Barbour was born on August 10, 1866, at Beauregard in Brandy Station, Culpeper County, Virginia. On the side of his father, also John Strode Barbour, he belonged to a distinguished family of Scottish descent which had long been prominent in Virginia politics; his mother was Eliza Byrne of Petersburg.
He received his education in private schools of the community, and at the University of Virginia, where he was granted the B. L. degree in 1842.
After four years of practise in his native county, he entered politics as the Democratic candidate for the position of delegate to the legislature from Culpeper, and won against strong Whig opposition. His name appears on the rolls of the House of Delegates for the sessions 1847-48, 1848-49, 1849-50, 1850-51. When the Orange & Alexandria Railroad Company was organized in 1849, the State appointed Barbour to represent its interests on the board of directors. Three years later, the directors elected him president of the company, a position which he held for thirty-three years. Under his management the road of sixty miles was extended across the state through Danville, and was enlarged by the addition of several subsidiary lines. There was not a single strike during these years, not even in the lean and troublous decade of the seventies--a fine testimony to his ability and to his justice toward his employees.
In consequence of a deadlock in a district convention of his party, he was nominated for Congress, without his knowledge, and was subsequently elected. He remained in Congress from March 4, 1881, to Mar. 3, 1887. He refused renomination in 1886. It was during this period that he made his greatest contribution to the commonwealth. He revived the Democratic party which had ceased to exist as an organization in his state, and conducted the campaign which rescued the state from William Mahone's control. A convention in Lynchburg on July 25, 1883, appointed Barbour chairman of the state executive committee of the reorganized party, a position held by him until 1889. His success in defeating Mahone was due to his gift for organization and to the universal confidence and esteem reposed in him.
He was a member of the National Democratic Committee from 1884 to 1892. Upon defeating H. H. Riddleberger, Readjuster (Republican), he took his seat in the United States Senate March 4, 1889.
Barbour died after a long illness at Doctors Hospital in Washington, D. C. on May 6, 1952.
He was a man of fine presence, six feet tall, with sharply cut features, snow-white hair, and dark brown eyes.
Barbour was married in 1865 to Susan Daingerfield of Alexandria, who died in 1886. They left no descendants.
