Revising "Nelson Barbour"

Our constant readers know that I’m revising Nelson Barbour: The Millennium’s Forgotten Prophet. This is not an easy task. I’m researching anew all aspects of Barbour’s life. Currently I’m probing his childhood and young adult years. There are no directly relevant records. But there are some things that illuminate those years.

Who where the clergy in Throopsville and Cohocton? Which church did the Barbour’s attend? Most early New York records spell the name phonetically as Barber. The family used both spellings.

A member of the Barbour family offered fairly convincing evidence that Friend Barbour [Barber] was Nelson’s grandfather, not his father. She pointed to David Barbour as Nelson’s parent, and there is some evidence leaning that way. I need solid proof. Wikipedia suggests that evidence is in Nelson’s will. It is not.

As a young man Barbour attended Temple Hill Academy. Do records still exist? I can’t find them. But they may be in some archive. The modern Temple Hill Academy is disconnected from the school of Barbour’s day.

Barbour left for Australia in 1851 or 1852. The strongest evidence points to 1852. I cannot find a passenger list or transit record that proves this, though we have Barbour’s own words for it. Can you find the passenger list? National Archives might help.

Queensland required a passenger list for all ships, even those only sailing to one of the other Australian colonies. A Mr. Barber of the right age appears twice in the records available to me. You can access these through familysearch.org . A Mr. Barber’s legal problems show up in Australian newspapers in the two years prior to Nelson’s departure. You can access these through https://elephind.com/ . Can we prove that this was Nelson Barbour.  Just as helpful would be proof that it is not Nelson Barbour.

In the 2-3 years before Nelson returned to the United States [1860], New York property records show transfers to a N. H. Barbour. Is this ‘our’ N. H. Barbour? I can’t answer that yet, and I may never be able to answer that. These records are at familysearch.org.

I do not have access to British passenger lists. His name must be on one, assuming records were kept by port authorities. That list would be an ‘arrivals’ list. There is a slight suggestion in something Barbour wrote that his return to America may have been from a German or French port. There is also a hint [and only a hint] that Barbour may have spoken German. I do not see that as important. But it might be ...

Two of my blog readers offered to help with this project. Well, here’s your chance.