Anchorage 1910 - 1940 Legends & Legacies

Search the database

Browse all Entries

Barndollar, Burton H.

1878-1944 | Legal Advisor and Examiner of Accounts, Alaskan Engineering Commission

Burton Hack Barndollar was an Alaskan Engineering Commission (A.E.C.) appointee who came to Anchorage to join the original survey crews and to serve as legal advisor and examiner of accounts. He was born in Bedford, Pennsylvania in 1878 and lived there until 1893. He was a graduate of the Washington University Law School and spent several years in Chicago before moving to Washington, D.C. with the Department of the Interior.

Barndollar was a member of the District of Columbia bar and was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was sent from Washington, D.C. to Alaska and became legal advisor to the governor of Alaska after the completion of the Alaska Railroad in 1923.

After leaving Alaska, he returned to Bedford, Pennsylvania.1 He died December 2, 1944.2

Click an image to see more

Burton Barndollar was a senior administrator for the Alaskan Engineering Commission, which built the Alaska Railroad. This photograph shows him on the far right along with other Commission executives.
Burton H. Barndollar on the left with Dr. Howard Romig, early Anchorage physician, in 1932.
×

Burton Barndollar was a senior administrator for the Alaskan Engineering Commission, which built the Alaska Railroad. This photograph shows him on the far right along with other Commission executives.

AEC 130, Alaska Railroad Photograph Collection (BL79.2 and BL.2004.1), Atwood Resource Center, Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Anchorage, AK.

Burton H. Barndollar on the left with Dr. Howard Romig, early Anchorage physician, in 1932.

BL1985.63.330, Romig Collection, Atwood Resource Center, Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Anchorage, AK.

Endnotes

1Burton H. Barndollar, 1940 U.S. Census, Rainsburg, Bedford County, Pennsylvania, National Archives Microfilm Publication T627, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, Roll 3430, ED 5-32, Sheet 61A, 1940 United States Federal census [database on-line], http://ancestry.com (accessed January 14, 2013).

2Obituary, "Early Day R.R. Official Dies," Anchorage Daily Times, January 5, 1944, 1.  

Sources

This biographical sketch of Burton Hack Barndollar is based on an essay which originally appeared in John Bagoy's Legends & Legacies, Anchorage, 1910-1935 (Anchorage, AK: Publications Consultants, 2001), 9. See also the Burton H. Barndollar file, Bagoy Family Pioneer Files (2004.11), Box 9, Atwood Resource Center, Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Anchorage, AK. Note:  edited and updated by Mina Jacobs and Bruce Parham, January 21, 2013. 

Preferred citation: Bruce Parham, “Barndollar, Burton H.,” Cook Inlet Historical Society, Legends & Legacies, Anchorage, 1910-1940, http://www.alaskahistory.org.

Major support for Legends & Legacies, Anchorage, 1910-1940, provided by: Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Atwood Foundation, Cook Inlet Historical Society, and the Rasmuson Foundation. This educational resource is provided by the Cook Inlet Historical Society, a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt association. Contact us at the Cook Inlet Historical Society, by mail at Cook Inlet Historical Society, Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, 625 C Street, Anchorage, AK 99501 or through the Cook Inlet Historical Society website, www.cookinlethistory.org.