Charles Barton (British Army officer)

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Lieutenant-General Charles Barton (20 April 1760 – 11 June 1819) was an Anglo-Irish soldier who commanded the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards and fought in the Peninsular War.

Barton owned an estate in County Fermanagh, Ireland.

Life[edit]

Born in 1760, Barton was the third son of William Barton (1723–1792), of Grove House, Fethard, County Tipperary, by his marriage to Grace Massy, a daughter of Charles Massy, Dean of Limerick.[1] He was baptized into the Church of Ireland on 25 April 1760 at St Peter's, Aungier Street, Dublin.[2] His brothers included Thomas Barton (1757–1820) and General Sir Robert Barton (1768–1853).[1]

In February 1790, Barton was a Captain in the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards and was promoted to Supernumerary Major.[3] In 1792,[4] he was promoted to Major, and in December 1796, still serving in the 2nd Life Guards, from Lieutenant-Colonel to Major-General.[5] In 1805 he again became Lieutenant-Colonel of the 2nd Life Guards by purchase,[6] by which he gained command of the regiment. He was still its Lieutenant-Colonel in 1811, while it was fighting in the Peninsular War.[7] During that war, on 25 April 1808, Barton was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General[8] and was still a serving officer when he died in 1819 at the age of 59.[1]

In 1804, while a Major-General, Barton sat with Henry Edward Fox as a member of a court martial to try a case against Dr Robert Gordon, Physician to the Forces.[9]

In 1816, while Barton was living at 1, Montague Place, Mayfair, a man was hanged for breaking into his house and stealing a pistol.[10]

At the time of his death, Barton owned an estate in County Fermanagh called the Waterfoot, near Pettigo, which was inherited by his eldest son.[11]

Thomas Carlyle later described Barton as "...an Irish landlord and a man of connections about Court, lived in a certain figure here in Town; had a wife of fashionable habits, with other sons, and also daughters, bred in this sphere. These, all of them, were amiable, elegant, and pleasant people."[12]

Private life[edit]

In November 1799, at Wimbledon, Barton married Susannah Johnston, a daughter of Nathaniel Johnston, then of Wimbledon,[13] and Susanna Gledstanes, and their first child, Hugh William Barton, who eventually followed in his father's footsteps by becoming Lieutenant-Colonel of the 2nd Life Guards, was born on 13 December 1800. They had at least six other children: Nathaniel Dunbar Barton (1803, later a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Bengal Cavalry); Thomas Charles Barton (1805–1856); Robert Johnston Barton (1809–1863); Albert Evelyn Barton (1812–1874); Susannah Barton (born c. 1813); and Anna Eleanor Barton (born c. 1816).[1]

In her youth, Barton's wife had lived at Bordeaux in France, where her father, a Scot, had been naturalized as French.[1] Barton met her as the result of his younger brother Hugh Barton becoming a merchant in Bordeaux, where he made a large fortune and in 1791 married Susannah's sister Anne Johnston. Hugh Barton owned Château Langoa-Barton and estates in Ireland and lived at Battle Abbey, Sussex. He was High Sheriff of County Kildare in 1840.[1]

On 2 November 1830, at Christ Church, Marylebone, Barton's daughter Susannah married John Sterling, an author. Thomas Carlyle said of them that "His blooming, kindly and true-hearted Wife had not much money, nor had he as yet any..."[14]

In 1831, at Karnal, British India, Barton’s son Nathaniel married Honoria Angelina, a daughter of Colonel Alexander Lawrence and sister of Henry Montgomery Lawrence.[15]

Barton's other daughter, Anna Eleanor, married Frederick Denison Maurice, a clergyman,[16] on 7 October 1837 at Clifton,[17] and was the mother of two sons, including Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice.[18]

Australian descendants[edit]

"Banjo" Paterson
Waltzing Matilda MS

After an early career as a naval officer in the service of the East India Company, in 1840 Barton's son Robert Johnston Barton migrated to New South Wales and became a landowner and grazier at Boree Nyrang, near Molong.[19] He married Emily Mary Darvall (1817–1909), a sister of John Darvall, and their daughter Rose Isabella Barton (1844–1893) married Andrew Paterson and was the mother of Andrew Barton Paterson (1864–1941), known as "Banjo", a prolific poet and the writer of the lyrics of Waltzing Matilda.[20] The Dictionary of Australian Biography states that Paterson was related to Edmund Barton, the country’s first prime minister,[21] but the exact relationship is unclear.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, Burke's Irish Family Records (London: Burkes Peerage Ltd, 1976), pp. 79–80
  2. ^ Ireland, Select Births and Baptisms, 1620-1911 at ancestry.com, accessed 25 November 2020: "Name Charles Barton / Mother Grace /Father William Barton / Baptism Saint Peter and Saint Kevin, Dublin, Ireland 25/04/1760 (25 Apr 1760)" (subscription required)
  3. ^ "Deaths and Preferments" in The Scots Magazine, Vol. 52 (1790), p. 103
  4. ^ The London Chronicle, no. 5524, Tuesday, 17 January 1792, p. 49
  5. ^ The Scots Magazine, Vol. 58 (1796), p. 866
  6. ^ The London Gazette, Issue 15823, July 1805, p. 902
  7. ^ The Royal Military Chronicle: or, the British Officer's Monthly (1811), p. 278
  8. ^ A List of the Officers of the Army and of the Corps of Royal Marines on Full and Half Pay (Great Britain War Office, 1818), p. 146
  9. ^ Charles Maclean, An Analytical View of the Medical Department of the British Army, p. 104
  10. ^ PHILIP STREET. Theft: burglary. 3rd April 1816, oldbaileyonline.org, accessed 24 November 2020
  11. ^ Edward Walford, The County Families of the United Kingdom, p. 57
  12. ^ Thomas Carlyle, Carlyle's Works: John Sterling (Dana Estes Latter day pamphlets, 1892), p. 62
  13. ^ "Marriages", in Oxford Journal, Saturday 30 November 1799: "At Wimbledon, Colonel Charles Barton, of the 2d Regiment of Life Guards, to Miss Susannah Johnston, daughter of Nathaniel Johnston, Esq. of Wimbledon, Surrey"; The Monthly Magazine, 1 January 1800, p. 1009
  14. ^ Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill, The Works of Thomas Carlyle: The life of John Sterling (1898), p. 75: "On the edge of winter, here at home, Sterling was married: at Christchurch, Marylebone, 2d November 1830, say the records. His blooming, kindly and true-hearted Wife had not much money, nor had he as yet any..."
  15. ^ Vernon Charles Paget Hodson, List of the Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758-1834, Part 1 (London: Constable, 1927), p. 100
  16. ^ Thomas Carlyle, Charles Richard Sanders, Clyde de L. Ryals, The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (1981), p. 45
  17. ^ "Marriages", in Bell's New Weekly Messenger (London), Sunday 15 October 1837, p. 7: "At Clifton, the Rev. F. MAURICE, Chaplain Guy’s Hospital, to ANNA, youngest daughter of the late Lieutenant-General CHARLES BARTON, the 2d Life Guards"
  18. ^ "Maurice, (John) Frederick Denison", in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/18384
  19. ^ Jennifer Gall, Looking for Rose Paterson: How Family Bush Life Nurtured Banjo the Poet (2017, ISBN 978-0642278920), pp. 1–3
  20. ^ Gall (2017), pp. 3–5
  21. ^ PATERSON, ANDREW BARTON (1864-1941), poet, in Dictionary of Australian Biography, gutenberg.net.au, accessed 25 November 2020
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