J.H. Barwise - At Home Later Years

This is a picture of J.H. Barwise in his home at Eleventh and Austin in Wichita Falls just a block from where I lived at 909 Eleventh Street.  The picture itself was scanned from the book by Johnnie R. Morgan, "The History of Wichita Falls."  Other than the copy I have, there are copies in the Wichita Falls Library.

He died in 1927 at the age of 97.  His health and toughness were indeed exceptional considering the medical capability at that time.  His son--Myron, my grandfather--died the same year of a heart attack.  Nothing could be done.  I had a heart attack at the same age he was when he had his, and I was back to normal in six weeks in 1991.  How medical  science changed in a relatively short period of time.

  --Howard DeMere

Joseph Hodson Barwise - 1829-1927

Joseph Hodson Barwise, farmer, businessman, and pioneer settler of Wichita Falls, Texas, was born to Thomas Henry and Julia (Collins) Barwise in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 13, 1829.  When he was four the family moved to a small communnity just north of New Trenton, Indiana, where Thomas Barwise farmed 360 acres.  They remained in Indiana until April 1846, when the elder Barwise traded his farm for a large, uncleared tract of land near St. Charles, Missouri.  J.H. Barwise accompanied by one of his brothers, moved to this farm and cleared it in preparation for the arrival of the rest of the family in 1847.  Moving to Missoudri ended Barwise's formal education, the entire eight months of which had taken place in Indiana, largely at the hand of a tutor, Will Taft, the father of William Howard Taft, later president of the United States.  In Missouri on October 18. 1852, Barwise married Lucy Hansell, whom he had met in St. Charles after rafting timber cleared from the family farm down the Cuiver River. The couple settled on a farm provided by Bawise's father and eventualy raised seven children.

Barwise was a staunch Unionist  He organized Company A of the 27th Missouri Division and served as captain of the home-defense unit, which saw no action during the Civil War.  When he was advised in  he mid-1870s to move to addrier climate he took his family to Texas and settled at Cedar Spring,near Dallas, in Januaryu 1877.  He had little success as a wheat-separator salesman there.  In December 1879, "after prospecting in various parts of the state," he and his family became the first permanent settlers at the site of Wichita Falls.  He purchased the single existing cabin there as well as a quantity of land, for $105.

Barwise immediately broke ground for a farm and soon afterward established a freight service.  He sank the community's first water well.  Soon after his arrival he began manufacturing bricks of native clay to supply local construction.  He acquired sizable land holdngs and prospered.  He donated  55 percent of  his land to a bonus designed to induce the Wicbita Falls and Denver City Railway Company  to extend the road through the community.  By the  second decade of the twentieth century he had acquired a ranch near Dalhart and began trading in grain of the Panhandle.  Barwise was chosen as one of two original justices of the peace for Wichita County.  He held the position  of county judge on three separate occasons.  He also served as a member of the Wichita Falls school board during the 1880s and 1890s. and was elected president in 1890.  He was a charter member of the local Elks and Masonic organizations, the Businessmen's Leage and the First Presbyterian  Church, which he served as an elder.  He died in Wichita Falls on January 11, 1927, and was buried in Riverside Cemetery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: :Louise Kelly, Wichita County Beginnings (Burnet,Texas, Eakin Press, 1982).  Johnnie R. Morgan, The History of Wichita Falls (Wichita Falls, 1931; Nortex 1971,

Barwise Trunk - To Texas and Back to Missouri

This is the trunk that held belongings of Joseph H. Barwise, his wife Lucy Hansell and their five children for the journey from St. Charles County, Missouri to the area in North Texas where he would settle.  He was the founder of Wichita Falls in 1878.

Round Trip to Texas

Long ago I learned that a writer must have a purpose in writing, an outline, a beginning and ending.  My purpose is to write a Blog that tells my family history for the enlightment of my children, introducing members of the families I knew well, but they will never meet. 

There are two family names: Barwise and DeMere.  Both names are uncommon but they also have stories that are interesting and of some local and national significance.

My story will be auto-biographical.  Some of the people I merely brushed past as I grew.  Others were part of me and helped to form and educate me.  Yes, and there is sadness to tell and regrets by the dozens.  But blame--there is none of that.  Hurt, yes, but no one intended to cause sorrow or unhappiness.  Just things that happen as we grow, age and, eventually, die.

My first recollections are of Wichita Falls, Texas, because that's where I was born in 1925, 

The Starting Place - Missouri, St. Charles County

Grandpa Barwise never kept a diary as far as I can determine.  All I know about the trip and why it was made come from newspaper accounts in Wichita  Falls, Texas, the city he founded.  People seldom report facts of their lives because, who would care really.  Only after 50-100 years do facts become interesting and important to the new generation. 

Grandpa told a Daily Times reporter who asked why he took his family from Missouri to Texas that he did so for his wife's health.  What?  Seems impossible today in the community near St. Louis.  Not strange when you recall the huge progress made in science and medicine.  St. Charles County at the conflence of three great rivers--the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Illinois--was a marshy area where mosquitos flourish and, in turn, malaria was a threat to anyone living there. 

There is also a chance that Joseph Barwise himself was infected--with wanderlust. courage to go somewhere just to see what's there.  Why Texas?  My conjecture that it was wide open and being settled by adventurers and ambitious types.  He had been in the Union Army during the Civil War.  Who knows?  In the modern vernacular, maybe he just wanted a "piece of the action."  He got it.  He had some money from the sale of  his land in Missouri where the soil is rich and productive, so he invested it in the red clay dirt of North Texas.

Pioneer Family:

Pioneer Family: The trunk that carried the families belongings from St. Charles to Texas in a covered wagon in about 1878.

Howard DeMere