Philip Lemont Barbour

Philip Lemont Barbour (21 December 1898 – 21 December 1980) was an American linguist, historian and radio broadcaster who is most remembered by those interested in the foundations of English settlement in North America, for his detailed investigations into and documentation of the life of the pioneering adventurer, colonialist and proto-“travel writer”, Captain John Smith. At an earlier stage in his rather varied career, Barbour played a key role in the creation of Radio Free Europe after World War II.

Philip Lemont Barbour
Born(1898-12-21)21 December 1898
Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
Died21 December 1980(1980-12-21) (aged 82)
Petersburg, Virginia
Resting placeMapleshade Cemetery, Ridgefield Connecticut
Occupationhistorian, linguist, radio broadcaster
Notable worksThe Three Worlds of Captain John Smith; The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609; The complete works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631)

Early life

Philip Lemont Barbour was born in Louisville, Kentucky on 21 December 21, 1898. His father was Dr. Philip Foster Barbour (born 24 February 1867 in Danville, Kentucky; died 1 November 1944, aged 77, in Louisville, Kentucky) and his mother was Jessie E. Lemont (born 28 April 1872, Louisville, Kentucky; died 7 March 1947 in New York, New York aged 74). His parents were married on 29 October 1891 in Louisville.

Philip Barbour's paternal grandfather, Lewis Green Barbour (1829—1907), a native of Danville, was the principal of the Caldwell Institute for Young Ladies which was founded in Danville in 1860 and still exists albeit absorbed into Center College. His wife, Elizabeth Anne (Ford) Barbour (1835—1921) was born in Mississippi.

Barbour's maternal grandfather, Seward Merrill Lemont (born January 1833; died October 1903), was born in Maine but moved to Louisville where he became the prosperous president of a cold storage company. His wife, Emma Fredericka (Bleyle) Lemont (born April 1839; died November 1918) was originally from New York, New York.

For at least nine years after their marriage, as shown in the 1900 Federal census.,[1] Philip's parents and his siblings lived in the substantial Lemont family home on Second St., in Louisville along with three servants. By 1900, the family comprised the two parents and their three children; Philip and his sisters Ruth (born September 1892) and Margaret (born 1894).

By 1900, Philip's father, Dr. Philip Barbour, was practicing as a physician in Louisville, having graduated from the Hospital College of Medicine at the University of Louisville in 1890, and was also serving as Professor of Diseases of Children at the University[2]. The family was sufficiently well off to summer in upstate New York and holiday in Europe. The parents also appear to have had substantial artistic connections. For example, Philip's mother, Jessie, often recounted a visit to Paris in the late 1890s where she met the German lyric poet, Rainer Maria Rilke at the studio of Auguste Rodin.[3] The Louisville Courier-Journal of 7 February 1900 mentions (p. 6) that Lorado Taft, a Chicago sculptor who was due to visit Louisville to give an address to the Women's Club would be staying with Dr. and Mrs Barbour while he is in town. Mrs. Barbour's name is also frequently mentioned at this time in connection with activities of the Louisville Arts Club.[4]

Parental divorce

Dr. Philip Barbour and his wife, Jessie, were divorced on December 13, 1904[5]. The grounds for the divorce petition lodged by Dr. Barbour were that his wife had deserted him in November, 1604 through no fault of his own. The article said nothing about custody of the children but it was understood a private arrangement had been made. The 1910 census [6] showed that Philip, his mother and his two siblings were still living in the Lemont family home on Second St. in Louisville.

Dr. Philip Barbour who was now living on Fifth Street, Louisville, with a new wife, one Elizabeth (Akin) Barbour who he had married on 9 January 1909.[7].

In 1910, Philip's mother, Jessie, moved to New York City, taking her three children with her. On 14 July 1913, she married a German immigrant and writer named Otto Johannes (Hans) Trausil.[8] who was described in his citizenship application as being tall, of medium build with blue eyes and blond hair as well as being 24 years younger than his new wife..

Education

By his own account [9] Barbour "left high school (the Patterson-Davenport school in Louisville) without graduating to enter Columbia and (he) left Columbia because (he) wanted to get to know people rather than to know too many languages". Barbour earlier had claimed [10] that he had enrolled at Columbia University as a freshman, studying history and languages although there is no record of a Philip Barbour in the alumni records of Columbia University for the years 1914 to 1920. There is, however, record of a “Lamont Barbour” (possibly a misspelling of his middle name, Lemont) as having attended but left without graduating in 1918.[11]

In the same interview, Barbour also said that he attended Cornell University between 1917 and 1919. This claim is supported by his draft record which identifies him as a student at Cornell University[12] and by the Cornell University Class Records for 1919[13] which identify him as a junior. He was pleased to note [14] that he also left Cornell without obtaining a degree.

While he was at University, there were several developments involving his close family.

First, on June 15, 1917, his older sister, Ruth married an Army reservist named Harold Albert Lamb with whom she would soon move to California. Then, on June 29, 1917, his other sister, Margaret married a naval officer named Douglas Murray who was soon to leave on active duty.

In 1918, his mother, Jessie and her second husband, Hans Trausil, published their translation of “Poems” by Rainer Maria Rilke[15] with an introduction by H. T. (that is, Hans Trausil). The dedication reads “To the Memory of Auguste Rodin through whom I came to know Rainer Maria Rilke”.

Finally, on 24 November 1918, Philip's maternal grandmother, Emma Lemont, died leaving a modest inheritance to his mother, her brother, Seward, and two of her three children (including Philip).

Career

The 1920s: a quick marriage and divorce and work as a journalist in Italy

During the early 1920s, there are traces of Barbour's movements in the southern states and Mexico. In May, 1920, a Mr. Philip L. Barbour is noted as checking into the Adams Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.[16] In June 1924, there is a record of him arriving at San Pedro, California, from Mazatlan, Mexico.

Consistent with these movements, the next record of Barbour's movements is an announcement in an El Paso, TX newspaper[17] of a marriage between Philip Lemont Barbour and a Consuelo Seggerman (born 24 February 1902; died 1 January 1973) the daughter of a prominent El Paso pioneering family. The newspaper account mentions that the couple will make their home in Mexico City “where Mr. Barbour has business interests”. The article also mentions that Mr. Barbour was a graduate of Cornell University.

The marriage did not last long; possibly as little as 12 months. A 1929 El Paso newspaper article [18] announced that Consuelo Seggerman had been granted a divorce from Philip Barbour on the grounds of cruelty. The article reported that Ms. Seggerman had been so badly treated by her husband that she had a nervous breakdown, that her maiden name had been restored to her, and that Mr. Barbour was believed to be living in Rome, Italy.

Even before this time, an arrival card dated 18 March 1927 has Philip L. Barbour, traveling alone, arriving in San Francisco from Manzanillo, Mexico, having departed March 7 aboard the SS City of San Francisco. By his own account,[19] Barbour moved to Italy that same year and stayed there through to 1934 working first as a newspaper correspondent for Hearst newspapers based in their Rome office and then on radio work (employer not specified) elsewhere in Italy.

By this time, it is likely that Barbour had made a good start in mastering the seven languages that he would eventually achieve fluency in during his life, namely, in addition to English; Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Russian. He claimed that he had become proficient in French and German before he was eight years old due to encouragement by his parents. He also claimed that he was a top student in Latin as well.

1930s

Towards the end of his time in Italy, Barbour said that he succeeded in securing one or more fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation to study long range, short-wave radio broadcasting in Europe.[20] He claimed, in an interview given towards the end of his life,[21] that he entered into radio broadcasting after meeting Guglielmo Marconi who lamented to him that no-one was utilizing the potential of radio as an educational tool and encouraged Barbour to get into radio work.

After he returned to the US in 1937, Barbour became director of Inter-American Broadcasts at radio station WIXAL, Boston in 1937,[22] joining a growing movement attempting to promote the use of short wave radio as an international cultural and political tool.[23] In November 1937, he gave a widely reported speech at the 2nd National Conference on Educational Broadcasting in Chicago in his capacity as director of a plan for collaboration of the nations of the western hemisphere in a series of cultural programs.[24]

At this time, Barbour, although only 39 years old, was being described as a “short-wave radio expert and a master of 7 languages[25]

In 1938, Barbour was appointed as Chief of Foreign Press and Station Relations of the International Division of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in New York.[26] At the time, NBC was one of the biggest players in the short-wave radio broadcasting sector although, like everyone else, it never succeeded in making it commercially viable.

1940s: World War II and its aftermath

Barbour remained in his job with NBC through to 1941, during which time (according to the 1940 census) he moved in with his mother, Jessie, in a house that she had owned since at least 1935, in Norwalk, Connecticut. Both he and his mother, whose occupation is listed as self-employed author, are described in the census tables as being divorced.

In 1942, Barbour was appointed to a position in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Council of National Defense, probably as a direct result of his previous connections with the Rockefeller Foundation (the Council of National Defense had been set up by the Roosevelt administration in 1940 and Nelson Rockefeller had been appointed as its inaugural director). Early the same year, (16 February 1942), Barbour enrolled for the draft. Once the US entered the war, he joined the US Army and rose from private to Captain between 1942 and 1946. After attending officer's school he was attached to General Eisenhower's staff at Supreme HQ in London.[27]

While he was serving, his father Dr. Philip Foster Barbour died in Louisville KY (1 November 1944) and was buried at Cave Hill Cemetery. His second wife, Elizabeth Akin Barbour pre-deceased him (28 November 1940).

After the cessation of hostilities in Europe, Barbour was appointed as Chief of Political Intelligence, Berlin Sector, US Military Government, serving from 1946 to 1948.[28] During this period, his mother Jessie Trausil also died.[29]

In 1948, Barbour was appointed and served briefly as Control Officer for Radio in the American Sector in Berlin after which he embarked on a world tour before returning to the US.[30] On his return to the US, he became one of the first employees of Radio Free Europe, coordinating and supervising production of educational and historical programs by natives of the countries to whom they were broadcasting. He served from 1948 to 1953.

1950s: retirement and commencement of a full-time writing career

In 1953, he retired and moved into a newly purchased property in Newtown, Connecticut. His first task was to completely remodel a large barn on the property, converting it into a substantial home in which he lived for the rest of his life. An article in the Bridgeport Sunday Post of January 22, 1967 described the house as having “complete living quarters downstairs, bedrooms, living room, kitchen and baths handsomely finished. Upstairs, a huge fireplace with 33-foot chimney dominates a large library with a wide range of reference books and many maps. He also has a microfilm reader and orders many books needed for his research on microfilm”.

It was during this period that researched and wrote the books on John Smith and other aspects of the first English settlement in the Americas at Jamestown, Virginia for which he later became most notable.

Death

He died of a heart attack on 21 December 1980 in Petersburg, Virginia and was buried in the Mapleshade Cemetery, Ridgefield, Connecticut.[31][32] The death certificate recorded, incorrectly, that he had never married. He was still working on his final publication, "The complete works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631)" at the time of his death.

Legacy

As a result of the publication of Philip L. Barbour's biography of Captain John Smith,[33] his first book on the colonial experience, Barbour moved into the “forefront of the biographers of the early colonial period” in the opinion of many experts, not least being Professor David Beers Quinn, one of late 20th century's leading experts on the voyages of discovery and colonization of America.[34] Barbour's book was described as being “close to…the definitive work on the remarkable career of a controversial man”,[35] notable for its meticulous scholarship and abundance of detail, and the “best modern biography of John Smith.[36]

The main significance of Barbour’s work was that it comprehensively and convincingly refuted the claims of a series of late 19th century attacks on Smith launched by, amongst others and most famously, Henry Adams,[37] as part of what became a sectional battle between southern writers and a so-called “Yankee conspiracy” to defame Smith.[38]

Barbour's next great lasting contribution to the literature on colonial America was the posthumous publication of his collected works of John Smith.[39] Barbour's work comprehensively replaced the previous compendium compiled in the 1880s by Edward Arber and re-published in 1910,[40] which is now widely considered to be incomplete. Barbour's work was widely praised for its "scrupulous editing and annotations and the clear identifications of appropriation, dubious authorship and redundancy". The book was considered to have "few rivals among the published writings of southern colonists", was described as being "a major achievement"[41] and a “vast improvement over its predecessors".[42]

The significance of this work has not diminished over the passage of time since its publication. As recently as 2007, Yale University's Professor Jill Lepore, in the course of reviewing the ongoing debate about the role of John Smith in the early colonization of America, observed that recent publications would "never replace Philip L. Barbour's magnificently annotated and definitive three-volume "Complete Works of Captain John Smith,…".[43]

Bibliography

Books by Philip L. Barbour

[44]

  • Boris Godunov LCCN 53009090 by Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799-1837 with translation and notes by Philip L. Barbour. Published New York, Columbia University Press, 1953.
  • The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith, LCCN 64010543 by Barbour, Philip L. Published Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1964.
  • Dimitry, called the Pretender, Tsar and Great Prince of all Russia, 1605-1606 LCCN 66012062 by Philip L. Barbour. Illustrated with photos. and with maps and tables by Samuel H. Bryant. Houghton Mifflin, 1966.
  • The Jamestown voyages under the first charter, 1606-1609: documents relating to the foundation of Jamestown and the history of the Jamestown colony up to the departure of Captain John Smith, last president of the council in Virginia under the first charter, early in October 1609 LCCN 68023173 Edited by Philip L. Barbour. Published for the Hakluyt Society [by] Cambridge U.P., 1969.
  • Pocahontas and her world; a chronicle of America's first settlement in which is related the story of the Indians and the Englishmen, particularly Captain John Smith, Captain Samuel Argall, and Master John Rolfe LCCN 70100621 by Philip L. Barbour. Published Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1970
  • The complete works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631) LCCN 81010364 by Smith, John, 1580-1631 edited by Philip L. Barbour. Published Chapel Hill for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va. by the University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Other publications
  • Barbour, Phillip L. (1971) The Earliest Reconnaissance of the Chesapeake Bay Area: Captain John Smith's Map and Indian Vocabulary. Pt.I, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol.79.
  • Barbour, Phillip L. (1972) The Earliest Reconnaissance of the Chesapeake Bay Area: Captain John Smith's Map and Indian Vocabulary", Pt. II, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol.80.
  • Barbour, Philip L. (1973) The Function of Comparative Linguistics in the Study of Early Transcriptions of Indian Words, Studies in Linguistics, XXIII, 3-11.
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References
  1. Year: 1900; Census Place: Louisville Ward 6, Jefferson, Kentucky; Roll: 530; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 0060; FHL microfilm: 1240530
  2. Obituary of Philip Foster Barbour, Journal of the American Medical Association, December 2, 1944
  3. Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 29 March 1947
  4. e.g. Louisville Courier-Journal, 25 March 1900, p.26
  5. Courier-Journal, Louisville KY, June 8, 1906
  6. Year: 1910; Census Place: Louisville Ward 7, Jefferson, Kentucky; Roll: T624_485; Page: 6A; Enumeration District: 0131; FHL microfilm: 1374498
  7. Kentucky, County Marriages, 1783-1965
  8. The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Petitions for Naturalization from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 1897-1944; Series: M1972; Roll: 684
  9. Louisville Kentucky Courier-Journal, October 30, 1973
  10. in a wide-ranging interview with a reporter from the Bridgeport Sunday Post which was published 22 January 1967
  11. Columbia university alumni register, 1754-1931, compiled ...Columbia University https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b4525470
  12. Registration State: New York; Registration County: New York; Roll: 1766248; Draft Board: 126
  13. "U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012"; Yearbook Title: Cornellian And Class Book Cornell; Year: 1919
  14. Louisville Kentucky Courier-Journal, October 30, 1973
  15. Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (1918) translated by Jessie Lemont Trausil. Tobias Wright, NY, NY. The book is available on Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38594/38594.txt
  16. Arizona Republic, Phoenix Arizona, 14 May 1920
  17. El Paso Herald of 5 April 1926
  18. El Paso Herald dated 22 June 1929
  19. as recorded in the previously cited Bridgeport Sunday Post article of 22 January 1967
  20. Bridgeport Sunday Post of 22 January 1967
  21. Louisville Courier-Journal, 30 October 1973
  22. Bridgeport Sunday Post, January 22, 1967
  23. WIXAL was a non-commercial station on the campus of Harvard University which was financed by private donations and a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and was devoted entirely to educational and cultural programs (Harvard Crimson, February 11, 1937) including the broadcast of university lectures. This was believed to be the first time that this was done in the world. WIXAL was the brainchild of Walter Lemmon, who had been an aide to Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. His idea was to create a radio university to promote international culture, a kind of “National Public Radio on shortwave”. (Berg, Jerome, S. (1999) On the Short Waves, 1923—1945: broadcast listening in the pioneering days of radio. McFarland.
  24. 30 November 1937 Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, Nebraska
  25. Courier-Journal, Louisville Kentucky, 2 December 1937
  26. Bridgeport Sunday Post, 22 January 1967
  27. Bridgeport Sunday Post, 22 January 1967
  28. Bridgeport Sunday Post, 22 January 1967
  29. Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky 29 March 1947
  30. Bridgeport Sunday Post, 22 January 1967
  31. "A Rare Historian". Daily Press. Newport News, Virginia. December 31, 1980. p. 4 – via Newspapers.com.
  32. "Historian Barbour Dies". Daily Press. Newport News, Virginia. December 27, 1980. p. 16 – via Newspapers.com.
  33. Barbour, P.L. (1964) The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 553pp.,1964.
  34. Quinn D.B. (1965) The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith by Philip L. Barbour, William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 3 (July), p.496.
  35. Vassar, R. (1965) Indiana Magazine of History, Vol.61, No.2, pp.177-178.
  36. Sheehan, Bernard W (1987) The American Historical Review, Volume 92, Issue 3, 1 June, p.736 (https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/92.3.736)
  37. Adams, Henry (1867) Captain John Smith, North American Review, CIV (January), pp.1-30.
  38. Rozwenc, E.C. (1959) Captain John Smith's Image of America. The William and Mary Quarterly. Vol. 16, No. 1 (January), pp. 27-36.
  39. Barbour, Philip, L. (ed.) (1986) The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580–1631). University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va., Pp. lxii, 448; xii, 488; xi, 513.
  40. Arber, Edward, ed. (1910) Travels and Works of Captain John Smith Edinburgh: John Grant. Hosted online by the Internet Archive: Volume I and Volume II.
  41. Innes, S. (1987) The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631) in Three Volumes. by Philip L. Barbour The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Aug.), p. 471
  42. Vaughn, Alden (1986) Beyond Pocahontas, New York Tomes Book Review, June 29.
  43. Lepore, J. (2007) Four centuries on, the battles over John Smith and Jamestown still rage The New Yorker, April 2, (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/02/our-town, downloaded 11/3/2017)
  44. Source: Library of Congress Catalogue, https://catalog.loc.gov/
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