Henry Dwight Barrows (February 23, 1825 – August 7, 1914) was an American teacher, businessman, farmer, goldminer, reporter, United States Marshal, Los Angeles County School Superintendent, manufacturer, writer, and a founder and president of the Historical Society of Southern California.

Soon after arrival, he went to the northern mines, going as far as Shasta County; but, as the dry season had set in, he returned down the valley, working at haying at $100 a month on Thomas Creek, near Tehama.

From 1856, for nearly ten years, he was the Los Angeles correspondent of the San Francisco Bulletin, then one of the most influential newspapers in California.

[1] By President Lincoln's recess appointment on April 9, 1861, he became the United States Marshall for the southern district of California, holding the office for four years.

The letter says such sentiment "permeates society here among both the high and the low," and reports: Andrew Jackson King, under-sheriff of this county, who has been a bitter secessionist, who said to me that he owed no allegiance to the United States Government; that Jeff Davis' was the only constitutional government we had, and that he remained here because he could do more harm to the enemies of that Government by staying here than going there; brought down on the Senator (a steam ship) Tuesday last a large lithograph gilt-framed portrait of Beauregard, the rebel general, which he flaunted before a large crowd at the hotel when he arrived.

I induced Colonel Carleton to have him arrested as one of the many dangerous secessionists living in our midst, and to-day he was taken to Camp Drum.

King unlike the members of the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles, was true to his word and did not flee to the Confederacy and in 1862, he was married to Laura Evertson, and remained in office as Undersheriff to 1865.

Barrows wrote on many subjects for the local press, and especially on financial questions, including resumption of specie payment and bimetallism.

In 1868 he was president of the Historical Society of Southern California, of which he was one of the founders, and to the records of which he contributed many valuable papers of reminiscences.

He believed that it had departed from its earlier dedication on behalf of universal freedom, and "to the happiness of free and equal men."