Background
He was born on December 16, 1783, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
He was born on December 16, 1783, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
He spent his early years in hard work on his father's farm, obtaining his schooling after the usual fashion of country boys at that time - in the nearest district school during the intervals of farm labor.
He was early attracted by the possibilities of the newer country farther west and at the age of twenty-six went to Jefferson County, Ohio, where he settled as a farmer. At the outbreak of the war with Great Britain he raised a company of volunteers, of which he was captain, subsequently serving as adjutant of a regiment under Gen. Harrison. At the close of the war he removed to the almost unbroken wilderness of Richland County, in the interior of the state (1814).
Mansfield, then a small settlement, was near-by, but there were no settlers west of the site chosen by Bartley for his new home. Opening a clearing in the forest for his dwelling and first crops, he soon obtained a competence far beyond that of others who followed him. He continued here for twenty years, in the meantime establishing a mercantile house in the town of Mansfield. Bartley's success as farmer and merchant, coupled with a character that won the confidence of the community, led to his election to the Ohio state Senate (1817). Henceforth he was to spend many years in public life. During his term in the Senate he was appointed by the legislature to the position of register of the Land Office - a position which placed him in charge of the Virginia military district school lands.
His keen interest in the advance of public education in Ohio dates from this time. In 1823 he was elected to Congress and was reelected for three successive terms. At the end of his fourth term he declined again to become a candidate.
Upon his retirement from Congress (1831) he devoted his entire time to agricultural and mercantile pursuits until his election as governor of Ohio (1844). He was elected by a small majority over David Tod, his Democratic opponent. The gubernatorial succession at this time was a remarkable one: Bartley, elected as a Whig, succeeded his son, Gov. Thomas Bartley, who was a Democrat.
The elder Bartley was sixty-one years old and the younger thirty-two. The Mexican War occurred during Bartley's term as governor, and he was confronted by the difficult task of reconciling his duty as the chief executive of the State with his own personal opposition to the war - an opposition which was shared by almost all the members of the Whig party in the state. When President Polk issued his call for troops Bartley's friends and associates strongly urged him against taking steps to fill Ohio's quota. But he took the high ground that the State was constitutionally bound to respect the requisitions of the national government. His message to the legislature on this point is an able state paper. He therefore adopted prompt measures to raise the necessary volunteers, who were organized under his personal supervision and delivered to the United States authorities. He declined a second nomination, although strongly urged to permit it. After his retirement he abstained entirely from public life. In his last years he was severely afflicted with paralysis. He died at his home in Mansfield.
In Congress he was affiliated with the National Republicans and became a strong supporter of President John Quincy Adams and a warm friend of Henry Clay. One of his few speeches in Congress was in defense of Clay and Adams against the corrupt-bargain charge.
Bartley was the first to propose in Congress the conversion of the land grants of Ohio into a permanent fund for the support of the common schools. He secured the earliest Federal appropriations for the improvement of the harbors of Cleveland and other towns on the shore of Lake Erie.
Bartley was a quiet, retiring, undemonstrative man, who enjoyed the respect of his neighbors and constituents, though never arousing their enthusiasm. He was a product of the frontier, but he did not share that section's narrow, provincial outlook.
In 1804 he was married to Miss Welles of Pennsylvania.