Philip Barker

Biography

Philip Barker spent the documented part of his life working as an agricultural labourer at Castle Camps in Cambridgeshire, in eastern England. A source-cited family reconstruction places his birth around 1814 and reports his baptism at Camps Green on May 1 that year. He married Mary Ann Bartlett at Castle Camps on June 23, 1839.

The census summaries offer two snapshots thirty years apart. In 1841 Philip was twenty-seven, living with Mary and a four-year-old recorded as Elizabeth Barrett. In 1871 he was fifty-seven and still working in agriculture. His household then included Ann, John, Henry, Elizabeth, and Mary, ranging from seventeen to eight. His son Henry, thirteen, was also recorded as an agricultural labourer in the reconstruction.

Those entries show work and family continuing in the same parish across much of Philip’s adult life. Mary had died by the later census, when the compilation describes him as a widower.

The fuller family list names John, Henry, an earlier Elizabeth, Martha, Sarah, Dudley Rebecca, Mary Jane, Ann, Elizabeth born in 1860, and Mary born in 1863. The later Elizabeth is provisionally identified with Eliza Elizabeth Barker King; the earlier Elizabeth Barrett’s presence in the 1841 household does not by itself establish her parentage.