Judge Benjamin Franklin Barkley

Barkley's politics cost him his standing at home. When he and his wife Malinda left Kentucky for Texas in 1855, the Handbook of Texas says, they first freed the enslaved people on their farm. In Tarrant County he served as a Freedmen's Bureau subassistant commissioner in 1867 and 1868, reported misconduct and held hearings on Ku Klux Klan activity. He grew so unpopular that Black soldiers escorted him from his Birdville home to his Fort Worth office. Governor Edmund J. Davis made him county treasurer in 1871, and the return of Democratic control ended his offices.

What the plaque says

Judge Benjamin Franklin Barkley (1822 - 1882) In 1855 Benjamin F. Barkley, a Kentucky physician, with his wife Malinda Elizabeth Duncan (1827-1917) and their children settled on a farm at Birdville. There he practiced medicine, became a lawyer, and a charter member of Masonic Lodge No. 148 in Fort Worth. In 1856 Dr. Barkley tried unsuccessfully to keep the county seat at Birdville. As a Republican leader, he spoke out against slavery and secession. Barkley was admired for donating land for Birdville's cemetery and participating in Indian campaigns, but his strong will and pro-Union stand stirred anger in the area. He barely escaped death several times. Barkley treated wounded Confederate soldiers and aided their families despite his opposition to the Civil War, and served as local postmaster during the war. During Reconstruction, Barkley headed the county registration board which denied the vote to former Confederate supporters. He was appointed county judge in 1867 and used federal troops to maintain order. With great courage he fought to protect the rights of the ex-slaves. He left office after Democrats won all county offices in 1873, but remained active in law and medicine throughout North Texas for the remainder of his life. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 5.5 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 5.6 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 7.5 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 7.9 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• Pioneer Birdville Schools — steps away
• West Fork Baptist Association — steps away
• Birdville Church of Christ — 0.2 mi
• Dr. Riley Andrew Ransom — 2.2 mi