The Ongoing Legacy of E. H. Barney

BY WAYNE E. PHANEUF & WILLIAM L. PUTNAM

business prospered and after a few years Berry sold out to Barney who continued the management of the enterprise until his death.

Popularly regarded as the most important person in the development of Springfield’s park system, Barney was surely its most catalytic and long-lasting figure. Exactly who, or what, inspired Barney to this generosity is lost in the murk of conjecture, but it was dramatically effective. In a series of additional donations of land, and ultimately in the disposition of his residual estate, he provided an example that stimulated numerous other leading citizens to a similar generosity.

Barney began purchasing the lots that would eventually make up the entirety of his estate in 1871. Through purchases of eight adjacent parcels of land from 1871 to 1884, Barney finally assembled the property he required to plan and develop his remarkable estate which would one day become a large portion of Forest Park.

Barney laid out the landscape of his estate in 1884, and in the summer of 1885 built his mansion which at that time was perhaps the most expensive private resi- dence in Springfield.

For the sum of one dollar, on May 15, 1890, Barney and his wife, Elisa, sold one hundred nine and a half acres, presently containing the Barney Hill and Duck Pond areas, to the City of Springfield. The deed contained some restrictions -his right to lifetime occupancy of his residence, burial of himself, his wife and their only son, George, in a granite mausoleum he had built for the purpose, and a requirement that certain adjacent property also be acquired. Within three months, on 8 August of the same year, the heirs of Linus Dickinson deeded to the City most of their remaining adjacent farmland (for a total Dickinson acquisition of 116.66 acres) thus meeting Barney’s prime condition for acceptance. One after another, all his other conditions were met, and after two years the only remaining restriction was that the property thus transferred be “...forever devoted to park purposes under the public park acts of the Commonwealth.”

In keeping with the spirit of the gift and the times, Barney was soon appointed to the Board of Park Commissioners in 1890, a position he retained for the rest of his life. In this man. their remainfarmland (for a acquisition thus meeting condition for after anothconditions after two years remaining restriction property thus “...forever depurposes under acts of the Commonwealth.” the spirit of times, Barney appointed to the Commissioners position he retained life. In this office Barney participated actively in further acquisitions of land for the expansion of Forest Park with the help of his fellow commissioners. Typical of these transactions -- all designed to fill out the park to its optimum natural boundaries -- was his 1908 decision, with fellow commissioners Herman Bucholz, Nathan Bill, Daniel Marsh and William Wright, to acquire a long strip of land south of the Pecousic Brook between the New Haven Railroad and the Connecticut River, for the grand sum of ten dollars.

Leaping ahead of time in this chronology, Everett Barney, who died in 1916, left an estate that was valued at almost half a million dollars, not including a variety of holdings of indeterminate value, such as some extensive acreage near Tampa, which he cautioned his trustees not to part with for fifty years, as he felt it would ultimately form the most valuable part of his estate.”

Seventy-five years after his death, the estate of Everett Barney, managed after 1975 by the Trust Department of BayBank Valley, produced an income of $150,000 annually that was used

“... when called upon by the Park Commissioners to the City of Springfield... to maintain, improve and beautify so much of Forest Park as is described as follows... [here Barney defined the totality -178 acres -- of his several gifts to the City].”

Before the Civil War broke out Barney was working in Connecticut making Spencer repeating rifles. His next job was as a foreman in New York when the draft riot broke out and he had to secure the weapons from the rioters. Thankfully, for the City of Springfield, Barney took on a job of fulfilling contracts for the Warner gun shop that was located along Pecousic Brook. He had finally found his last home.

When the war ended, rifles were set aside and ice skates, a life long passion for Barney, would become his lifetime work and set the stage for a fortune that included that land around Pecousic Brook that would become his estate and eventually a gift to the people of Springfield as Forest Park.