Orr, Huberich and Barton Families Papers

An Inventory of the Collection

Biographical Sketches of the Creators

John Orr, 1841-1916

John Orr was born in Montreal, Canada, on February 4, 1841 of Irish immigrant parents, John and Rachel Matthews Orr. As a youth he ran away from home to go to sea, spending some time in South America and visiting his relatives in Coleraine, Ireland. In 1860 he lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, and worked with several newspapers until 1861 when he enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private. When the 6th Louisiana Infantry was organized he was made Adjutant with rank of Captain. His regiment was in the first battle of Manassas, with Stonewall Jackson in the Valley campaign, in the Seven Days fights around Richmond, and involved in the capture of Harper's Ferry before the battle of Sharpsburg. In an engagement near the Culpepper courthouse in 1863, he was captured and spent seventeen months as a prisoner in the military prison at Johnson Island in Lake Erie.

He came to Texas in 1865, started a business at San Andres, and then later moved to Cameron. In 1867 he sold the Cameron business and formed a partnership with Major J. S. Hanna in Millican. In 1869 the firm of Hanna and Orr moved to Calvert. Major Hanna retired in 1872, and John Orr continued the business there until 1885. He sold this business, moved to Austin, and established a wholesale grocery business on Congress Avenue. He later started a branch office in Llano. He sold the Austin business in 1910, but continued to advise his sons on the Llano business.

He was involved in the civic concerns of Austin, serving on a citizen committee to nominate officers for the new commission form of city government. He was also one of the businessmen who accompanied Governor Hogg in 1894 on a tour of Northern and Eastern cities to explain his reform program.

In 1868 John Orr married Emma Hanna, the eldest daughter of Major Hanna. They had a daughter also named Emma. His wife died in January of 1870 and the daughter died in 1881.

Laura King Allen became his second wife in June of 1871. Their children were John, Jr., Lollie, William, May Bess, and Wilkin Roberts Orr.

He died in Austin on April 22, 1916, and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery.

Laura King (Allen) Orr, 1851-1922

Laura (Allen) Orr was born in Willow Springs (close to Calvert, Texas) on September 3, 1851, to Alsey Hudson and Mary Cooper (Stedman) Allen (d. 1895). She had a sister, Mollie, and three brothers: Winship, Cooper "Coop," and Alsey H. Allen.

She married John Orr in Calvert in June of 1871. They had seven children: John, Jr., Lollie, William, May Bess, Wilkin Roberts, and 2 daughters who died in infancy.

In 1885 the family moved to Austin and established a home on Pearl Street. They lived there the rest of their lives except for several years when they lived in Llano.

She died while visiting her youngest daughter, Bess Evans, in Montclair, New Jersey, on October 8, 1922. She is buried in the family plot in Oakwood Cemetery in Austin.

John Orr, Jr., -1909 and William Orr, 1881-1959

John Orr, Jr., was the firstborn son of John and Laura Orr. He studied at the Hood Seminary in Austin and at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. In 1898, when his father opened a branch of his wholesale business in Llano, he was made manager. By 1902 he was living and working in the West in hopes of improving his ill health. He died in the spring of 1909.

William Orr was born in Calvert, Texas, in 1881. He served as secretary of the family business, managed the Llano store after his brother left for the West, and served as President after his father's death. He died in 1959.

Laura "Lollie" King (Orr) Huberich, 1878-1969, May Bessie (Huberich) Gibson, 1903- , and Alexander Dunnet Gibson, 1901-

Lollie Orr was born in Calvert on November 25, 1878. She attended the Hood Seminary, Baylor College at Belton (1894-95) and graduated from the National Park Seminary in Forest Glen, Maryland (near Washington, D.C.) in 1898. Returning to Austin, she lived with her parents until she married Charles Henry Huberich, a law professor at the University of Texas, in June of 1902. They had a daughter, May Bessie, who was born in 1903 in Austin. They moved to Palo Alto, California, in 1905. In 1909 they spent some time in Berlin and in Madison, Wisconsin, where he taught at the University of Wisconsin. They lived in the East in 1911. In 1912 they traveled to Europe and lived in Berlin for about a year. Lollie and May Bessie returned to the United States in 1913 and lived with her sister for a while. She and her daughter returned to Texas in 1914. She and her husband divorced in 1915 or 1916.

To make a living she studied at the University of Texas and obtained a teaching certificate. She taught at the Whitis School in 1915 and later at the Highlands School. Then she opened Mrs. Huberich's School on the grounds of the family home on Pearl Street. She continued to run her school until 1945 when the house was sold, and she moved to Terrytown and reopened her school. When she was 78 years old she retired. She was living with her daughter in McIndoe Falls, Vermont, when she died in October of 1969. She is buried in Oakwood Cemetery.

May Bessie Huberich was born September 26, 1903. She graduated from the University of Texas in 1924 with a teaching degree and first taught at her mother's school. Later she taught in Hillsboro and in Houston. While taking some classes at Columbia in 1928 in New York City she met Alexander Dunnett Gibson. They were married in Toulouse, France, in June of 1929.

After spending some time in France, they returned to New York City where Alexander accepted a teaching post as French instructor at Horace Mann School. In 1936 they moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, where he taught at the William Penn Charter School. He accepted a position at Mount Hermon School, in Mount Hermon, Massachusetts, in 1939, and at Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1944. He published several books on the French language and another on the history of McIndoes Academy.

They had two children: Barbara Jean born in 1934, and Alexander Dunnett, Jr. "Sandy" born in 1937.

May "Bess" (Orr) Evans, 1883-1962 and Francis "Babe" Evans, 1880-1963

Bess Orr was the youngest daughter of John and Laura Orr. She was born in Calvert in 1883. She attended school at the Hood Seminary in Austin and Monticello College in Godfrey, Illinois.

She married Francis Hurlbut "Babe" Evans, the youngest son of Ira and Francese Evans, in November of 1907. They lived in Denver, Chicago, New York, New Jersey and Cincinnati during his business career. When he retired in 1953, they returned to Austin to live.

Bess Evans died in November of 1962 and Francis Evans died in February of 1963.

Wilkin Roberts Orr, Bess (Moore) Orr, Hallie Elizabeth (Orr) Barton, and Jim Tom Barton

Wilkin Orr was born in Austin in 1886 and attended the Hood Seminary in Austin and Austin High School. He worked for the family business for a short time in 1902. He attended Texas A&M College and graduated in 1906 with an engineering degree. Deciding against an engineering career, he worked for the Otis Elevator Company in Houston. He then took over the management of the Llano business in 1911. With his mother's death in 1922, he became vice-president of the family business. Before he retired he was the concessions auditor of the Texas State Parks Board.

He married Bess Moore, daughter of Franklin and Maud Moore, November 9, 1910, in Houston. Their daughter Hallie Elizabeth was born in 1911.

After he retired he and his wife returned to Austin to live close to their daughter. He died in November of 1965 and Bess died in 1968.

Hallie Orr graduated from Llano High School and attended the University of Texas graduating in 1934. She married Jim Tom Barton on March 6, 1937, in Austin.

Jim Tom Barton was a CPA with an undergraduate degree from Southern Methodist University and a masters from the University of Texas. He worked for a time as the financial manager of the Texas Highway planning survey during World War Two. He enlisted in the Navy and was at the district headquarters in New Orleans. He then attended the Naval School of Military Government and Administration at Columbia University, New York. As a Lieutenant Commander he was attached to the military government in the Marianas Islands.

After the war they returned to Austin, and he worked with the firm Wade, Barton and Marsh. They had two children: Thomas Orr and Betty Drury.

Charles Henry Huberich, 1877-1945

Charles Huberich was born in 1877 in Ohio and grew up in San Antonio. He earned his law degree at the University of Texas in 1897 and also studied at Yale and Heidelberg. He taught law and political science at the University of Texas from 1900 to 1905. In 1907 he taught at Stanford then at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago. In 1912 he moved with his wife, child and mother to Berlin. There he started a private practice in international law, with offices also in London and The Hague.

He and Lollie divorced in 1915 or 1916. He remained in Europe throughout the war with an official residence in New York. His second wife was Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani.

He wrote several books on German law, among books on other topics, and was considered an authority on Liberian history with the publication of his 2 volume Political and Legislative History of Liberia.

He died in 1945. Stanford University has a collection of his papers.

Scope and Content Notes

This collection consists of 7,147 items in 12 linear feet. Correspondence, printed material, legal and financial documents, genealogical information, literary productions, diaries, school records and Photographs document the lives and times of five generations of families related by marriage with a time span of 1864 to 1965.

Approximately 9 linear feet is correspondence from the Allen, Orr, Huberich, Moore, Gibson, Evans, and Barton families. The letters are for the most part arranged by recipient. These letters, written by children and adults, narrates the domestic, business and social lives of men and women who shared their lives with each other through their letters.

The Orr family's correspondence, in particular, superbly document a wide range of people, places, and topics covering local and national events. The correspondence between John Orr, his family, and others covers both his business and domestic concerns regarding the family and the wider world. The correspondences between Laura (Allen) Orr, Bess (Orr) Evans, Lollie (Orr) Huberich, and May Bessie (Huberich) Gibson is rich with domestic details about clothing, food preparation, interior decorating, health issues, family relationships, travel, relations between men and women, education, and touches some on world events.

Lollie (Orr) Huberich's correspondence that she sent and received comprises the bulk (approximately 5.5 lin. ft.) of the collection. There are many letters to and from her parents, brothers and sister, her daughter, more distant relatives, and friends. She had a life long friendship and correspondence with Julia (Scarbrough) Fisher, and those letters from 1892 to 1953 are in the collection. There are also letters from her suitors before she married Charles Henry Huberich. During her married life, besides living in Austin, California, Wisconsin, Chicago and New York, she traveled to Fiji, Mexico, Europe, and lived in Berlin for about a year in 1913. There are many letters with much detail about their travels and activities. The letters between her and her family also refer to the difficult time of her separation and divorce. The letters from her daughter, May Bessie (Huberich) Gibson, are especially informative on how their lives changed during this time during World War II.

Wilkin Orr's early correspondence has interesting observations on life in Austin starting in 1894 with his letters to his sister Lollie. With his marriage to Bess Moore and move to manage the family business in Llano, much of his local news concerns that city. But he still advised Lollie on the family home and other land that they owned in Austin.

The Orrs lived at 2100 Pearl Street and were neighbors and friends to the Hill family (AR.S.007). There is correspondence about and from the Hills.

The remaining approximately 1.5 linear feet is a variety of materials that relates to many aspects of the various members of the families. Marriages are particularly well documented with wedding invitations of family members and friends both in Austin and other cities from 1885 to 1960. There are brochures, programs, newspaper clippings, bills and receipts (1868-1948), and information on some of the various schools that the Orrs attended. There are 5 issues of a periodical that Wilkin Orr and Harry Hill produced as children in 1897 called "The Children's Weekly" that has brief clever writings on events on their block and notes on people and what was happening in the city. There are 443 photographs, many unidentified. But there are identified ones of John, Laura, John Jr., Lollie, Wilkin, Bess and William Orr. There are also Photographs of Charles H. Huberich, Bess (Moore) Orr, Francis Evans, May Bessie (Huberich) Gibson, Hallie (Orr) Barton, Jim Tom Barton and others.

There is a great deal of information on Lollie Huberich's School. She kept clippings of the ads that ran for the school in various publications. There are class registers for 1920-1955, and her accounting books from 1924 to 1955, with some notes. The books that have notes on school affairs from 1940 to 1948 have information on the students and their families that attended her school. Some of the students that attended the school were Dan Moody, Jr., George Christian, Ruth Gracy, Julia Emerson Fisher, Allen Searight, and Linda and Luci Johnson. These books also served as personal diaries for these years.

The Bartons are represented with about .5 linear feet of correspondence, newspaper articles, other printed items, and photographs.

Donations by members of this family have been made to the History Center in installments. A related collection is AR.1993.41, Orr-Moore-Allen Family Papers.

Scope and Content Notes - Additions

The first addition of .5 linear feet of material is a continuation of correspondence, financial and printed material concerning the families. Most of the correspondence concerns Lollie (Orr) Huberich with 29 items of correspondence sent and received by her while she, her husband, and daughter were living in Germany (1909, 1913-1915). These letters concern problems with her marriage, and the period when her husband and she are separated. Sheet music and artifacts are included with this part of the collection. The artifacts are medals commemorating Confederate reunions in New Orleans in 1903 and 1908, and a 50th annual conclave in Austin.

A smaller second addition continues the series of family correspondence and includes photographs, negatives, and a political bumper sticker.

Restrictions

Restrictions on Access

None.

Restrictions on Use

None.

Related Material

Separated Material

Administrative Information

Custodial History

The materials were brought to the Austin History Center by Hallie (Orr), Jim Tom, Thomas, and Betty Barton.

Preferred Citation

Orr, Huberich and Barton Families Papers (AR.Z.002). Austin History Center, Austin Public Library, Texas.

Acquisition Information

Donor#: 6402.

Donation date: 1988, 1992.

Processing Information

Processing and finding aid completed 1999-12-23, 2000-10-30, and 2002-10-10 by Ruth Baker.

Detailed Description of the Collection