Jane Barton

Jane (Jeanie) Barton, Lady Barton (née Ross; born 11 June 1851 – 23 March 1938) was the wife of first Prime Minister of Australia, Sir Edmund Barton of the Protectionist Party. She was the eldest daughter of David Ross of Newcastle, New South Wales. In 1877, at the age of 26, she married Edmund Barton, who was then a New South Wales barrister. Two years later he won a seat in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly representing the now abolished electoral district of University of Sydney. From 1896, the Bartons' house Miandetta in Carabella Street, North Sydney was the site of 'open house' meetings on the subject of Federation. Some of the most frequent attendees of the meeting would become prominent in the formation of Australia, namely Robert Garran, Atlee Hunt and Thomas Bavin. One of the ways in which Lady Barton helped her husband with the cause of Federation was when she served as vice-president of the second Sydney Women's Federal League. Later in life, after her husband left the Australian Parliament in 1903, she served as the first president of the Queen's Club in Sydney and was a member of the first committee of the Crown Street Women's Hospital. After her husband's death in 1920, she moved to London, returning to Sydney in 1927. In May 1935, she made possibly her last appearance in public at a service in Centennial Park to celebrate the silver jubilee of King George V. In March 1938, Lady Barton died aged 86 years at the home she and her husband moved into in 1909 called Avenel in Mona Road, the Darling Point, Sydney. She had six children by her husband: