Barnabas Burns
Col. Burns, the youngest of five children of Andrew and Sarah Burns, who emigrated from Ireland in 1800, was born in Fayette county, Pa., June 29, 1817. He emigrated with his parents to Milton township, Ashland county, settling there June 20, 182?; he received a common school education and also spent a short time in the Ashland and Mansfield schools. He came to Mansfield April 9, 1838, where he has lived ever since. He was Deputy Clerk of Courts, from 1839 to 1846; he studied law in the offices of Hon. Thomas W. Bartley and Samuel J. Kirkwood, and was admitted to practice in the summer of 1848, and practiced law in this city from that date until within a few weeks of his death. In the fall of 1847, he was elected t othe Ohio State Senate, and re-elected in the fall of 1849; he was Presidential elector for the State at large, on the Democratic ticket, in 1852; he served as Colonel of the 86th. O.V.I. in the war of the rebellion, doing excellent service there. After his return he continued the practice of his profession. In 1873, he was elected a member of the Constitutional Convention, and the same year was nominated on the Democratic ticket as Lieutenant Governor; out of a vote of nearly 600,000, he was defeated by only about 500 votes. In 1876 he was one of the Ohio Commissioners at the Centennial Exposition, filling that office, like all others, in a manner satisfactory to all the interes s concerned therein. He served tow terms as one of the Trustees of the Ohio Soldiers’ Oprhans’ Home, at Xenia, an institution in which he took great interest. His last official position was inspector of the Northern Pacific railroad, which position he filled during Secretary Kirkwood’s ministration of the Department of the Interior.
From THE OHIO LIBERAL: October 17, 1883, re-printed from History of Richland County