Virgil Horace Barber

Virgil Horace Barber (May 9, 1782, Claremont, New Hampshire – March 25, 1847, Georgetown, D.C.) was an American Jesuit.

His father was Daniel Barber; like his father, Virgil was a Catholic convert. He himself said that the first step leading to his conversion was the reading of "A Novena to St. Francis Xavier", a book belonging to an Irish servant girl, while he was principal of the Episcopalian Academy at Fairfield, New York. This raised doubts concerning his Protestant faith, which his bishop, Dr. Hobart, and other Episcopalian ministers could not solve for him.

During a visit to New York City, in 1816, he called on Father Benedict J. Fenwick, S.J., with the result that he resigned his Episcopalian charge at Fairfield, and went to New York, where he and his wife Jerusha (born New Town, Connecticut, July 20, 1789) were received into the Roman Catholic Church with their five children, Mary (born 1810); Abigail (born 1811); Susan (born 1813); Samuel (born 1814); and Josephine (born 1816). At first he opened a school in New York, but this lasted only seven months. Both he and his wife determined to enter religious life, he in the Society of Jesus, and she in the Visitation Order. Under the direction of Fenwick, in June 1817 they set out for Georgetown, D. C., where Barber and his son Samuel went to the college of the Jesuit Fathers, and his wife and the three oldest girls were received into the Georgetown Visitation Monastery. The youngest child, Josephine, then ten months old, was taken care of by Father Fenwick's mother.

The superior at Georgetown, Father John Grassi, S.J., shortly after sailed for Rome and took Barber with him as a novice. Barber remained there a year and then returned to Georgetown, where he continued his studies until December 1822, when he was ordained a priest at Boston. After his ordination he was sent to his old home, Claremont, New Hampshire, where he built a church and laboured for two years. He then spent some time on the Indian missions in Maine, and was after recalled to Georgetown College, where he passed the remainder of his days.

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