Viewing Ferdinand Barta (1857-1928).

Ferdinand Barta (1857-1928).

Ferdinand Barta practiced law and politics in St. Paul for forty-five years. A stalwart Republican, he was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1894 and 1896, but was defeated in a bid for the state Senate in 1898. He died in 1928 at age seventy.

He was also a hero. On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 15, 1899, he saved the life of Justice of the Peace Joseph Smith by subduing a disgruntled litigant who had killed one man already and was aiming his shotgun at the Justice. The drama was described in an article in St. Paul Globe the next day.

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