Richard Walker Barton (July 3, 1799 – January 15, 1860) was a nineteenth-century politician, lawyer and planter from Virginia. His nephew Robert Thomas Barton (1842-1917), who unlike three of his brothers survived fighting in the Confederate States Army, also became a distinguished lawyer in the Winchester, Virginia area, as well as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and author. Career U.S. Army officer turned controversial Confederate engineer Seth Maxwell Barton of Fredericksburg was a more distant relative. Early and family life Born at "Shady Oak" farm about six miles from Winchester, Virginia, to the former Martha Walker and her husband Richard Peters Barton. His grandfather was Rev. Thomas Barton. When Richard was a young boy, his father bought 288 acres of land on Opequon Creek that included a stone house which local pioneer John Hite had built in 1753. The Bartons renamed the property "Springdale" and this man lived there as an adult, and ultimately left it to one of his surviving brothers in his will. The area comprising both farms was later known as "Bartonsville." R.W. Barton had four brothers and three sisters. He received a private education appropriate to his class, then studied law. Barton married twice. His first wife, the former Alcinda Gibson of nearby Culpeper County, bore two sons and a daughter before her death in 1829. Barton remarried, to Caroline Marx, who bore two sons and two daughters. Career Admitted to the Virginia bar, Barton began his law practice in Winchester, the Frederick county seat. He also farmed using enslaved labor, and Winchester was also the site of the chancery court for northwestern Virginia, which handled cases involving decedents' estates and matters involving women and slaves who had no status in the civil court system. In 1830 Barton owned 24 slaves, including 9 boys and a girl under 10 years of age, and one enslaved man older than 55. By 1840, he owned 30 slaves and by 1859 his real estate was worth more than $100,000. However, the slave schedules first instituted in the 1850 census show him as owning 28 slaves, ranging from a 100 year old man to 11 children 10 and under. Barton enlarged Springdale to about 610 acres, and also speculated in land in Frederick county and westward in Randolph County that became part of the new state of West Virginia not long after his death. He helped found