[1] Barry was born in a small frame house at 24 Thames Street, near Trinity Place, in Lower Manhattan.

He received his early education in the public schools and the Free Academy of the City of New York.

He became a brigadier general in August 1903[2] and, at the start of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, he was assigned to the Imperial Russian Army as a military observer.

[4] In 1907, he was chosen as commander for the Army of Cuban Occupation and Pacification by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Following a sudden death of Major General J. Franklin Bell on January 8, 1919, Barry was ordered back to the headquarters of Department of the East at Governors Island, New York where he once served in 1913 and assumed duty as commanding general.

Barry died of uremic poisoning as the result of Bright's disease at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on December 30, 1919.