North Dakota is presented as the obscure starting point of the Barber family’s violent history. The account links it to James Burkett, Andrew Barber’s great-grandfather, whose departure from the state and subsequent criminal life became part of the family’s story of a violence passed down across generations.

Burkett’s origins

James Burkett was born near Minot around 1890. Andrew knows little about his childhood, parents, or education; what he can place him within is the High Plains of Dakota after Little Big Horn, during the closing of the American frontier. That scarcity matters: North Dakota is not reconstructed as a fully known home but as the beginning of a lineage whose missing details leave room for uncertainty.

Departure and reinvention

The family account, passed from Andrew’s grandfather through his mother, says Burkett left North Dakota to escape an armed-robbery charge. He reportedly spent time on Lake Superior’s southern shore, clamming and working on fishing boats, before making his way to New York under the name James Barber. The reason for the name change remains unknown: evading an arrest warrant and beginning anew are possibilities, not established facts.

The most tangible trace of this transition is a photograph made in New York City on August 23, 1911. Its handwritten notation identifies the young man as James Barber, but it cannot explain why he left North Dakota or what prompted him to take that surname. The uncertain story of departure thus contrasts with the definite evidence of his new identity.

Place in the family history

Andrew treats Burkett’s move east as the first known break in a pattern of violence that later marked Burkett, his son, and most conspicuously Andrew’s father. Burkett’s subsequent New York record includes repeated arrests and long periods in custody, but the account does not establish what he did in North Dakota beyond the reported robbery charge. North Dakota therefore functions both as a geographical origin and as the boundary of what Andrew can know: the family’s history begins there, but its earliest causes remain unresolved.