Martin James Barlow

Rev. M.J. and Annie (McLendon) Barlow

Andrea Price

Quick Facts

Significance:

Mississippi Homesteader

Place of Birth:

Jasper County, Mississippi

Date of Birth:

6 Oct 1869

Place of Death:

Shubuta, Clarke County, Mississippi

Date of Death:

8 Jun 1936

Martin James (M.J.) Barlow was born October 6, 1869 in Jasper County in southeast Mississippi. In the 1870 and 1880 United States Census records for Jasper County, “James Barlow” is enumerated with his grandmother Sarah Barlow. Mary Barlow, in the 1870 census record, is likely his mother. In the 1880 United States Census, he is recorded as attending school and being able to read and write.

M.J. Barlow married Annie McLendon on 27 May 1893 in Clarke County, Mississippi. Annie, born in March 1878 in Mississippi, was the daughter of homesteader Alfred McLendon, and his wife, Roseanna Porter (aka Cooley). In the 1900 United States Census, M.J. Barlow is a minister, and his wife Annie is a farmer. Both are identified as renting farmland in Shubuta, Clarke, Mississippi, and both are literate. They have three children, and the eldest attends school and can read.

In September 1904, Martin J. Barlow paid $7.00 and filed Homestead Application #39902 for 79.28 acres of land in Clarke County via the Jackson, Mississippi Land Office. He did not appear in person in Jackson due to distance.

In October 1909, Rev. Barlow gave notice to make the final 5-year proof to establish his claim to the land. The two witness testimonies included in the final proof were by John A. Menasco, a white homesteader who lived within half-mile of, and had known, M.J. Barlow for eight years; and Alford F. McLendon (likely Annie’s father and homesteader), who lived within a mile of, and had known, M.J. Barlow for seventeen years. M.J. had ten acres of land “cleared and broken and in good state of cultivation” and was harvesting fifty bushels of corn, two bales of cotton, twenty bushels of peas and seventy-five bushels of potatoes per year. About seventy acres was timber and no land was used for grazing. In terms of land improvements, there was one three-room house—made of lumber and covered with boards—worth about $150. There was also one barn with four stalls and pine railing that fenced-in the cultivated land. The total cost of land improvements was estimated at $225. Rev. Barlow received Patent #149938 for 79.28 acres of land on 1 Sep 1910, under authority of the 20 May 1862 Homestead Act (12 Stat. 392).

By the 1910 United States Census, M. J. and Annie Barlow had six children: Shadrack Chester “S.C.”, Alfred Havanah, William L., Lucy Annie, Mamie and King Pugh. Everyone can read and write. M.J.’s occupation is as a clergyman, and he owns his own farm in the Shubuta area without a mortgage. His widowed brother, George W. Barlow, resides with the family.

According to oral family history, Rev. M.J. Barlow served as a pastor of Shubuta’s Tribulation Baptist Church, which was established in 1862. His wife Annie’s father, Alfred McLendon, and her step-grandfather, Berry Cooley, were among the church’s founders and first deacons. Rev. Barlow also served as a pastor of Pearlie Grove Baptist Church in Quitman, Clarke County. Rev. M. J. Barlow’s prominence as a minister from Shubuta was well documented in newspapers. He was the long-time president of the First Enterprise Baptist Sunday School Convention, an organization he was associated with for over twenty years. In Hattiesburg News articles about the 1916 annual convention, President Rev. Barlow offered encouragement after the recent Gulf Coast hurricane and called for unity, self-reliance, and a need to address idle young men being drawn to criminal activity. He stressed the importance of supporting the Meridian Baptist Seminary and gave the convention’s temperance sermon.

In December 1918, four young, likely innocent African Americans - including two pregnant young sisters – were lynched on the “Hanging Bridge” outside Shubuta. This infamous lynching was investigated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), included in their 1919 report, “Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1898 – 1918”, and widely reported around the country. What words of comfort or condemnation Rev. Barlow might have offered in the aftermath of the lynching or national attention, are unknown. In January 1920, Rev. M. J. Barlow was one of many distinguished speakers mentioned in a Dallas, Texas article about the National Baptist Convention, unincorporated.

In January of 1930, tragedy struck the family when a young man came to Rev. Barlow’s home and shot and killed his 28-year-old daughter, Lucy (Barlow) Heard, a married mother of three young children. The shooter was identified as 21-year-old Melford Collins and was quickly arrested, according to the newspaper. Rev. Barlow and his family published a “Card of Thanks” in the 31 Jan 1930 issue of The Clarke County Tribune to express “our thanks to our friends, both white and colored, for their words of sympathy and beautiful floral offerings at the time of the death and funeral of Lucy Barlow Heard.”

According to family oral history, the shooter was a male acquaintance who mistook Lucy for her younger sister, Mamie, who died just three years later after an appendectomy. According to the family, Mamie died of a broken heart. Mamie (Barlow) Cole was a teacher and widowed mother of one young son.

On 12 June 1936, The Clarke County Tribune announced Rev. Barlow’s death on page 1: 

 THE REV. M. J. BARLOW, COLORED, DIES
 The Rev. M. J. Barlow, well known and respected colored minister, passed
 away at his home at Shubuta, Miss.  Funeral services were held Wednesday
 afternoon of this week at 1 :00 o’clock from the Tribulation Baptist Church at  Shubuta, with interment in the Tribulation Cemetery.

Annie (McLendon) Barlow, called “Miss Sweet”, continued to reside in Shubuta until her death in 1950. She was also buried in Tribulation Cemetery.

Patent Details - BLM GLO Records

~ Contributed by Andrea Price

More about the contributor: Andrea Price is an avid family genealogist and IT professional from Indianapolis, Indiana. On her birth father’s maternal side, she is a descendant of Alfred and Roseanna (Porter a.k.a. Cooley) McLendon, the parents of Rev. Barlow’s wife Annie. Her 2nd great-grandparents Ras and Ella (Chapman) McLendon moved to Indianapolis, Indiana during the Great Migration.

She learned of Rev. M.J. Barlow’s distinguished life after connecting with her third cousin once removed, Janice Heard Guidry, on Ancestry.com. Janice is Rev. M.J. and Annie (McLendon) Barlow’s great granddaughter through Lucy (Barlow) Heard. Janice, a passionate family historian and collector of artifacts, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and spent many summer vacations with her Aunt Laura Heard in Rev. Barlow’s latter home in Shubuta, MS. Janice has a copy of Rev. Barlow’s 1930 address to First Enterprise Baptist Sunday School Convention. She was intrigued by the eloquence of his writing as someone born in rural Mississippi just after Emancipation, as well as the fact that he was the original purchaser of land that provided for the family over several generations. As of 2022, the last of Rev. Barlow’s land still known to be in the family, 29 acres purchased in 1920, is being prepared for sale as there are no living heirs in Mississippi.