As a young man Barret joined the Richmond Light Infantry Blues, a prestigious militia company. He and his comrades marched to Portsmouth amid rising tensions after the British warship Leopard attacked the American frigate Chesapeake in 1807, but they saw no action. During the War of 1812 the unit mustered several times in anticipation of British attacks but never engaged in hostilities. Barret rose from private to orderly sergeant during the company's diligent but relatively uneventful service.
Barret was a wealthy bachelor in 1844 when he built a tasteful and elegant house at the corner of Fifth and Cary streets. The most discerning student of Richmond's residential architecture, Mary Wingfield Scott, stated that Barret's house marked "the high point of Classic Revival architecture in Richmond." On December 11, 1845, he married Margaret Elizabeth Williams Palmer, the widow of James Keith Palmer. They had no children. The Barrets were fond of society, literature, music, and travel. Margaret Barret died on May 6, 1852, in Charleston, South Carolina.
Barret's life ended tragically. Always fearful of fire following his lucky escape in 1811, he took unusual precautions with his stoves and fireplaces, but after breakfast on January 20, 1871, while lighting his pipe, Barret set fire to the hem of his dressing gown and was almost immediately engulfed in flames. He died a few hours later and was buried beside his wife in Hollywood Cemetery.
Time Line
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November 29, 1786 - William Barret is born in Richmond.
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1844 - William Barret purchases brick factories at Fourteenth and Cary streets and on Main Street between Twenty-Third and Twenty-Fourth streets in Richmond.
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1844 - William Barret builds a tasteful and elegant house at the corner of Fifth and Cary streets in Richmond.
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December 11, 1845 - William Barret and Margaret Williams Palmer marry in Richmond.
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March 23, 1849 - Henry Brown enlists the help of a free black and a white slave owner and is sealed in a wooden box and shipped to Philadelphia.
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March 24, 1849 - Henry Brown, a slave from Richmond who was shipped the day before in a box to Philadelphia, is delivered to the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Having risked death to make the journey, he emerges a free man.
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1850 - William Barret's Richmond tobacco factories have a workforce of about 100 slaves producing 400,000 pounds of tobacco per year.
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May 6, 1852 - Margaret Palmer Barret, the wife of William Barret, dies in Charleston, South Carolina.
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1860 - William Barret's Richmond tobacco factories produce 590,000 pounds of tobacco.
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April 8, 1869 - William Barret composes his last will.
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January 20, 1871 - William Barret dies after inadvertently setting himself on fire. He is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
References
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Tarter, B., & the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. William Barret (1786–1871). (2017, July 6). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Barret_William_1786-1871.
- MLA Citation:
Tarter, Brent and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. "William Barret (1786–1871)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 6 Jul. 2017. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: April 12, 2017 | Last modified: July 6, 2017
Contributed by Brent Tarter and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Brent Tarter is founding editor of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography.