Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022
William “Bill” Horace Barnes was born April 13, 1858, in Eagle Creek, in an area now known as Shakopee. He was a baseball player and played center field for the St. Paul Saints.
Bill played starting at the end of the 1884 season. In eight games as the Saints’ starting center fielder Barnes batted .200 (6 for 30) with two runs scored. In the field he recorded eight putouts, three errors, and participated in one double play.
Bill’s grandfather was St. Paul early settler, James Thompson (1799-1884). George Monroe, nephew of President James Monroe, “owned” James in Virginia. Monroe became involved in debt and obliged to part with six of his slaves; among them was Thompson, his brother and sister, and several aunts and cousins. He was then conveyed to St. Louis and from there moved to Fort Snelling as the property of John Culbertson, sutler, in 1827.
James Thompson married Marpiyawecasta Mary Wabashaw Hapah Cloud Man Thompson (1817-1884), who was a Dakota Indian, and James learned the Dakota language.
In the 1830s, James was hired by missionary Alfred Brunson as an interpreter, and the mission purchased his freedom. Thompson, along with his wife, became one of St. Paul’s first settlers and a man of property. He eventually donated materials and money in the 1840s for the construction of St Paul’s first Methodist church.
James and Marpiyawecasta moved to the less-settled area of Sha K’ Pay in 1853, where they lived with the Barnes family in Eagle Creek (now Shakopee). Their children, George and Sarah, lived with them.
Sarah Thompson was married on October 31, 1854, in St. Paul to William J. Barnes, who was born in England in 1829. They moved to the Barnes farm in Eagle Creek, where they had three children: Mary Elizabeth “Libby” Barnes (1855), William Horace (1858) and Lucy Emma (1860). Sarah Thompson Barnes (1837-1875) was Bill Barnes’s mother. Sarah was half Dakota, one-quarter white, and one-quarter African American. And Sarah and William’s son was the baseball player, William “Bill” Horace Barnes!
Bill, whose heritage included African American, Dakota, and white ancestors, became the first professional baseball player who was born in Shakopee! And one of his great-grandfathers was Maȟpíya Wičhášta, or Cloudman, a Dakota leader who lived at Bde Maka Ska, which was called Lake Calhoun for many years, where there was a Dakota farming village.
William “Bill” Horace Barnes married Mary Katherine Smith on February 5, 1882, in Ramsey, Minnesota. Bill and Mary Katherine had two children, both born in St. Paul: Mabel Winona Barnes Auge Sullivan (1885-1957) and William “Henry” Horace Barnes, Jr. (1888-1955).
William “Bill” Horace Barnes died on July 10, 1945, in St. Paul, at the age of 87. He was buried in St. Paul, Minnesota.
But Shakopee will always remember William “Bill” Horace Barnes, the African American, Dakota, and white man who played pro ball in Minnesota!