John Barr was born in 1879 in Hamilton, Lanarkshire. He was the son of Robert Barr, a coalminer, and his wife Margaret.

In 1881 the family lived at 11 Chisholm’s Buildings, Low Blantyre Road in Hamilton. During the early 1880s, while John was still a young child, they moved to England and settled in Northumberland. John’s father died in 1888 and by the time of the 1891 census his mother, now a widow, was living at 25 New Square, Seghill with John and her other 4 children.

John became a coalminer like his father and in 1900 he married Mary Ann Black.

In 1911, they were living at Crank Row, West Moor near Killingworth. As well as their own son, James aged 2 years, they also had a nephew and niece living with them. The 16-year-old nephew was already working underground in the coal mine as a pony driver.

John joined the Northumberland Fusiliers in WW1, enlisting at Alnwick.

He died on 3rd January 1915. As the Imperial War Graves Commission was not set up until 1917, he may have had a private burial and his name was not printed in the original register of the war graves at Morpeth, where it appears as a handwritten addendum at the bottom of the page. His commission headstone was listed in 1930 as an “additional burial”.

His widow, Mary Ann, did not re-marry. She was living at Yard Row, Netherton Colliery in the late 1920s and died in 1933.