Her works include, Jan Vedder's Wife, A Border Shepherdess, Feet of Clay, Friend Olivia, The Bow of Orange Ribbon, Remember the Alamo, She Loved a Sailor, A Daughter of Fife, The Squire of Sanddal Side, Paul and Christina, Master of His Fate, The Household of McNeil, The Last of the Macallisters, Between Two Loves, A Sister to Esau, A Rose of a Hundred Leaves, A Singer from the Sea, The Beads of Tasmer, The Hallam Succession, The Lone House, Christopher and Other Stories, The Lost Silver of Briffault.

In Chicago, Illinois, Barr tutored at home, and established a school for girls, though she was not involved for long as her husband's business prospects fell through and they traveled west, settled in Austin, Texas.

They remained there until after the American Civil War when they moved to Galveston, where Mr. Barr became an auditor for the state, before he and four sons were stricken with yellow fever and died.

She came there to tutor the three sons of a prominent citizen, William Libby, in ancient and modern literature, music, and drawing;[3] and opened a school in a small house.

[5] Barr asked advice of Henry Ward Beecher, then editor of the Christian Union, in regard to contributions to magazines.

[3] In 1869, she moved to New York City, where she began to write for religious periodicals and to publish a series of semi-historical tales and novels.

[1] By 1891, when she achieved greater success, she and her daughters moved up the Hudson River to Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, where they renovated a house on the slopes of Storm King Mountain and named it Cherry Croft.