John C. Barton was born around 1839 in Ohio to William Barton and Philena Wilson. His father was a miller who owned $200 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in Portage, Ohio, until the 1850s, when they moved to Wadsworth, Ohio. By 1860, he was working as a book agent. Soon afterward, he apparently began working in the oil industry.
He enlisted in the Union army on May 20, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Company C of the 23rd Ohio Infantry. The regiment took part in the Battle of Antietam. He was promoted to corporal on July 19, 1861, but he was reduced to the ranks on April 20, 1862. Army officials assigned him to hospital duty in the fall of 1862, and he hoped to “remain [there] as long as I remain a soldier.” By September 1862, he confessed, he was “getting tired of camp life and I am longing for peace and home.” He seemingly mocked his more ideological comrades, writing that he would “live to tell in the future how I fought bled & died in the War of 1861.” He voted for Peace Democrat Clement Vallandigham in the gubernatorial election of 1863, but he urged his family to keep this news “Private.”
In the fall of 1863, army officials assigned him to recruitment duty in Wadsworth, but he apparently disliked the assignment and met with little success. He returned to the regiment by the spring of 1864. He was mortally wounded in the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain on May 9, 1864, and he died on May 14, 1864. Three years later, his father wrote to Ohio’s adjutant general seeking to honor Barton’s memory: “I learn the Gov[ernment] presets each Veteran a complymentary Medal would we be entitled to one[?].” The state’s records, however, indicated that Barton had never reenlisted and therefore did not qualify.