Born at Eastleigh, Hampshire, on 31 December 1836, he was the sixth child of John Barton (1798–1852) by his wife Fanny, daughter of James Rickman.
There he helped in superintending St John's College, Agra with an attendance of 260 students, and the orphanage at Secundra, five miles away, with 300 children.
From 1877 to 1893 he was vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, but was absent in Ceylon for four months in 1884, and during 1889, after refusing offers of the bishoprics of both Travancore and Tinnevelly, was in charge of the latter district.
In 1893 he refused the call to a bishopric in Japan, and left Cambridge for London to become chief secretary of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, whose "forward movement" he organised.
[1] Barton published Remarks on the Orthography of Indian Geographical Names, reprinted from Friend of India (1871); Missionary Conference Report (1873), and Memorial Sketch of Major-General Edward Lake, Commissioner of Jalundhur (2nd edit.
A son, Cecil Edward Barton (d. 1909), missionary in the Punjab, was rector of Rousdon, Devon, and joint author of A Handy Atlas of Church and Empire (1908).