William Baxter was an influential Quaker, businessman, and politician of Richmond, Indiana.  This collection documents his life, that of his wife Mary (Barker) Baxter, and his children, especially his daughter Mary Ellen (Baxter) Sutton and the family of her husband, John G. Sutton. William Baxter was born in Appletreewick, Yorkshire, February 11, 1824, the son of John and Mary Baxter.  He immigrated to the United States in 1848 and settled in Philadelphia.  As his biography in the 1872 Wayne County history states: “By his unusual industry, application, and business capacity, he soon gained the unbounded confidence of his employers, and after the short space of eight months, one of the partners retiring from the firm, offered him a partnership in the wool trade. . . . In 1864 he retired with an ample fortune.” William Baxter’s first wife was Mary Wickett, who died soon after they arrived in Philadelphia. In 1856 Baxter was married under the care of the Whitewater Monthly Meeting here in Richmond to Mary Barker (1830-1918), daughter of Enoch and Sophia (Davis) Barker. They had seven children.  In 1864, the family returned to Richmond, where William Baxter took up the life of a gentleman farmer west of the city at a home the family christened “Cliffside.”  He also invested heavily in the Wayne Agricultural Works company, of which he was the vice-president. In Richmond, Baxter became active in civic affairs, especially in the cause of temperance.  In 1872, he was elected as a Republican to the Indiana House of Representatives, and in 1876 was elected to the state senate.  He was best known as the author of the controversial “Baxter Law,” passed by the legislature in 1873, which required applicants for liquor licenses to obtain signatures from a majority of the legal voters in the ward or precinct in which sales would take place.  It proved so unpopular that it was repealed in 1875. William Baxter died of typhoid fever in Richmond, September 6, 1886.  He had already sold most of his farm to support his Wayne Works investment, and the rest had to be disposed of to settle his estate. The second child of William and Mary (Barker) Baxter was Mary Ellen, born in Philadelphia November 1, 1860, and died in Richmond November 24, 1945.  She was married January 11, 1882, to John Gough Sutton (1854-1925), a nephew of David Sutton (1827-1902), whose family often appears in the collection.  John G. and Mary (Baxter) Sutton had one daughter, Helena Sutton (1888-1967), a teacher in Richmond. Sources: Andrew W. Young, History of Wayne County, Indiana; Henry Clay Fox, Memoirs of Wayne County, Indiana, vol. II; Obituary, Christian Worker, 2^nd Mo. 3, 1887; Beverly Yount, Tombstone Inscriptions in Wayne County, Indiana, vol. I; Stephen Anshutz.

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