During 1836 and 7, Mr. Barr devoted a good deal of time in collecting statistics of this port, the business of the city, its population, &c., &c., and also of the west generally, and laying them before the public in the papers of Philadelphia and other eastern cities. In company with Mr. Willey and the late Governor Tod, he visited Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, endeavoring to enlist the attention of capitalists to aid in those enterprises. But the crash of 1837, and the general prostration of business, that followed all over the country, rendered it unavailing. In the Winter of 1838, Mr. Gidings, S. Starkweather, Frederick Whittlesey, Wm. B. Lloyd and Mr. Barr were appointed a committee to attend a railroad convention at Harrisburgh, Pa., to promote the project of the railroad from Cleveland to Philadelphia, by way of Pittsburgh. In 1838 and 9, at the request of John W. Willey, he still spent much of his time in sending a series of articles on the importance of the project, that were published monthly in the North American, a paper in Philadelphia devoted to such projects.
Through the disastrous state of the times, these various measures had to yield, and become, for the time being, failures; but time has shown that those who were engaged in them were only in advance of the spirit and means of the age.
In 1844, when this subject again arrested the attention of the Cleveland public, Mr. Barr, although crushed by the storm of 1837, again resumed the subject with his pen, and gave to the public in the National Magazine, published in New York, quite a history of the city, its early settlement, &c., together with a full description of the shipping on their lakes, tonnage, trade, &c., that cost weeks of hard labor and patience, more particularly to place our city in a favorable view before the eastern public.
In 1846, a friend of Mr. B. sent him a petition to circulate and send to the Hon. Thomas Corwin, one of Ohio's Senators, asking Congress for aid to survey and establish a railroad to the Pacific.
In circulating this petition, Mr. Barr was gravely inquired of by one of our citizens, "if he expected to live to see such a road built?" Mr. Barr replied, "if he should live to the usual age of men, he did expect to see it commenced, and perhaps built." The reply was, "If you do, you will be an older man than Methusalah!" Both have lived to know that great work has been achieved.