Historical September 1992 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The Columbian quincentenary occupies everyone during 1992.
However, St. Louis has no coastal venue during that year and has perhaps a similarly significant event to remember this year.
It concerns the first million dollar gift in the history of the city from a man who was basically a dry-goods salesman who cared about his city and his world. Robert A. Barnes died on April 2, 1892. Upon his death one million dollars went to Washington University to start its medical school and medical research operations. Barnes Medical College was incorporated that year for Washington University by Drs. Pickney French, Charles H. Hughes, and A.N. Carpenter.
The Missouri Dental College was made a department of Washington University also in 1892.
This was a time when a million bucks went a long way.
The Barnes family had come to America from England in 1662 – fully 230 years before he died.
This was an old family in the United States. Robert A. Barnes was born in 1808 in Washington, D.C.
His parents were Jesse Barnes and Mary Evans, both of Maryland.
He was working for his uncle, Richard Barnes, in Louisville, Kentucky, to learn the dry goods business.
When he came to St. Louis in 1830, he went to work for Sproule & Buchanan.
He later worked for Varian & Reel until the firm dissolved and John Reel took Barnes into partnership with the firm name of Reel, Barnes & Co.
This was when the Jefferson Hotel was on the Riverfront at 2nd and Market. Dred Scott worked in the Jefferson Hotel which was owned by Peter Blow: The. Old Courthouse Archives has several bill signed by Barnes dating back to the time when Scott worked at the Jefferson Hotel.
When John Reel died on January 8, 1838, the firm was dissolved and Barnes sold out the business.
He joined in a river partnership with Captain John C. Swon, the well known steamboat riverman, until 1841. Swon sold his interests to Barnes who stayed in the river commerce trade until the start of the Civil War, 1861. Robert Barnes was elected a director in the Bank of the State of Missouri in 1840, the only bank then in St. Louis.
He became president of the bank in 1859, and stayed until 1866 when it became a national bank.
He then retired from banking as well.
On January 28, 1845, Robert Barnes married Louise DeMun.
The granddaughter of Charles Gratiot and Victoire Chouteau, Louise DeMun’s parents were Isabelle Gratiot and Jules DeMun.
He was a French Vicomte from Haiti and took the family there in 1820 when the panic after the War of 1812 engulfed the West and all but ruined the economy of St. Louis.
The family returned to St. Louis in 1831 from its coffee plantations near Port Au Prince. Louise was the third child, fully ten years younger than Robert Barnes.
When they were married in 1845, she was nearly thirty and he was nearly forty.
They had two children, but both died in infancy.
This affected their lives and the disposition of their fortunes. Mrs. Louise DeMun Barnes died in 1889, three years before her husband. Although they had had a full life, the records indicate a certain sadness had invaded their life. Those who knew them and wrote about them said they ….fought the battle of life nobly.” Their conservative style and pleasant consistency gained everyone’s respect.
It also seemed to have kept them somewhat distant from many of the otherwise interesting aspects of life at that time in St. Louis. Even before his death on April 2, 1892, Robert Barnes was working with Washington University on the plan for his hospital.
He had found a cause and he knew it would be good for his city to have this institution.
He wanted to leave something of permanent and consistent value for the city and its people. Certainly the death of his children played a part in his interest in health matters. Probably the malaise that affected his wife as the result of all their challenges also influenced his interests.
He wanted research and schooling and training for professionals who would care about the regular health of regular people using the best knowledge in the best circumstances. Robert Barnes, through his wife, was related to Alfred Waterman and his wife, Louise Adele Kingsbury. Waterman, like Barnes, was in the wholesale grocery business.
All were descendants of the Gratiot line of the Chouteau family.
With the 100th anniversary of the Barnes bequest to Washington University, it is time to reconsider the importance of health care in St Louis and in our part of the city. Certainly this was a family that cared.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September 1992.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Barnes bequest/medical school institutional chronology and family history are1992 author claims, not independently verified here.
Original source: SD_Times1992_09.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
