We want nothing more from our Washington youth than to get a good local education, and then use it in the world to make a difference.  Go out and make something of yourself.  Orson Barler was a very early example of someone who saw beyond the little town of Washington at a time when it wasn't very common for youth to do so, and forged his own path.

Barler's family spent his younger years in Washington.  Although he predates the recorded graduating classes of Washington High School, he undoubtedly would have been qualified to do so in the mid 1840s.  You have to remember how early this was in Washington's history.  This was one-room schoolhouse time for everyone.  There was no high school at all.  

After his local studies he attended the Baptist Shurtleff College in Alton, Illinois.  Shurtleff was the first college in Illinois, originally opening as Rock Spring Seminary in 1827.  Barler went from his one-room schoolhouse in Washington to a faraway college, giving an address at his Shurtleff College commencement in 1849.

Barler started as a teacher and school administrator.  He opened a subscription school in the town of Chester, Illinois, in the late 1850s, called "Rev. O.L. Barler's Mathematical & Classical School for Males & Females."  He was a regular contributor to "Illinois teacher," a very early publication, showing Barler was never short on opinions on a variety of topics.

Along with these roles, he also became quite astute at the art of phonography (shorthand), and traveled giving lectures on the topic.  In the 1860s, he became the principal of the St. Louis Phonography Academy.

By the 1870s, Barler had moved back to Alton and was getting the farming bug, writing in newspapers about melon-growing techniques and other discoveries he had made.  He didn't just farm; he tried to make other farmers and growers better.  He served as an officer and later president of the Alton Horticultural Society.

Though trained in an environment with deep Baptist roots, by the late 1870s Barler’s theological path evolved toward Swedenborgianism, a Christian movement based on the mystical and theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.  Barler served as a Reverend and frequently traveled to preach and lecture for various regional New Church societies, including congregations in Lacon and Henry, Illinois.  

Barler was highly independent in his doctrinal interpretations. On his 83rd birthday, he published a controversial pamphlet regarding Swedenborg's concept of "Conjugial Love" (spiritual marriage), which sparked sharp institutional debate and ultimately resulted in him being formally censured by the Council of Ministers of the General Convention.

In the 1880s he worked at Urbana College in Ohio. Urbana College was established by Swedenborgians.  In the book "Stay By Me Roses: The Life of American Artist Alice Archer Sewall James, 1870-1955", James was quoted as saying this regarding Barler during her time at the college:

Rev. Orson L. Barler, the head of the girl’s school [was] my first remembered teacher beyond my father. And it was the same sphere of spiritual awakening with assurance of order from inmost loves, through thoughts, into deeds. Anything beautiful could be done . . . Many such influences in Urbana made heavenly seed-beds in our young minds . . . though with me I am afraid I never really studied. We made certain excursions into science (botany), we began to read Latin. We came into geometry; but all of this was more or less swallowed up in an inner glory of meanings from the Bible, even from the overhearing of Spenser’s Fairie Queen as the class just ahead of me recited; and was expressed in cherubic forms I could not help drawing around my sums. These delinquencies were tolerated under the doctrinal principles of Urbana University.

Mr. Barler, like my father, thought spiritually, that is, from causes not facts. The fact of preserving our spiritual life while adapting us to the world was met by the knowledge that “one degree or form would not suffice to give life to anything, much less give life to man. There must be forms in series, one interior to another, that a thing or being may come into existence, and subsist (the Discrete Degree) and there must be also extension, growth and development in each of the several planes of life (Continuous degrees.)” These are the profound steps on which I left my childhood.  

Rev Orson L. Barler passed away September 11, 1919 and is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Chicago.

From the one-room schools of frontier Washington to a wildly varied and meaningful life, Orson Barler was certainly not afraid of any challenge or perceived limitation.