Barthinius L. (Barthinius Larson) Wick

Born in 1864, Barthinius L. Wick was an Iowa attorney and writer whose work blended legal training with a deep interest in regional history. He is remembered in part through a 1948 obituary in The Annals of Iowa, which identifies him as an attorney, and through library records that preserve the books he wrote and co-wrote.

Wick authored The Amish Mennonites: A Sketch of Their Origin, and of Their Settlement in Iowa, with Their Creed in an Appendix, published in 1894 by the State Historical Society of Iowa. He also collaborated with Luther A. Brewer on History of Linn County Iowa: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time (1911), an ambitious local history that has remained useful to later researchers and genealogists.

His writing suggests a lasting commitment to documenting the people and institutions that shaped Iowa communities. Although he is not widely known today, his books continue to offer a window into the religious groups, pioneers, and local traditions that defined an earlier Midwest.