 After he studied for the Congregational ministry at Hackney College, he took charge of the Congregational Church at Market Drayton in Shropshire, where he also ran a school.He was then transferred to Bradford, Yorkshire where he began writing for the Bradford Observer.Barrow emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, in the hope that a change of climate would be beneficial to the health of his invalid wife, arriving in September 1853 on the "Hannah Maria" with his wife and four children, and obtained a position in the office of the "South Australian Register".