Researching the Barbers

Tom Barber, 63, was told from an early age bits and pieces of his family’s history.

His elder uncle, Jack, had once shown him an old Free Press article in which the wife of a former slave owner mentioned Paul Barber in her will. Jack told Tom he wanted “everyone to know how great my grandfather was.”

“We’ve always known things, that we were among the first black families to stay (in Ottawa),” Tom says. “(But) there was no evidence of that other than family photographs to substantiate where our place in Ottawa was.”

So Tom Barber set about thoroughly researching his family’s history in the 2000s. He amassed a collection of newspaper clippings, recorded interviews with family members, and other artifacts — both of family members and other early black Ottawans.

Tom’s research brought him to Kentucky in 2002. He visited Bardstown, the location of the property where Paul Barber had once lived. He also met the descendants of his grandfather’s former owner in Springfield, whom Tom says were more than kind in helping him research his roots.

With generous help from local residents, Tom uncovered a treasure trove of records about his grandfather. He found Paul’s year of birth, where he stayed, and that he had been in a previous marriage (prior to marrying Elizabeth in Canada) with a woman of mixed race.

“All I have to say is God was with me,” Tom says of his luck researching.

Tom plans to eventually leave his collection of newspaper clippings to the city’s Family Archives collection, though his research isn’t finished yet. He hasn’t traced the family lineage beyond Paul and wants to write more about his great-aunt Jeanette, who operated a railway porters’ rooming house on Besserer Street.