Joan Corey Barton

Joan Corey Barton, 80 years young, passed away peacefully on Sunday February 25th due to cancer and heart failure.  Joan was born July 5, 1943, in Orlando Florida, the only child of Leland and Ruth Corey.  She graduated from Edgewater High School in Orlando and then earned a Bachelor of Arts in Speech and a Master’s degree in International Relations at Florida State University.  She was a member of FSU’s Debate Squad and excelled in competition with other universities across the Southeastern United States.  While at FSU, she met and married Texan Weldon Barton, and they shared 57 compatible years together.  

The couple returned to Texas for four years, where their son Bill was born, and then relocated for the next 20 years to the Washington, D.C. area.  After Bill began public school, Joan earned a law degree from Catholic University Law School.  She then served as a law clerk, an attorney in the U.S Department of Justice, and for 10 years as a prosecutor of criminal cases in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington.  Upon returning to Texas in 1990, she worked in the Texas Attorney General’s Office before retiring to a small farm in the Waterson area outside Bastrop, where she indulged her passion for fiction reading and writing.  

Aside from good fiction literature, Joan’s loves included horses, especially her mare Ginger, and travels with husband and sometimes her son to exotic lands that included India, Istanbul, Syria, the Galapagos Islands, Kruger Game Park in South Africa, and many other destinations, always personally planning the itinerary and taking copious notes on the people, animals and places.  

Joan is survived by husband Weldon, of Waterson, son Bill and spouse Brandy of Liberty Hill, Grandson Trevor Barton of Austin, Cousin Diane Johnson of Minnesota, and many additional extended family members.  Her memory will long linger among those she loved and was loved by.  

We would like to thank the caring staff at Towers Nursing Center in Smithville as well as Divinity Hospice for their care and compassion during this difficult time.  

A gathering of family and friends will occur on Friday March 1 at Marrs-Jones-Newby Funeral Home in Bastrop, Texas from 9am-11am with a private burial service at a later date.