[1][2] His father died in 1826 and he grew up with relatives in a nearby town, apprenticing at various jobs in the family owned businesses.

He married in 1843 and moved to Oswego, New York, where he briefly got into the hotel business before turning to photography.

[1][2][4] A fire in 1853 destroyed the grain elevators in Oswego, New York, an event Barnard photographed.

[5] After the war, Barnard ran photography studios in Ohio, Charleston, South Carolina and Chicago.

[2] Barnard's work is included in the American Memory collection, Selected Civil War Photographs from the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1861–1865.