Barney Ford
| Barney Launcelot Ford | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
January 22, 1822 Virginia |
| Died |
December 22, 1902 Denver, Colorado |
Resting place | Riverside Cemetery (Denver, Colorado) |
| Ethnicity | Bi-racial (white/black) |
| Known for | Colorado businessman and civil-rights pioneer |
| Spouse(s) | Julia A. Lyoni |
Barney Ford was an escaped slave who became a wealthy Colorado businessman and civil-rights pioneer. He's a member of the Colorado Black Hall of Fame, the Colorado Business Hall of Fame, and has a stained-glass portrait in the House Chamber of the Colorado State Capitol.
Biography
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Ford was born in 1822 to a white plantation owner and a black slave. He taught himself to read and write with the help of his mother, Phoebe. As a teenager he was hired out to work on a Mississippi River Boat, from which he escaped at the age of 26 by walking off the boat while it was docked at Quincy, Illinois With the aid of the Underground Railroad, he made his way to Chicago. He took his middle and last names from a steam locomotive he saw there, Lancelot Ford. In Chicago he became a barber. He met his wife, Julia Lyoni, there and they were married in 1849.
In 1851 the Fords decided to prospect for gold in California, traveling from New York by ship around Cape Horn, as it wasn't safe for a runaway slave to travel by land. They got only as far as Nicaragua, where they decided to settle, opening the United States Hotel and Restaurant. The business was successful, but it was destroyed during civil war in Nicaragua (with United States intervention), and the Fords returned to Chicago, where he ran a livery stable that also served as an Underground Railroad station.
In 1860 the Fords again tried to strike gold, this time in Colorado, but as an African American he was not allowed to stake a claim, so they went to Denver, where he was again successful in business, owning a barbershop, a restaurant, and hotels, including the Inter-Ocean Hotels, located in Denver and Cheyenne. The building that housed his People's Restaurant still stands at 1514 Blake St. and is today known as the Barney L. Ford Building.
By the 1870s Ford was one of the wealthiest men in Colorado. He and his friend, Henry Wagoner, founded a school for African Americans.
In 1882 the Fords moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, where they constructed a home on a city block that he owned. The house has been restored and is open to the public as the Barney Ford House Museum, although none of the furnishings and other objects that are today in the building actually belonged to the Fords.
In 1890 the Fords returned to Denver. Ford died there in 1902.
When Colorado first sought admission as a state in 1865, Ford went to Washington, D.C. to lobby against it, because the proposed Colorado constitution barred African Americans from voting. He also fought for the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, which gave African Amendments the right to vote. With that in place, Ford supported statehood, and Colorado became a state in 1876.
Ford's contributions to Colorado were honored by a stained-glass window in the State Capitol, and by an elementary school named for him in Denver. A hill in Breckenridge where Ford had staked a mining claim that he was cheated out of had, until 1964, been known as Nigger Hill. Now it's officially Barney Ford Hill.
References
Ford, Barney L. (1822-1902), BlackPast.org
Former slave Barney Ford became a Colorado millionaire, Loveland Reporter-Herald
Barney Ford Biography, Barney Ford Elementary Archive, Denver Public Schools
Barney Launcelot Ford, findagrave.com
BARNEY L. FORD, historycolorado.org
Barney Ford House Museum, Summit Historical Society