Berley Barnum is something of a mystery. He was born about 1860, some 20 years after his nearest sibling, and appears only in the 1870 census and never thereafter. At the time of his birth his father would have been 48 years old and his mother 45, not impossible, of course, but unusual.
It has been suggested that he might have been an adopted son of Burgess Barnum and Sylvia Queal but there is no conclusive evidence for that supposition. He apparently could not have been a grandchild of Burgess and Sylvia by any of their children. Their daughter Laura never married and, in any case, she died before Berley was born. Likewise, sons Ira and Smith Barnum were not married until several years after Berley's birth and Lee died young and unmarried..