Strangers to Us All
Lawyers and Poetry

John Williams Barnes

(1858- )
Missouri

"Rev. John William Barnes was born in Washington county, Ill., October 14, 1858. . . . Rev. Barnes received a good common school education and also attended, for two years, a Normal School at Oregon, Mo. He was raised on a farm; spent most of his life in Missouri; has taught six terms of school . . . . Studied law and was admitted to the bar at Maryville, Mo. In the spring of 1887 he entered the traveling ministry of the M.E. Church, Missouri Conference, and is at present pastor of the La Belle and Newark Circuit.

At the age of eleven years he began to write peoms, which have been published in the following papers: Central Christian Advocate, Toledo Blade, Minneapolis Spectator, New York Witness, The Patriot (Quincy, Ill.), besides local papers." [The Magazine of Poetry, vol. 3, p. 365-366 (Buffalo, New York: Charles Wells Moulton, 1858)] [online text]