Thomas Barrows, Jr. (1804-1860)
Birth: 13 Apr 1804 • Carver, Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States
Death: 17 May 1860 • Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States
3rd great-granduncle to Jordan Saalfrank
When Thomas Barrows was born on April 13, 1804, in Carver, Massachusetts, his father, Thomas, was 27 and his mother, Mary, was 25.
Thomas Barrows Jr., of Carver, MA (1804-1860) first came to Martha’s Vineyard on a business trip in 1829. He moved to the village of Holmes Hole (now Vineyard Haven), in the town of Tisbury, permanently in 1830. The move was evidently in the second half of the year, since he is not listed in the 1830 Tisbury census.
Thomas married Tamson Luce (1810-1859) of Tisbury in 1831 and had two children: Mary Washburn (1832-1894) and Sarah Drew (1838-1908).
Thomas opened “Barrows Brothers’ Store” on Main Street in Holmes Hole no later than 1832, since the Barrows Brothers account book [2012.001.089] starts in that year.
John Jay Barrows (1810-1880) of Carver, MA, was almost certainly the other brother involved at the time.
During the 1830s, Holmes Hole—a bustling, strategic harbor village in the town of Tisbury, Massachusetts on Martha's Vineyard (officially renamed Vineyard Haven in 1871)—was home to the prominent merchant firm known as the Barrow Brothers store. The establishment was operated by the Barrows brothers, with Thomas Barrow, Esq. serving as the eldest partner.
The Operation: The enterprise was a staple of the local maritime economy. In records from the mid-1830s through the 1840s, the business is also referred to under the partnered name Smith & Barrows.
Industrial Expansion: The wealth and success generated from their Holmes Hole mercantile trade allowed the brothers to expand into major regional manufacturing. In 1849, Thomas Barrow partnered with a retired whaling captain named Charles Smith to establish a massive clay-mining and brick-making operation at Roaring Brook in nearby Chilmark. This venture eventually evolved into the "Vineyard Brick and Tile Works," which produced up to 30,000 bricks a day for foundations and wells across the East Coast. [1]
Burial of Thomas Barrows, Jr is back in his home town, Carver, Massachusetts. It seems that the Barrows family owned a significant amount of land in Carver around Sampson's Pond, very near where the Union Cemetery can be found.
Carver, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, USA
Plot
Section C Lot 16
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