Mixing Up Men with the Same Name (revised 6 May 2025)

(Latest update: 6 May 2025 - gmc) Sometimes research mistakes get made - even by local history librarians and archivists who should know better. 

For years I have mixed up Robert Woodward Barnwell of Beaufort born 1801, died 1882 in Columbia with a poet by the same name. I have done some displays for National Poetry Month over the past decade that unintentionally ascribed the poems to the wrong Robert Woodward Barnwell. How did this happen? one asks. The answer is: "It is very easy to get persons with the exact same name mixed up when families perpetually use a name over and over through succeeding generations." In the course of unraveling this particular mystery, I discovered that The Story of an American Family by Stephen B. Barnwell, 1969 - considered the go to guide of all things Barnwell - lists a dozen different men named Robert Woodward Barnwell, the first one in 1801, and the last one listed born in 1959, though there probably are a few more RWB's now. In the index he calls the RWB I am most interested in today, "Senator." 

I discovered my mistake on 27 July 2017 as I was updating a WordPress blog post I created nine years earlier. I was wondering why I could not find any references to poetry writing in all the online sources I found for him nor in any of our own BDC resources at hand - except for three items.

Seeing the dates on the poetry book, Realities and Imaginations ... a Poem, [1938] and Dawn at Daufuskie and Other Poems (1936) got me to thinking about why the collections were published 50 years or more after RWB's death. I have these two titles on the shelves so I could look at the items in their entirety for clues. Luckily Dawn at Daufuskie had a copyright date of 1936 and a "Preface" written by the author in 1936. Obviously, the author was not my RWB as I had previously thought. The "Preface" also written by the author for Realities and Imaginations ... A Poem two years later indicates that he did not begin writing poetry until 1920 and that he was living in Florence, SC. More proof that I had mixed up the Robert Woodward Barnwells.

Researching deeper in The Story of an American Family (whose index only includes personal names, not topical subjects), I finally located the right Robert Woodward Barnwell, the Episcopalian priest and poet. I used information gleaned from a Florence Morning News obituary to narrow down my options for searching the name index of The Story of An American Family. The Florence Morning News obituary stated that he married  his second wife Malinda in 1902. 

I looked in the index to The Story of An American Family and found her name. I then read several pages both before and after page 354 to see if I could triangulate the proper RBW who wrote Realities and Imaginations ... a Poem and Dawn at Daufuskie and Other Poems. I have at last! 

Stephen B. Barnwell, author of Story of An American Family, writes about this particular Rev. Robert Woodward Barnwell, his wives, children, and grandchildren on pages 352 - 357 and includes a number of photographs. 

Rev. Robert Woodward Barnwell, author of Realities and Imaginations ... a Poem and Dawn at Daufuskie and Other Poems was the son of another Rev. Robert Woodward Barnwell who died in 23 June 1863. His wife Mary Carter Singleton died two days later thereby leaving three orphaned young sons to the care of relatives. In 1864 his brother Edward died leaving John Singleton Barnwell (1859 - 1932) and Robert Woodward Barnwell (20 November 1860 - 28 June 1952) to the care of their grandmother and aunts in Beaufort. 

John Singleton Barnwell never married and died without issue.  

His brother, minister and poet RWB had three children with his first wife Wilhelmina DuBose before her death in 1899. He and second wife Malinda McBee Brunson had six children. Malinda died in 1962 in Florence. All told then, minister and poet RWB had 9 children all of whom survived to adulthood, most of whom married, and some of whom had children themselves. For details, you can come to read The Story of An American Family in our Research Room. Just be sure to contact us ahead of time to make sure we're here: 843-255-6468; bdc@bcgov.net

You can see his headstone on the Find-A-Grave website.

RWB, 1801-1882

For nine years I had been unintentionally sharing bad information. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. 

This purpose of this post is to set the record straight and to encourage you to take your time before determining if you have the "right" person with a particular - and repetitive through the generations - name. Weigh all the evidence. Evaluate the documents. Use your finest most honed reasoning skills. When in doubt, explain your reasons why you think this particular person is the correct person for your genealogical chart. Doing so will make it easier for your descendants to evaluate any new evidence or documentation that may come to light in the future.

Learn more about Robert Woodward Barnwell, 1801-1882 in our "bdcbcl: Links, Lists and Finding Aids" blog on WordPress.

The image is from House Divided: A Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College.