Sarah Lieber Barter

Frederick and Sarah Barter

By Diane Giles

At the age of 69, Sarah Lieber Barter was one of the older members of the Kenosha County Equal Suffrage League in 1915. She was to be one of five county delegates representing Pleasant Prairie that year at the Wisconsin Equal Suffrage League convention.

Sarah Adelia Lieber was born in Spafford, Onondaga County, New York, on July 31, 1846, one of 11 children born to James and Clarissa (Andrews) Lieber. At least four of Sarah’s siblings did not live to adulthood.

At 22, Sarah married Frederick Barter, age 28, in Kenosha County on March 10, 1868. Sarah’s younger sister Emma married Frederick’s older brother Albert.

The photo of the couple was probably taken at a earlier point of their lives, judging by Sarah’s dress, as the clothing style is that of the 1860s/’70s. The photo comes from Fred Lyman’s 1916 History of Kenosha County, Vol. II.

The couple had eight children: Ellen, Nellie, Arthur, Fred D., Clara, Frank, Addie and Edith. By the time of Lyman’s book, the Barters also had 10 grandchildren.

But despite her dedication to the suffrage cause, she never got to vote in a statewide of federal election.

Sarah Barter died at the age of 70, on July 15, 1916, more than three years before Congress passed the Susan B. Anthony Bill in June 1919.

She is buried in Vale Cemetery in Kenosha County, just south of the present-day White Caps Subdivision on Highway 50.