Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Barker, born in 1891 to John Burton Barker and Harriet Walls Barker of Milton, was one of the members of Fannie Leonard’s Sunday School class in 1906, and one of the cast members of “The Oxford Affair,” performed by her classmates and teacher in February of that year. The proceeds of tickets sold for that performance were donated by the girls and their teacher to the Milton Methodist Protestant Church’s building fund, and helped underwrite the cost of its stained glass windows and the chancel added to the rear of the church. For their efforts, the Sunday School class was memorialized on a window of their own, on the east wall of the church.
The cabinet card portrait of Lizzie and her sister was likely to have been made around 1897, based on the apparent ages of the girls (Ida was born in 1886). When it was loaned to the Milton Historical Society recently, its value was immediately apparent: this is the only portrait, at any age, of any of the Sunday School girls or their teacher. It is one of only a handful of photographs of the members of the Milton M. P. Church congregation of 1906 that have ever surfaced.
In their teens, both sisters worked at the Douglass & White Shirt and Overall Factory in town. Ida married farmer William R. Johnson of Milton in 1904, and died in 1922 of kidney disease. The couple had no children.
Lizzie married plumber Clarence Clendaniel in 1910, producing two children, Ralph and Harriet. She enjoyed a long life centered around her family, passing away in 1968.
For a more detailed biography of the Sunday School girls, follow this link:
For the review written by David A. Conner of “The Oxford Affair,” click on the link below: