Ortha Orrie Barr Sr.

Ortha Orrie Barr Sr. (February 24, 1879 – December 5, 1958) was an American lawyer, businessman and politician who served as a two-term Member of the Ohio House of Representatives from January 1931 until January 1935. Together with his physician father, Dr. Eugene Barr, Ortha Barr co-established the historic Barr Hotel in Lima, Ohio, built in 1914 and formally opened in October 1916. Eugene and Sadie Barr had married in 1877. The Barr family moved to Allen County in 1885 where Ortha Barr attended local elementary and middle schools. He had a half-sister, Mabel Barr whose mother, Mattie A. Miller, daughter of John G. Miller married Eugene Barr in 1883, presumably after the dissolution of his first marriage. Ortha O. Barr was a 1904 LLB graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. after winning an election. Barr belonged to the Allen County Bar Association. He entered a joint business venture with his father to build the historic seven-storey hotel, Barr Hotel in downtown Lima, Ohio, which officially began operations in October 1916. During his first term in the state legislature from 1931 to 1933, he became a member of the house taxation committee where he sponsored a bill to put a limit on interest rates in state of Ohio. (died as a toddler), Robert Ortha (1910-1996), Margaret A. (1914-1999), Edna Barr Hunter (1915-2009) and Ortha O. Barr, Jr. (1922-2003). Ortha Barr Sr. held different roles in several social clubs, Masonic and fraternal societies in Ohio, including President (1943–44) of the Lima Sertoma Club, Member, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, local chapter Grandmaster (Grand Chancellor) of the Knights of Pythias. Ortha Barr followed the footsteps of his father, Eugene Barr, who was also a Knight of Pythias and an Elk. Ortha Barr also belonged to the Lima chapter of the Sertoma Club where he was a life member and in 1943, served as President of the service club. He was buried at the Gethsemani Cemetery in Lima, Ohio. When Lena Rudy died in 1972, she was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Lima after her funeral at the Trinity United Methodist Church, also in Lima.