The Biographical Dictionary of America/Barney, Hiram

​BARNEY, Hiram, lawyer, was born in Jefferson county, N.Y., May 30, 1811. He was graduated from Union college in 1834, and then studied law, and was admitted to the bar. In 1840 he settled in New York city, and in 1849 became associated in legal practice with Benjamin V. Butler and his son, William Allen Butler. Benj. F. Butler having soon afterward retired from active practice, James Humphrey of Brooklyn became associated with the business, and the firm was continued under the name of Barney, Humphrey, & Butler, and afterward—on Mr. Humphrey's election to Congress—under the title of Barney, Butler & Parsons, which was succeeded, on Mr. Barney's retirement, by the firm of Butler, Stillman & Hubbard. Mr. Barney was appointed collector of the port of New York by President Lincoln, and served during the first three years of Lincoln's administration, when he resigned, and declined an appointment to a foreign mission. Mr. Barney was first married to Susannah, daughter of Lewis Tappan, the abolitionist, and after her death to Miss Kilburne of Keokuk, Ia. In 1830 he became identified with the temperance and anti-slavery cause, and was chairman of the executive committee of the young men's anti-slavery society in New York city. In 1840 he was nominated as a representative to Congress by the anti-slavery party, but received only three hundred and fifty votes. In 1848, when the anti-slavery party formed the Free Soil party, Mr. Barney was a presidential elector. In 1853 he was on the electoral ticket for Hale and Julian. When the Republican party was formed, in 1856, Mr. Barney was a delegate to the Philadelphia convention that nominated Fremont and Dayton. At that convention he voted for Sumner instead of Fremont. In 1860 he attended the convention at Chicago that nominated Lincoln and Hamlin, and he succeeded in raising $35,000 in New York, which he sent to the state committee in Illinois to assist in carrying that state. He died at Kingsbridge, N.Y., May 18, 1895.