Background
He was born on January 29, 1802, at Amherst, New Hampshire.
He was born on January 29, 1802, at Amherst, New Hampshire.
He studied law at Georgia, Vermont.
For two years, beginning in 1824, he conducted an academy at Georgia, Vermont, meanwhile studying law, which he afterward practised for several years. He migrated to White Pigeon, Michigan, in 1831, and in 1834 removed to Constantine, Michigan, which remained his home until his death. He prospered in business and during his later years was regarded as a wealthy man. Yet it was his good fortune to come to the front when even his defects were accounted virtues, and he played a notable rôle in the political history of Michigan. His first important public service was as a member of the state constitutional convention of 1835. During the next few years the most extravagant boom Michigan has ever witnessed ensued. It was accompanied by an era of wild-cat banking and a craze for state-constructed internal improvements which could only end in disaster both moral and financial.
The bubble burst during the Whig régime of 1840-41, and Barry, who was a Democrat of conservative principles, was elected governor in the latter years, on the wave of a reaction against the policies which had brought the commonwealth to the verge of bankruptcy. It was his task to salvage what might be saved from the general financial wreck, and to restore the state to the pathway of solvency and prosperity. This proved difficult and thankless enough, but the personal qualities of the Governor, reinforced by his substantial business ability, admirably fitted him for its performance. He was reelected in 1843 and during his four years in office (1842 - 46), the task was substantially accomplished. The state constitution forbade a second successive reëlection to the governorship, but the verdict of the electorate upon Barry's administration was seen in his election to the office for a third term in 1849, a precedent not repeated in Michigan for almost sixty years.
He was a Democrat of conservative principles. Barry was a firm believer in the Jeffersonian principles of constitutional interpretation, and when the sectional dispute progressed to the stage of civil war, his adherence to views which his state had discarded relegated him to political oblivion.
Barry was of stern and austere character, wholly lacking in the arts of the politician, and master of but few of the graces of social intercourse.
In early manhood he married Mary Kidder, of Grafton, who died in 1869; the union proved childless.
