Editor’s note: The author, Steve Bailey, is outreach coordinator at the Anson County Historical Society.
We learn something every day and I recently learned a lot from my Historical Society guest, Jim Walker of Chicago, who is compiling a book on the famous baseball commentator “Red” Barber.
Barber, whose career spanned from the 1930s until his retirement in 1966, never lived in Anson County. But his father, William Lanier Barber, was born in Wadesboro in 1879. He eventually got a job with the railroad which led him to the state of Mississippi, where he met his future bride. They were living in Columbus, Miss., when Walter Lanier Barber was born in 1908. Because of his red hair, he was nicknamed “Red.”
I’m guessing that the marriage did not last long because “Red’s” mother is buried in Hillsborough County, Fla. All members of the Barber family and Lanier family living in Anson and the surrounding area would be distantly related to “Red” Barber.
The book that Jim Walker is compiling is scheduled to be published in 2022 and I look forward to obtaining a copy for the Historical Society’s research room. (Here’s the gravesite information for “Red” Barber.)