Photograph collage with portraits of Barker family members, envelope, and Court of Common Pleas summons (Barker v. FitzSimons et al.)
Book 1, Page 169 ·ca. 1880–1904
Transcription
The page is mounted with six small portrait photographs along the top, a larger portrait at lower left, two envelopes in the lower-center, and a folded legal document at lower right. Pencilled captions in the compiler’s hand identify the portraits.
Top row — six small portraits
Left to right, the photographs and their pencilled captions:
(1) A young woman in a dark dress with white collar, on a Lindsey & Brown, ASHEVILLE mount, captioned:
Mamie Barker
(2) A baby in long white christening dress in an oval frame, captioned:
Ellen Barker
(3) A standing woman in a dark dress (outdoors against trees), captioned:
Mrs. Thomas M. Bar[ker]
(4) A young girl in a white dress standing on a chair, captioned:
Thomas M. Barker Jr.
(5) A head-and-shoulders portrait of an older woman on a Lindsey & Brown, ASHEVILLE mount, captioned:
Lydia Barker
(6) A group photograph (two figures visible at left edge, a third cropped off), captioned:
Lydia — Ellen & Mamie Barker
Lower left — single larger portrait
A portrait of a clean-shaven man in a dark coat with bow tie, captioned in pencil below:
Thomas M. Barker Jr.
Center — small folded envelope and addressed envelope
A small folded envelope (blank side facing). Above it, a larger torn envelope addressed in ink, with a one-cent postage stamp at lower right and a CHARLESTON S.C. postmark dated JUN 11, 1904:
Miss Ellen M. Barker
15 Maple Avenue
Asheville
North Carolina
A pencilled annotation beside the envelope:
2 letters / Ellen Barker from / Theodore G. Barker — his wife
Right — folded legal document
A folded legal sheet, the cover panel reading in printed and handwritten text:
[Pencilled at top:] Copy for Thomas M. Barker
State of South Carolina,
COUNTY OF Berkeley
Theodore G. Barker as / Executor of Will of John / B. Milliken, and in his / own right,
Plaintiff
against
Susan M. FitzSimons, / Ellen Porcher, Thomas / M. Barker, et al.
Defendants
COPY SUMMONS [and Complaint] FOR RELIEF.
[signed] D. B. Gilliland
Plaintiff’s Attorney
AI Notes
An album page mounted with six small portrait photographs in a top row (carte-de-visite portraits with pencilled captions identifying Barker family members including Mamie, Ellen, Mrs. Thomas M. Barker, Thomas M. Barker Jr., Lydia Barker, and a group of ‘Lydia, Ellen & Mamie Barker’); a single larger portrait at lower left of a clean-shaven man in a dark coat captioned ‘Thomas M. Barker Jr.’; a small folded envelope (blank side); a torn envelope addressed to Miss Ellen M. Barker at 15 Maple Avenue, Asheville, with a Charleston, S.C. postmark of June 11, 1904; and a folded legal cover sheet at right titled ‘State of South Carolina, County of Berkeley’ — the cover of a ‘Copy Summons and Complaint, for Relief’ in the case of Theodore G. Barker (as Executor of the Will of John B. Milliken and in his own right) versus Susan M. FitzSimons, Ellen Porcher, Thomas M. Barker, et al., signed by Plaintiff’s Attorney D. B. Gilliland (Walker, Evans & Cogswell law stationers, Charleston).
Printed at the foot of the sheet: “Walker, Evans & Cogswell, Law Stationers, Charleston, S.C.” A pencilled “G” sits in the lower-left margin.
The Barker v. FitzSimons et al. complaint — whose full text is reproduced on pages 172–175 — is not an adversarial lawsuit in the modern sense but a partition-and-administration action filed by Theodore Gaillard Barker (as Executor of his uncle John B. Milliken’s 1889 will) against his own siblings and their heirs, including his sister Susan Milliken Barker FitzSimons (the compiler’s grandmother). Such friendly partition suits were the standard 19th-century Lowcountry mechanism for dividing inherited real property — here the Mulberry / Castle Ruin / Ellery tracts on the Cooper River — among multiple heirs when the estate could not be partitioned in kind.