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Major Charles R. Barney was the engineer in charge of the construction of the railroad spur up the mountain from Cowan to Tracy City. He was a West Pointer and a friend of Leonidas Polk, and so when the site at Sewanee was selected by the Board of Trustees, Bishop Polk asked Barney to be the University's first civil engineer. Major Barney lived at Sewanee for nearly two years between 1857 and 1860 and during that time he was the resident officer in charge of all University properties. He completed a very elaborate survey of the domain, showing ten food elevations, a survey which was not duplicated until about 1950 by our Forestry Department. This survey was among the papers lost in the burning of the railroad car in north Alabama during the Civil War. Only since I have read the letters in the Polk collection of papers which we received from Yale University have I realized the importance of Barney's work. There are numerous letters to Barney from Polk, and all of them reveal the great confidence placed in Barney by Bishop Polk and the conscientious care with which he discharged his duties. He unquestionably deserved to be memorialized at Sewanee, and the naming of this lake for him would be an appropriate honor for him in our Centennial Year. Barney went to South America after the Civil War and died of typhoid fever about 1879.
Respectfully submitted,
ABC:EW Historiographer
[???? No real facts on Barney- party re other surveys] Sewanee-Tenn [ Barney- must have been Tenn-C??-C.W.]