Charles BARNEY [5466]

   FamilySearch ID: KWJD-NJL. Find a Grave ID: 11620101.

  Burial Notes:

After 139 years, Charles Barney was honored for the first time with a memorial marker in the Spanish Fork Cemetery. This early Mormon settler who fought in the War of 1812 and the Black Hawk War, died in Spanish Fork in 1865 while visiting one of his sons. He is buried in the Spanish Fork Cemetery, but there are no records of where in the cemetery his body lies. One of Charles descendant's, Mattie Cornaby began working on his life history in 1994 and with the aid of her cousin, Nolan Barney, discovered that he is buried in the northwest part of the Cemetery in an unmarked grave. The City lost the names of several early pioneers buried in that area of the main cemetery and will never bury anyone in certain areas. A daughter of Cornaby pioneers was buried in the northwest section in October 1864 and has a headstone. Charles Barney, buried in February 1865 would be nearby, for those families knew each other in early Spanish Fork. Determined to mark the area, Cornaby learned that Charles qualified for a free government-issued stone because he was a war veteran. Included on the headstone are the names of Barney's two wives and how many children each had, something that the U.S. government usually doesn't do. They changed the two lines (birth and death date) under his name to the last two lines, and listed War of 1812 under his name on their one available upright granite marker. It is impossible to know the exact place where Charles Barney is buried so the sexton decided to place the memorial marker by the west cemetery road, nine feet to the west and a few rods south in a grassy area all by itself. The many thousands of Charles Barney's posterity can easily view it. Not too far southeast of the new marker, his namesake grandson, Charles Barney, born 1861, is buried, as well as many of families of that Charles. Many others of the posterity of Charles (b. 1783) are buried in Spanish Fork and other parts of the United States. On Friday, October 1, 2004, Spanish Fork Mayor Dale Barney gave a short dedication for the new headstone that stands somewhere near where his great-great-grandfather is buried. "It's great to be able to honor your ancestors," Barney said. "A lot of us don't take the opportunity to do family history."

[Information obtained from a story written by Todd Hollingshead and published in the Provo Daily Herald, Saturday October 2, 2004 and The Barney Family News, No. 103, Fall 2004.]

Charles married in 1805 in Batavia, Genesee, New York, United States.