Joshua Barney - a Guilford-Savage Pirate

There are many things that link the historic area "Between the Bridges" and the Guilford and Savage communities. Perhaps there is no better link than Joshua Barney.

Commodore Joshua Barney (July 6, 1759 - December 10, 1818 ) already had an impressive naval career and at the start of the War of 1812 he became a privateer for the government - the equivalent of a legal pirate! (https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/joshua-barney)

Joshua Barney’s passion for the water didn’t end with his privateering and continued as a Naval Officer after his 1809 marriage to Harriet Coale, the daughter of Thomas Coale and Sarah Ridgely, families who were all members and even vestry who served the Christ Church of Guilford that is still on Oakland Mills Road. Barney’s passion for the water was also seen by his land dealings and purchases along the Little Patuxent River such as his 1810 land patent called the First Attempt, the 1810 land survey and 1811 patent called “Mill Race” claiming vacant land adjoining the lands called White’s Contrivance, Warfields Range, and Mill Seat (perhaps Mill Seat in Partnership, his 1811 purchase of Harry’s Lott and it’s resurvey claiming additional lands, the 1811 resurvey of an adjoining land called Cole’s Choice claiming additional vacant lands, and his 1814 claim and resurvey of another nearby land patent called “Cocksell”. (See map)

What all of these lands had in common was the Little Patuxent River, which he basically claimed between what is now near Lake Elkhorn down to Savage with the exception of the Guilford Mill area. The land resurveys were often due to legal challenges resulting either from improved surveying methods, or claiming of vacant lands, the usual result was to increase the land acreage of the plaintiff. The resurvey of Harry’s Lott was done with his wife Harriett and her brother Alfred, and sister Anne, as co-beneficiaries. Due to Joshua Barney’s service to his County he had little time to manage his land holdings but his daughter Caroline, from his first marriage, married an effective attorney, Nathaniel Williams. Nathaniel represent Barney in the purchase of Harry’s Lott in 1811 and in its April 1818 sale.

After Barney was wounded in the 1814 Battle of Bladensburg, he retained a Naval commission but desired to finally relocate to Elizabethtown in Hardin County Kentucky where he had purchased over 50,000 acres of land. Although he and his wife, and sister-in-law Anne had visited some of their Kentucky holdings traveling by horse-back, it was not feasible to do so with the entire family and their belongings, including their many servants and household furnishing. They left Savage-Guilford in October 1818 and headed towards Brownsville, Pennsylvania where they would take a boat down the Monongahela River into the Ohio River at Pittsburgh and then downstream to Kentucky. Due to low flows in the river the journey was difficult and Barney provided some physical assistance along with others on the various maneuvers. The physical nature of the trip was too much for him and he made it only to Pittsburgh and on December 1, 1818 he died from complications of his wound 4 years earlier.

An excellent narrative of Barney’s personal life was written by Rebecca Hoskins and published in January of 1982 - Historical Society Notes and Documents - The Death and Interment of Joshua Barney – The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, can be found at https://journals.psu.edu/wph/article/viewFile/3761/3579

After a few years of research it seems apparent that Barney's connections influenced the building of Savage Mill and he knew of the mill's potential.  His second wife's family owned Harry's Lott adjacent to White's Contrivance adjacent to the mill, he received a land patent for a Mill Race just upstream of White's Mill Land, he had a relationship with the William's brothers, as well as his privateering days in which he likely knew Michael McBlair and John Hollins, who submitted the incorporation papers for the Savage Manufacturing Company in December 1821 which were approved in February 1822.