprehension of all he sought to teach. There are but few of his former putpils who will not say that he was the best of all their teachers. His descipline was strict, but his kindness at the same time so manifest that he secured alike their respect, affection and obedience. In the summer of 1850, in company with Mr. E. Thresher, he started the Dayton Car Works. Their capital was limited and the business was carried on upon a moderate scale and prudently, but successfully. In 1854, Mr. C. Parker succeded Mr. Thresher in the firm, and from that time till 1864 the business, which had greatly increased, was conducted under the firm name of Barney, Parker & Co. Mr. Parker then sold out to Mr. Preserved Smith, the firm becoming Barney, Smith & Co., and the business was thus continued until 1867, when a joint stock company was formed under the name of "The Barney & Smith Manufacturing Company of Dayton", of which Mr. Barney was the President until his death. The company furnishes all kinds of cars for the railroads of the North, East, South, and West. During nearly its entire history, Mr. Barney was the head of the establishment, and to him is due the great success of the enterprise. He was a man of great ability, bold but prudent, clear headed, far sighted, energetic, systematic, practical and thoroughtly familiar with the business in general and in detail. Some years before his death, Mr. Barney, realizing the fact that our forests are rapidly disappearing and the whole country becoming denuded of its timber trees, and that the constant demand for timber would soon exhaust the present supply, and having his attention called to the valuable properties of the "catalpa", a tree of quick growth and furnishing timber of the most enduring quality, began a collection of information respecting the tree, and by correspondence, communications to the papers and the publication of pamphlets, he awakended a very wide-spread interest in the subject. He had at his office various specimens of the catalpa wood, one of which was from a post that stood in the ground for seventy-five years and which, with the exception of a very slight decay on the outside, was as perfect and sound as when sunk in the earth. He had, also, numerous letters from foreign countries as well as all parts of the United States, making inquiries respecting the catalpa, commending him in the most flattering terms for the interest he had taken in this important matter, and assuring him that his efforts in that connection could not fail to be crowned with the most valuable results, and be appreciated by future generations. If "he who causes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before" is a benefactor to his race, in an equally important sense is this true of a man who was instrumental in arousing the attention of nuserymen and agriculturists in the liberal cultivation of this most valuable timber tree, calculated, as it is, to furnish excellent lumber for future use. Mr. Barney was never an aspirant for public office. He was, however, President of the Dayton Hydraulic Company from its organization, and was Vice President of the Second National Bank of Dayton, also a Director and the largest largest stockholder of the same. He was likewise for many years prominently connected with the First Baptist Church of Dayton, and for some twenty years a member of the Board of Trustees of Dennison University, at Granville, Ohio (the Baptist college of the State), to which institution he has given $50,000, the same being to endow two memorial Professorships. He also contributed very largely to various other enterprises connected with his denomination. On October 19, 1834, he maried Julia, daughter of Dudley Smith, of Galway, Saratoga Co., N.Y., and six children, of whom five are living, were the issue of this marriage. Mr. Barney departed this life on the 17th of December, 1880, and was buried in the beautiful Wooland cemetery, with ceremonies befitting his rank in life.
From History of Montgomery County, Ohio, W. H. Beers & Co., Chicago, 1882