Career
Born in Paisley, Scotland in 1809, Barr moved to Otago in 1852, and farmed a property at Halfway Bush. In his time, he was considered the Laureate of Otago Province, of which he wrote, in Lowland Scots:
There"s nae place like Otago yet,
There"s nae wee beggar weans,
Or auld men shivering at our doors
To beg for scraps or banes
By February 1862 John was in Dunedin when he printed a "little volume" of poems, published in Edinburgh. The "Otago Daily Times" wrote.
"quite irrespective of their local character, which endows them with a peculiar attraction, the Poems possess intrinsic merits in themselves which entitle them to rank high as literary productions"
Allen Curnow described his writing as "this Scots-colonial parritch.. watery gruel at the best." Barr died on 18 September 1889 at Dunedin.