LEE WILLIAM BARNEY
Lee comes from a long line of Barneys in the United States. The Barney’s originally were Quakers living in England and came to America in the late 1600’s. They originally settled in Massachusetts. Later generations moved to Rhode Island and New York.
Lee was born 3 March 1903 in the Town of Johnsburg, New York To Lewis and Anna (Ross) Barney.
Lee’s father, Lewis Barney, died of pneumonia when he was young. Shortly after his father died, Lee, his brother and sister were placed in a Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while his mother got on her feet.
One summer, Lee worked at Blue Mountain Lake in northern New York at a summer lodge. He worked in the vegetable garden and barn, bringing fresh milk to the house every evening. There he met Antonia Heinz. They were married in the Town of Johnsburg on 10 May 1923. Witnesses were Anna Barney and J. N. Armstrong.
After they married, they moved to South Glens Falls, where they lived for a while on Main Street near the present day Joy Store and bank. In 1929 Lee and Antonia were able to purchase a house from their good friends William T. and Lucy C. Reynolds. The house had been built by the mill and had previously belonged to the Union Free Church of Feeder Dam.
The paper mill would send timber from where it was cut, down the Hudson River, to the mill in Glens Falls. Lee would go out on the river routing the timber across the Feeder Dam. On one occasion his right leg became crushed between logs. It blistered, became infected and Lee eventually had his leg amputated from just above the knee.
He wore a wooden leg. His grandson remembers Lee would tease the children by sticking pins into his wood leg and pretending it hurt. One time young Dorothy, his daughter, tried to beat Lee to the punch by sticking the pin herself. Unfortunately, it was in the wrong leg!
Lee worked as a Hydrostatic operator at Feeder Dam for the Niagra Mowhawk Power Corporation for 31 years. He was a member of the 25-Year Club of the Niagara-Mowhawk Power Corp and the I.B.E.W. (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) Local 1369.
His favorite pastime was to make cement lawn fixtures, such as elves, ducks, flowers, etc.
Lee died on Oct 13, 1962 and is buried at Griswold Cemetery, South Glens Falls, NY
