Philip Lemont Barbour


Philip Lemont Barbour was an American linguist, historian and radio broadcaster who is most remembered by those interested in the foundations of English settlement in North America, for his detailed investigations into and documentation of the life of the pioneering adventurer, colonialist and proto-“travel writer”, Captain John Smith. At an earlier stage in his rather varied career, Barbour played a key role in the creation of Radio Free Europe after World War II.

Early life

Philip Lemont Barbour was born in Louisville, Kentucky on 21 December 21, 1898. His father was Dr. Philip Foster Barbour and his mother was Jessie E. Lemont. His parents were married on 29 October 1891 in Louisville.
Philip Barbour's paternal grandfather, Lewis Green Barbour, a native of Danville, was the principal of the Caldwell Institute for Young Ladies which was founded in Danville in 1860 and still exists albeit absorbed into Center College. His wife, Elizabeth Anne Barbour was born in Mississippi.
Barbour's maternal grandfather, Seward Merrill Lemont, was born in Maine but moved to Louisville where he became the prosperous president of a cold storage company. His wife, Emma Fredericka Lemont was originally from New York, New York.
For at least nine years after their marriage, as shown in the 1900 Federal census., Philip's parents and his siblings lived in the substantial Lemont family home on Second St., in Louisville along with three servants. By 1900, the family comprised the two parents and their three children; Philip and his sisters Ruth and Margaret.
By 1900, Philip's father, Dr. Philip Barbour, was practicing as a physician in Louisville, having graduated from the Hospital College of Medicine at the University of Louisville in 1890, and was also serving as Professor of Diseases of Children at the University. The family was sufficiently well off to summer in upstate New York and holiday in Europe. The parents also appear to have had substantial artistic connections. For example, Philip's mother, Jessie, often recounted a visit to Paris in the late 1890s where she met the German lyric poet, Rainer Maria Rilke at the studio of Auguste Rodin. The Louisville Courier-Journal of 7 February 1900 mentions that Lorado Taft, a Chicago sculptor who was due to visit Louisville to give an address to the Women's Club would be staying with Dr. and Mrs Barbour while he is in town. Mrs. Barbour's name is also frequently mentioned at this time in connection with activities of the Louisville Arts Club.

Parental divorce

Dr. Philip Barbour and his wife, Jessie, were divorced on December 13, 1904. The grounds for the divorce petition lodged by Dr. Barbour were that his wife had deserted him in November, 1604 through no fault of his own. The article said nothing about custody of the children but it was understood a private arrangement had been made. The 1910 census showed that Philip, his mother and his two siblings were still living in the Lemont family home on Second St. in Louisville.
Dr. Philip Barbour who was now living on Fifth Street, Louisville, with a new wife, one Elizabeth Barbour who he had married on 9 January 1909..
In 1910, Philip's mother, Jessie, moved to New York City, taking her three children with her. On 14 July 1913, she married a German immigrant and writer named Otto Johannes Trausil. who was described in his citizenship application as being tall, of medium build with blue eyes and blond hair as well as being 24 years younger than his new wife..

Education

By his own account Barbour "left high school without graduating to enter Columbia and left Columbia because wanted to get to know people rather than to know too many languages". Barbour earlier had claimed that he had enrolled at Columbia University as a freshman, studying history and languages although there is no record of a Philip Barbour in the alumni records of Columbia University for the years 1914 to 1920. There is, however, record of a “Lamont Barbour” as having attended but left without graduating in 1918.
In the same interview, Barbour also said that he attended Cornell University between 1917 and 1919. This claim is supported by his draft record which identifies him as a student at Cornell University and by the Cornell University Class Records for 1919 which identify him as a junior. He was pleased to note that he also left Cornell without obtaining a degree.
While he was at University, there were several developments involving his close family.
First, on June 15, 1917, his older sister, Ruth married an Army reservist named Harold Albert Lamb with whom she would soon move to California. Then, on June 29, 1917, his other sister, Margaret married a naval officer named Douglas Murray who was soon to leave on active duty.
In 1918, his mother, Jessie and her second husband, Hans Trausil, published their translation of “Poems” by Rainer Maria Rilke with an introduction by H. T.. The dedication reads “To the Memory of Auguste Rodin through whom I came to know Rainer Maria Rilke”.
Finally, on 24 November 1918, Philip's maternal grandmother, Emma Lemont, died leaving a modest inheritance to his mother, her brother, Seward, and two of her three children.

Career

The 1920s: a quick marriage and divorce and work as a journalist in Italy

During the early 1920s, there are traces of Barbour's movements in the southern states and Mexico. In May, 1920, a Mr. Philip L. Barbour is noted as checking into the Adams Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. In June 1924, there is a record of him arriving at San Pedro, California, from Mazatlan, Mexico.
Consistent with these movements, the next record of Barbour's movements is an announcement in an El Paso, TX newspaper of a marriage between Philip Lemont Barbour and a Consuelo Seggerman the daughter of a prominent El Paso pioneering family. The newspaper account mentions that the couple will make their home in Mexico City “where Mr. Barbour has business interests”. The article also mentions that Mr. Barbour was a graduate of Cornell University.
The marriage did not last long; possibly as little as 12 months. A 1929 El Paso newspaper article announced that Consuelo Seggerman had been granted a divorce from Philip Barbour on the grounds of cruelty. The article reported that Ms. Seggerman had been so badly treated by her husband that she had a nervous breakdown, that her maiden name had been restored to her, and that Mr. Barbour was believed to be living in Rome, Italy.
Even before this time, an arrival card dated 18 March 1927 has Philip L. Barbour, traveling alone, arriving in San Francisco from Manzanillo, Mexico, having departed March 7 aboard the SS City of San Francisco.
By his own account, Barbour moved to Italy that same year and stayed there through to 1934 working first as a newspaper correspondent for Hearst newspapers based in their Rome office and then on radio work elsewhere in Italy.
By this time, it is likely that Barbour had made a good start in mastering the seven languages that he would eventually achieve fluency in during his life, namely, in addition to English; Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Russian. He claimed that he had become proficient in French and German before he was eight years old due to encouragement by his parents. He also claimed that he was a top student in Latin as well.

1930s

Towards the end of his time in Italy, Barbour said that he succeeded in securing one or more fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation to study long range, short-wave radio broadcasting in Europe. He claimed, in an interview given towards the end of his life, that he entered into radio broadcasting after meeting Guglielmo Marconi who lamented to him that no-one was utilizing the potential of radio as an educational tool and encouraged Barbour to get into radio work.
After he returned to the US in 1937, Barbour became director of Inter-American Broadcasts at radio station WIXAL, Boston in 1937, joining a growing movement attempting to promote the use of short wave radio as an international cultural and political tool. In November 1937, he gave a widely reported speech at the 2nd National Conference on Educational Broadcasting in Chicago in his capacity as director of a plan for collaboration of the nations of the western hemisphere in a series of cultural programs.
At this time, Barbour, although only 39 years old, was being described as a “short-wave radio expert and a master of 7 languages
In 1938, Barbour was appointed as Chief of Foreign Press and Station Relations of the International Division of the National Broadcasting Company in New York. At the time, NBC was one of the biggest players in the short-wave radio broadcasting sector although, like everyone else, it never succeeded in making it commercially viable.

1940s: World War II and its aftermath

Barbour remained in his job with NBC through to 1941, during which time he moved in with his mother, Jessie, in a house that she had owned since at least 1935, in Norwalk, Connecticut. Both he and his mother, whose occupation is listed as self-employed author, are described in the census tables as being divorced.
In 1942, Barbour was appointed to a position in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Council of National Defense, probably as a direct result of his previous connections with the Rockefeller Foundation. Early the same year,, Barbour enrolled for the draft. Once the US entered the war, he joined the US Army and rose from private to Captain between 1942 and 1946. After attending officer's school he was attached to General Eisenhower's staff at Supreme HQ in London.
While he was serving, his father Dr. Philip Foster Barbour died in Louisville KY and was buried at Cave Hill Cemetery. His second wife, Elizabeth Akin Barbour pre-deceased him.
After the cessation of hostilities in Europe, Barbour was appointed as Chief of Political Intelligence, Berlin Sector, US Military Government, serving from 1946 to 1948. During this period, his mother Jessie Trausil also died.
In 1948, Barbour was appointed and served briefly as Control Officer for Radio in the American Sector in Berlin after which he embarked on a world tour before returning to the US. On his return to the US, he became one of the first employees of Radio Free Europe, coordinating and supervising production of educational and historical programs by natives of the countries to whom they were broadcasting. He served from 1948 to 1953.

1950s: retirement and commencement of a full-time writing career

In 1953, he retired and moved into a newly purchased property in Newtown, Connecticut. His first task was to completely remodel a large barn on the property, converting it into a substantial home in which he lived for the rest of his life. An article in the Bridgeport Sunday Post of January 22, 1967 described the house as having “complete living quarters downstairs, bedrooms, living room, kitchen and baths handsomely finished. Upstairs, a huge fireplace with 33-foot chimney dominates a large library with a wide range of reference books and many maps. He also has a microfilm reader and orders many books needed for his research on microfilm”.
It was during this period that researched and wrote the books on John Smith and other aspects of the first English settlement in the Americas at Jamestown, Virginia for which he later became most notable.

Death

He died of a heart attack on 21 December 1980 in Petersburg, Virginia and was buried in the Mapleshade Cemetery, Ridgefield, Connecticut. The death certificate recorded, incorrectly, that he had never married. He was still working on his final publication, "The complete works of Captain John Smith " at the time of his death.

Legacy

As a result of the publication of Philip L. Barbour's biography of Captain John Smith, his first book on the colonial experience, Barbour moved into the “forefront of the biographers of the early colonial period” in the opinion of many experts, not least being Professor David Beers Quinn, one of late 20th century's leading experts on the voyages of discovery and colonization of America. Barbour's book was described as being “close to…the definitive work on the remarkable career of a controversial man”, notable for its meticulous scholarship and abundance of detail, and the “best modern biography of John Smith.
The main significance of Barbour’s work was that it comprehensively and convincingly refuted the claims of a series of late 19th century attacks on Smith launched by, amongst others and most famously, Henry Adams, as part of what became a sectional battle between southern writers and a so-called “Yankee conspiracy” to defame Smith.
Barbour's next great lasting contribution to the literature on colonial America was the posthumous publication of his collected works of John Smith. Barbour's work comprehensively replaced the previous compendium compiled in the 1880s by Edward Arber and re-published in 1910, which is now widely considered to be incomplete. Barbour's work was widely praised for its "scrupulous editing and annotations and the clear identifications of appropriation, dubious authorship and redundancy". The book was considered to have "few rivals among the published writings of southern colonists", was described as being "a major achievement" and a “vast improvement over its predecessors".
The significance of this work has not diminished over the passage of time since its publication. As recently as 2007, Yale University's Professor Jill Lepore, in the course of reviewing the ongoing debate about the role of John Smith in the early colonization of America, observed that recent publications would "never replace Philip L. Barbour's magnificently annotated and definitive three-volume "Complete Works of Captain John Smith,…".

Books by Philip L. Barbour