Making sure the story of Joseph Riley Barnett and his family is not lost to time

About halfway between Lovell and Greybull, on the east side of the Big Horn River, down one of those dusty roads most of us have never bothered to explore, there once stood a tiny town called Crystal Creek.

It survived only a few decades, yet for a while the area sustained a small but vibrant community. There was a schoolhouse, a post office and a general store. Families carved out lives in that narrow ribbon of land between the river and the mountains, raising children where isolation was simply part of everyday life.

A few days ago, with permission from Gene Schatz, I had the opportunity to visit the last remaining trace of that town -- an old cemetery with only three grave markers still standing. We walked up a gentle rise to a small gravesite that most people would pass without ever realizing it was there.

When Gene’s family purchased the land more than a hundred years ago, the graves were already there. Since then, they have treated that small patch of ground as sacred.

Standing there, I was struck by the stillness. Nestled between the Big Horn River to the west and the Big Horn Mountains rising to the east, it may be one of the most beautiful places in the Basin to spend eternity.

As I stepped into that quiet space, my eyes were drawn to the names etched into the stones, and I felt an immediate desire to know their stories. The more I learned, the more I was drawn in.

The first marker bears the name Joseph Riley Barnett, born in 1828 in Kentucky, the eldest of 13 children born to Bennett and Martha Barnett.

Like many young men of his generation, Joseph grew up working a family farm in a slaveholding state. The Barnetts lived in a world where slavery shaped the economy and daily life, and it is likely the family was part of that cruel practice.

When Joseph was 22, his father died. As the oldest of 13 children, the weight of responsibility settled squarely on him. Helping hold the family together was no small task. At some point he made a decision that would alter their lives. He left Kentucky and began moving west, finding work through southern Indiana and Illinois before settling in Missouri.

His mother lived another 25 years, and as was common in that era, she followed her oldest son across the frontier. Together they raised the younger children and endured the hardships of pioneer life. Not all survived. By the time Martha died, she had outlived seven of her children.

Joseph seems to have waited until the burden of raising his siblings eased before starting a family of his own. At age 30, in 1858, he married Louisa Bethurem. It must have felt like a hopeful beginning. They settled near Texas County, Missouri, in the town of Houston. Yes, Houston, Texas, Missouri.

By 1860 Joseph and Louisa had a son, named Bennett after his grandfather. Bennett was born just five days before South Carolina seceded from the Union, igniting the chaos of the Civil War. Even then, news traveled quickly. What may have felt distant at first would soon reach deep into Missouri.

My hope is that for a couple of years Joseph, Louisa and Bennett lived quietly on a small farm in the rolling hills of central Missouri, far from the cries of war. They were literally in the middle of the Ozark Mountains. If there was a place to hide, maybe it was there. I’m sure it wasn’t that simple, but I wish it was.

Then tragedy struck in 1863, in the middle of a nation tearing itself apart. Joseph’s wife, Louisa, died.

That year she delivered their second son, James, who did not survive the birth. The traumatic delivery left her suffering from what was then called “milk leg,” a condition caused by blood clots in her legs. Just one month after losing her son, Louisa was gone, as well.

There are no diary entries to tell us how Joseph carried that loss, but the timing alone is striking. Louisa died just days before the battles at Gettysburg, when the country itself seemed to be unraveling, much like this tiny family.

Missouri’s Civil War experience was unlike almost anywhere else in the country. Though it never officially seceded, the state fractured early, with rival governments and divided loyalties. By 1863, violence peaked with massacres, forced evacuations and the destruction of farms and towns.

Sometime after Louisa’s death, Joseph was pulled into the war. She died in February, and by that summer his name appeared in a Confederate enlistment register. Recruiters and militia officers moved through the countryside, often pressuring men to serve. In Missouri, one week it might be men aligned with the South, and the next it might be Union authorities.

The enlistment record describes Joseph like a dark personal ad: a 35-year-old single white male. One detail on the page is jarring. In a column labeled “White or Colored,” every man listed was white. Unsurprisingly, no Black men appear.

Joseph’s name appears on one line. The next is his younger brother Ewing, age 26 and also single.

Fortunately, the brothers never fought in the most violent battles. Their militia guarded railroad tracks, telegraph lines and supply routes. I have to imagine Joseph’s toddler son was watched over by his grandmother Martha or one of the younger sisters. For 13 months Joseph served the Confederate army.

The next trace of his life comes on September 19, 1864, when Joseph enlisted in the Union Militia of Missouri, doing much the same local duty under a different flag. As I researched more, I imagined the horrific possibility of the two brothers facing each other on a battlefield, and what it would mean to see your own brother as the enemy.

But thankfully a few days after Joseph, his younger brother Ewing also switched sides and began to serve in the Union Army of the North. It is noteworthy that during the short time that Ewing went from Confederate to Union Soldier he also went from single to married.

We all know how the war ended, with the North victorious, but we have no idea how the brothers marked that moment. More than anything, it seems they simply returned to their lives and got back to work. There are few records of daily life beyond scattered dates and losses. A sister died in 1869, Joseph’s mother in 1875 and another sister in 1880. In between those markers, they worked the farm in Missouri and kept going.

Joseph never remarried and was an attentive father. That fact shows up again and again in family accounts. Like countless widowers on the frontier, he carried forward by doing what needed to be done.

During those years, something we still recognize in our own communities began to happen. Fathers grow older, and sons begin to take over. It is never easy, but time, energy and health quietly drive the process. Somewhere along that long arc, the roles in the Barnett household began to shift.

In 1879, that shift became visible. The son, Bennett, still young but already shaped by loss and responsibility, decided he was grown. He married 17-year-old Willie Ann West. Young and full of plans, they stayed on the family farm and went to work building a life together.

For a time, Missouri seemed like it might be the perfect place. Bennett worked in the timber regions of central Missouri, where rivers doubled as highways for the logging trade. He and Willie Ann started their life together in the Ozarks, first in Miller County and later farther south. Children came quickly. Daughters first, then sons. A growing family rooted in a landscape of hardwood forests and winding rivers.

And through it all, Joseph stayed with them.

That detail matters. The widowed Civil War veteran did not fade into the background. He moved with the family, living under the same roof as Bennett and Willie Ann. Three generations bound together not by nostalgia, but by necessity.

By the 1890s, the Barnett household was large, loud and constantly in motion. Farms were bought and sold, and the family drifted across southern Missouri in search of land and opportunity. By 1899, Bennett and Willie Ann had 13 children.

With so many mouths to feed, the hope for something better grew stronger than the comfort of staying put.

That choice would carry their story to Wyoming and the Big Horn Basin. By 1900, Joseph was 72 and Bennett was 37. The son did what the father had done before him. He went west.

A Missouri newspaper captured the moment in a short but telling farewell, calling Bennett and Willie Ann “honest, trustworthy and hardworking” and wishing them success. It was a small-town sendoff, but it tells us something important.

Bennett traveled first with his eldest son and a friend, following word of work in Wyoming. The U Cross Ranch near Sheridan was hiring.

Bennett had one advantage over some of the others in Sheridan in those early days. He had family. His mother, who had died when he was only 3 years old, had at least two brothers living near Sheridan. Their last name was Bethurem, a name that still lingers in Sheridan County.

Soon after, Bennett sent for the rest of the family.

Their stay in Sheridan was short. By 1902, the Barnett family had settled along Crystal Creek, working their way to the land where 125 years later I stood near their graves.

There was reason for hope. The family had hundreds of acres to graze their cattle, and in most years Crystal Creek ran full and strong. The small community worked together to build an irrigation system that seemed to sustain them.

But tragedy could not go far from the Barnett family.

On April 12, 1903, Willie Ann gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, Noah and Nona; her 14th and 15th children. Her health, however, had weakened badly. Unable to care for the infants, the twins failed to thrive. Little Noah died on September 22, and Nona died five days later.

Willie Ann never fully recovered. During her 16th pregnancy the next year, her health continued to decline. She had suffered convulsions with earlier births, and it happened again. On May 22, 1904, at the age of 42, she gave birth to a baby girl and then passed away. Mother and infant were laid together at Crystal Creek.

Of the three graves that still remain at Crystal Creek, the first one was Willie Ann’s. Her dream of a life in Wyoming only lasted one year.

As happened in so many frontier families, the oldest daughter stepped forward. Elva, already a mother of four herself, moved into her mother’s role and did what she could to help hold the family together, caring not only for her younger siblings but also for her father and her grandfather, Joseph. For a time, four generations struggled to make a living on that ranch.

In 1907, Joseph, the Civil War veteran of both the North and the South who had lived on at least 10 farms from Kentucky to Wyoming, had enough. He was 79 years old.

And then, in 1908, Elva, who had stepped in to help in her mother’s place, died of typhoid fever. Her grave was placed beside her mother’s and her grandfather’s, completing the three-grave set I saw that day.

Bennett saw the death of his wife, his father and his oldest daughter in the space of four years, and the difficulty of making a living in Crystal Creek became too much. The harsh terrain, the unreliability of water and the loss of his family were overwhelming. He sold the farm in 1910 and moved to Greybull.

Bennett made enough selling his ranch to break even and start over again. He began working odd jobs and was often out of town for long stretches, working in the oil fields, as a teamster and at anything that would pay the bills.

In 1922, Bennett became seriously ill. Accounts from the time described him as unhealthy and “acting queer.” On October 4, the Greybull Tribune ran the headline: “Barnett Committed.” The article reported that a jury had returned a verdict of insanity and ordered him committed to the state hospital in Evanston. He died just five days later at what was then called the Wyoming State Insane Asylum.

He was only 62 years old.

Today, we can only guess what caused his sudden mental decline. In the early 1900s, the word “insanity” covered a wide range of conditions that modern medicine understands very differently. Brain tumors, encephalitis, infections, strokes or diabetes could all produce confusion and erratic behavior. Many patients sent to state hospitals were suffering from physical illnesses that communities did not yet understand.

My heart broke for this man who died more than 100 years ago, likely alone in a stark white room in a hospital 300 miles from home. He is buried in the Greybull Cemetery.

Thankfully, the Barnett story does not end there. These pioneers, Joseph and Louisa, Bennett and Willie Ann now have nearly 500 descendants scattered across Wyoming and the western United States. They produced farmers, teachers and hard-working people who still form the backbone of this country.

They plowed soil that had never been turned before. They dug ditches where water had never flowed. They watched this nation move from the brink of self-destruction to a global power. They traveled first by wagon, then by car and eventually by airplane.

Our lives are simpler. We enjoy heated homes, clean running water and abundant food because of the work they gave and the sacrifices they made.

I’m grateful for the hour I spent at the Crystal Creek Cemetery, standing before those three graves and reflecting on lives that might otherwise have been forgotten. Their story is not remarkable for its grandeur, but for its simplicity. Too often we remember only the powerful and the celebrated, and overlook the ordinary people who carried the real weight of building this country.