Peter Barnes of Mansfield died peacefully on March 27 at Sunrise Senior Living in Cohasset. He had been ill with cancer and partially disabled for the past few years. He was 76.

He was born in Attleboro on Oct. 5, 1938, a week after the great New England Hurricane hit. The morning after, the Barnes family yard at the corner of Rumford and Villa looked like a jungle in disarray, with trees uprooted, broken branches and debris everywhere. Peter’s mother, Doreen Kane Barnes, still in her 20s, was frightened and agitated by this onslaught as she darted from window to window awaiting her husband’s return home by train from his law office in Boston. He had been delayed by a tree that had fallen in front of the train, obliging him to walk a considerable distance during the storm.

Peter was educated in Mansfield elementary schools and the Forman School in Litchfield, Conn. He was a kind, considerate and cheerful person with an uncommon wisdom and loving nature. He lived his entire life in the Barnes home in Mansfield, and he spent every summer in the family’s home on Martha’s Vineyard. He was an optimist and well known in both places as a man who never said a disparaging word about anyone, always signing his cards or letters to his friends and siblings as Your Pal, Peter.

He was a hard worker, first at Mr. Bannon’s Mansfield Bleachery and, for many years afterwards, for Bob DeLong’s Acorn Manufacturing Company where he was a proud and happy Man Friday, doing necessary jobs.

He was the eighth of nine children of the late Clarence A. Barnes, former Attorney General of Massachusetts in the mid 1940s and a candidate for governor in 1950. Clarence won three important counties — Bristol, Barnstable and Dukes — in his fight for the Republican nomination, which was won by Lieut. Gov. Arthur Coolidge. Peter’s middle name was given in honor of Gov. Samuel McCall, for whom his father was the campaign manager in the 1920s.

Peter’s mother Doreen immigrated from Northern Ireland in 1915 at the age of six with her mother, Margaret Ingram Kane, aboard a ship darkened to avoid German naval attack. Here they joined her father, Thomas Edward Kane, a textile engineer, making their eventual home at Mansfield’s Four Corners (Willow street and South Main) in an English Tudor-style house. The senior Kanes lived there for some 40 years before their deaths in the early 1960s.

Peter was a true lover of dogs, especially his last, Penny, a golden retriever; he could be seen by many neighbors and townspeople who remember him walking faithfully with Penny in the Fulton Pond area in Mansfield, and at Waban Park near the waterfront in Oak Bluffs. A beachside bench facing Nantucket is dedicated to him and a great pal, Thomas (Tommy) A. Ashley of Belmont, who lived at the Barnes summer home for many years. The bench commemorates their joy and kindness in bringing local children and visitors’ children on sunfish rides for many summers. Tommy and Peter made many trips together, memorably to Hawaii, where a nephew, David McCullough Jr., taught at the Punahou School in Honolulu, and from which another nephew, Erick Street, graduated. They also traveled to Colorado, where a third nephew, Geoffrey McCullough, attended Colorado College. They also traveled from Los Angeles to San Francisco with his sister Margot and her son Erick.

Peter was a great sports fan, hardly ever missing a Mansfield/Foxboro Thanksgiving Day football game. He followed the Patriots, the Red Sox and of course the Celtics and the Bruins. He also attended many Yale-Harvard football games, notably in New Haven, where his father, uncle, grandfather, two brothers (Sam and Clare Jr.), cousins, a great-niece and great-nephew (currently a sophomore and pitcher on the baseball team) all matriculated at Yale. Two brothers in law, David McCullough (Rosalee Barnes’s husband) and Neil Goodwin (Margot Barnes’s husband), are also Yale graduates.

He will be greatly missed by the whole Barnes, McCullough, Street and Goodwin clan, especially by his loving and caring sisters, Rosalee and Margot, and his brother Samuel.

He is survived by his closest relatives, Margot and Neil Goodwin of Cambridge, Rosalee and David McCullough of Boston, and his brother Samuel Barnes of Pittsfield.

Peter also leaves his Vineyard nephew Clarence A. (Trip) Barnes 3rd, who brightened Peter’s life in many ways, and two nieces and one nephew on the Vineyard with their families: Beth Barnes Vought and husband Zeke; Jennifer Barnes Allgood and husband Ollie; and Marin Street and wife Dana Costanza Street. Other family members he leaves, also with their families, are his niece Doreen (Dorie) and T. Allen (Tim) Lawson of Rockport, Me.; nephew Samuel A. Barnes and companion Julie Verchot of Lincoln, N.H.; his Florida and Vineyard nephew and closest neighbors upon whom he relied, Marc Street and Meredith Slayton; niece Katrina Street of the Vineyard; nephew Erick and wife Laura Street of Venice, Calif., and the Vineyard; and the Streets’ French father Alfred E. Street (now living on Martha’s Vineyard); Margot’s stepson, Seth Goodwin, and his wife Kathy of Norwich, Vt. He also leaves the McCulloughs’ 19 grandchildren, Sam Barnes’s eight and Margot Goodwin’s seven. Peter’s four loving half siblings, now all deceased, were Clarence Alfred Barnes Jr., Jane Barnes Moore, David Harding Barnes and John Rogers Barnes. Their many children (and their families) are scattered throughout the United States, and they have continued a giving relationship with Peter over these many years.

Peter’s McCullough nephews and nieces and their children from nearby Hingham and Sudbury all deserve special thanks for their almost daily visits to Peter at Sunrise in Cohasset. They are William and Cissy, Geoffrey and Signe (with special mention of son Henry), David and Janice, and Melissa and John McDonald. William (Billy) has been extremely close to Peter and attentive to his needs, doing carpentry jobs in Mansfield and making innumerable visits to Mansfield and Sunrise. His nephews Davey McCullough, Erick, Marin and Marc Street, close summer Vineyard neighbors of Peter, merit special recognition for their frequent companionship and support of Peter, especially during the summer months.

Peter was predeceased by his father, Clarence (Clare), and mother, Doreen (Dodie), and brother Thomas K. (Tokey) Barnes, the artist; and by four half siblings. He was also predeceased by his sister in law and Samuel’s wife, Joy Woods Barnes, and by his aunt Geraldine Kane Ellis, his mother’s younger sister, and his uncle William DeLuce Barnes, his father’s only sibling.

Peter’s sister, Margot, his only Vineyard-born sibling, devoted many years to his care and well-being, most especially in the last two years of his life. She worked tirelessly with a group of loving caregivers, led for the past six years by Linda McKenzie and joined a year ago by Hari Khalsa.

A memorial service was held on April 3 in the Congregational Church of Mansfield with the Rev. Ted Newcomb. Interment was held the next day at the Oak Grove Cemetery in Vineyard Haven, with the Rev. Cathlin Baker presiding. A reception followed at the Vineyard Playhouse.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions be made to the Mansfield Congregational Church or to the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs.

Arrangements are by the Sherman and Jackson Funeral Home in Mansfield. To send Peter’s family a message of condolence, visit shermanjackson.com.