A. Amherst's drama Ireland as it is and the title role in Samuel Lover's comic opera Rory O'More.

As a boy Williams ran errands, sold newspapers, worked at a printer's office and at some point began performing bit parts at New York's Franklin Theatre.

In these days Williams played in several roles in the Tyrone Power repertory, including Paddy O’Rafferty in Born to Good Luck and Terry O’Rourke in The Irish Tutor.

On November 24, 1849, Williams married actress Maria Pray (1828–1911), the widow of actor Charles Mestayer who died the previous year.

In 1850 Barney and Maria appeared at The National Theatre in New York, in the title roles of The Irish Boy and Yankee Girl.

As a team, Williams and Pray would find the greatest successes of their careers beginning [1854] with long runs at San Francisco's Metropolitan Theatre.

Williams often played Irish characters to Pray's Yankee in performances that on four occasions were attended by Queen Victoria.

While in the U.K., the couple toured Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Limerick, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.

On October 17, 1859, they appeared at Niblo's Garden playing in Born to Good Luck, An Hour in Seville, and in Latest from New York.

Barney and Maria appeared at Niblo's Garden in New York in Irish and Yankee Life and The Connie Soogah, December 1864.

Barney and Maria began an engagement in Connie Soogah, or the Jolly Peddler on September 21, 1874, at Booth's Theatre in New York.

[9][10][11] Over on the other side of the cemetery, on Battle Hill, from which the bay and the city can be viewed, sleeps Barney Williams, almost the first actor in the line of Irish comedy.