Henry W. Barry

Henry W. Barry (April 1840 – June 7, 1875) was a Union army officer during the American Civil War, reaching the rank of Brevet Brigadier General. He commanded a regiment of United States Colored Troops. After the war, he became an attorney and politician.

Born in New York, Barry moved to Kentucky as a young man to teach school. He enlisted there in the Union Army during the war, being commissioned as an officer. In 1862 Barry recruited African Americans to Kentucky's militia. After the United States Colored Troops were established in 1863, Barry served as an officer of an African-American unit stationed in Kentucky and Texas.

After the war Barry earned a law degree in Washington, D.C. He moved to Columbus, Mississippi, where he set up a practice and became involved in politics. He served as a delegate to the 1867 state constitutional convention, and was elected to the Mississippi State Senate in 1868. In 1870 he was elected as U.S. Representative from Mississippi's 3rd congressional district, serving until 1875. He died shortly after, at age 35.

Early life and Civil War service

Born in Schoharie County, New York in 1840, Henry Barry was a largely self-educated man. At the age of eighteen, he moved to Kentucky, where he taught at Locust Grove Academy near Louisville. When the Civil War started, Barry enlisted in the Union Army as a private. He was commissioned as First Lieutenant of Company H in the 10th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry on November 21, 1861.

He served about a year, resigning on November 17, 1862, to assist in the recruitment of colored troops in Kentucky. He was commissioned Colonel of the 1st Regiment Kentucky Heavy Artillery, African Descent on April 28, 1864, when it was organized at Paducah. During that period, he was chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department (Forty-second and Forty-third Congresses).

In 1874 Barry nominated Henry E. Baker to the United States Naval Academy; he was the nation's third African-American naval cadet. After most blacks were disenfranchised across the South due to states' imposing barriers to voter registration, no African Americans received appointments to the Naval Academy for more than six decades.

Barry died at the age of 35 in Washington, D.C. shortly after his term ended. He was interred in Oak Hill Cemetery on June 7, 1875. He was survived by his wife Kate (Thyson) Barry (1850-1907) and their son Frank Thyson "Francis" Barry (1874-1889).