Walter B. Barton was born around 1844 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 farmhand. They moved to Norton, Ohio, in the 1860s, and by 1870, he was working as a book agent. By the early 1880s, he was living in an “Insane Asylum” in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. He died there of “exhaustion” on March 6, 1883.