BARRON, David (1737 - 1810) - Governor of Adashawnee

David Barron was born on August 14, 1737 in Roxton, in southwestern Adashawnee colony, the second son of Alexander Barron junior (1707 - 1765) and his first child by his second wife, Margaret Mardyke (1713 - 1788). His childhood was split between Adashawnee and Baranor colonies after his father, a landowner and prominent politician within the former colony, was granted Gazaille House on the northern shore of Loch Linne in 1741. David was later joined in the nursery by William (b. 1742) and Alice (b. 1744), while his elder half-brother John (b. 1734) was already at school. In 1744, at the age of seven, David was sent to Millbend School in Seavale, the port capital of Baranor colony.

David's education at Millbend School, a four-year primary institution for wealthy boys, played out under the shadow of revolutionary tension. In 1748, the Noronnican Crown deployed troops to Seavale. For a week, the students of Millbend were locked inside their buildings as Noronnican soldiers patrolled the streets; eventually, however, they were allowed to go home. After the outbreak of the Revolution in 1749, Alexander Barron sent his second son for safety to Lynne House, a fortified tower house in Stenhouse, Roxton County, built in the 1680s and later purchased by David's grandfather. During the Revolution, Alexander switched his allegiance three times in a drawn-out attempt to preserve his Roxton County lands from destruction. By 1757, however, most of the Barron patrimony was totally wasted. David, having grown to young manhood at Lynne House, burned to avenge the damage done by the Noronnicans.

In 1758, however, the twenty-one year old David was commissioned as a captain in the Noronnicans’ loyalist Almorean militia, a condition of his father's submission to the Overlord of Noronica at the end of the previous year. David served in the royal uniform until his brother John deserted to the revolutionary militia in 1760. As Alexander began to rise in the rebels' favor once more, David saw his own opportunity to break free from Noronnican service. In 1761, he deserted his post in northern Talavora and fled to General William Ells' camp, where he was promoted to major. John, meanwhile, served as a colonel. After seeing action around New Nolon during the following year, David was furloughed in 1763 as peace negotiations began. He was one of the equerries who took part in the coronation of King Robert later that year.

David married Georgiana Price (1744 - 1805) in 1763, when she was nineteen and he was twenty-six. She was the daughter of Archibald Price (d. 1777), a lieutenant colonel in the king's personal guard. David's strong royalist ties propelled him to accept a royalist officer's commission during the War of the Two Congresses from 1766 to 1768, although as the Almorean monarchy finally collapsed the following year, he chose to sit on the sidelines in line with his brother John's public attitude. David displayed an intense loyalty towards his wife's family, intervening through his brother to secure the elder Price's appointment as a clerk of Congress in 1770. David and Georgiana's first child, Robert, was not born until 1772. Unexpectedly, the couple had four other children in quick succession, Elizabeth (b. 1773), Alexander (b. 1775), Archibald (b. 1777), and Henrietta (b. 1778).

In 1772, David was appointed commissioner of Roxton County through the influence of his brother, now the county's representative in Congress. This position gave David executive authority over the towns in the county, with the ability to convene meetings and name a county council. Despite these powers, David was an inactive commissioner, preferring military life to administrative duty. In 1774-75, he served in both the Frasyrland and Parangaban expeditions. David was forcibly retired after the officer's coup of 1777, while his brother was arrested and his father-in-law Price was treated roughly and later died. After the military regime collapsed in 1778, John Barron, now a senator, grew determined to enhance his family's power. He secured the appointment of the youngest brother, William, as sheriff of Roxton.

After 1778, David and William worked in tandem to enforce their authority in the county. David always kept one eye on his own financial prospects, accumulating his salary to buy a 620-acre property in Talavora province and later siphoning off customs tax to pay himself back. This type of low-level malfeasance went largely unnoticed. In the mid-1780s, the health of David and William's widowed, aging mother Margaret declined markedly, forcing William to retire as sheriff to attend to her needs at the Barron residence in Roxton. Already an alcoholic, William grew depressed after Margaret died in 1788 and never returned to public life, meeting an early end in 1792. William's removal from the scene allowed David to strengthen his control over Roxton County. In 1788, he was elected to the Adashawnee legislature, and he attended the constitutional convention alongside his brother John during the winter of 1788-89.

During the 1790s, as John's stature in the Senate rose, David's position improved substantially. He was approved as a "deserving settler" and gifted 150 acres in Queensland province by Congress in 1791. He was also able to accumulate various sinecures from his brother, including the office of Chief Inspector of Ports and the position of Senate receiver-general. In 1795, he was appointed as an assistant secretary of state during his brother's brief tenure as top diplomat. President Robert William Howard disliked David personally, but favored him out of respect for John Barron, one of his closest legislative allies. By 1800, David's annual income exceeded $6,000 and he was living comfortably, at the least, in a new wing of apartments added for great expense to Lynne House.

Now in his early sixties, David lived contently with his wife, supervising the education and marriages of his children. In 1793, Elizabeth had married Charles Mann, the son of revolutionary general Adam John Mann. After one of the sons of wealthy Trannsa merchant William Traynor broke off his suit, Henrietta was married in 1801 to Phillip Hartward, the nephew of Howard's onetime treasury secretary. These matches brought minor political benefit, but Robert married a girl with no connections in 1803, and David's other sons remained bachelors until after his death. Most of David's time was spent with estate management, occasional attention to his executive duties, and a great deal of hunting, riding, and shooting.

After Howard's presidency collapsed in the autumn of 1802, however, John Barron became President. David attended his brother's inauguration in Ellsburgh on September 26, and both brothers immediately saw an opportunity for mutual political gain. The aged Barron duo would each support the other; John would extend his brother's influence in Adashawnee, and David would use his newfound power to advance the President's objectives. In 1804, David became Commissioner to the Adashawnee Senate; at the age of sixty-seven, he would now have immense influence over the Adashawnee legislature. The President was maneuvering his brother into the 1806 race against unpopular governor William Francis Dykes, with an eye towards deploying the resources of the Adashawnee government to attack his political enemies. Chief among these was Nicholas Simpson, the deputy president who had turned away from John's federalist programs.

David was depressed by the death of his wife Georgiana of a stroke in 1805. Having advised his brother to run for another term in that year's presidential election, however, David decided to accept John's support in the Adashawnee governor's race. Aided by the federalist machine, David was elected governor of Adashawnee with 57% of the vote in June 1806, and was inaugurated in Kingsford on July 5. He quickly set about ordering the foreclosure by financial agents of Simpson's coastal estate at Swynfield, as well as the seizure of some investments. Although John Barron won another term in December, his death of a heart attack brought on by breathing troubles on March 12, 1807 quickly deflated David's mood. The new President, James Macaulay, was on good terms with Simpson and had been chosen to run for deputy president in 1806 largely as a political compromise.

Macaulay's accession to the presidency doomed David's governorship. Approaching his seventieth birthday, and devastated by the demise of his brother, David spent the spring of 1807 waging political war against Simpson, liberal provincial senators John Acethen and Gilbert Wykeham, and their allies in the Adashawnee legislature. Without his brother's protection from Carldon Hall, David found that his dubious moves against Simpson in 1806 could quickly be exposed and turned into political ammunition. During April and May 1807, debate raged over impeaching David, with only the Roxton delegation supporting the embattled governor. By early June, David was exhausted and decided to leave Kingsford for Lynne House, signalling surrender. Desperate to achieve political compromise to secure his own authority, Macaulay sent a letter to the Adashawnee legislature, received on June 10, asking it to depose David and install vice governor Benjamin Orton in his place. David resigned on June 12, 1807.

His political career in ruins, David retired to Lynne House, where he lived with a young mistress, Olivia Moreswell (1779 - 1843) and his two unmarried sons, Alexander and Archibald. Resigned to political exile, he began to write his memoirs and finished about 400 pages before his hands were crippled in 1809 by a weakness in the bones, which left him hunched over and leaning on a cane by Easter 1810. Within months, he was bedridden with pneumonia; David died on the morning of November 2, 1810, aged seventy-three. He was buried alongside his late wife in a stone mausoleum in the grounds of Lynne House, an area which would later become Barron Park.