Alfr1902
January 28
Alfred H. Barr, Jr. born Detroit, Michigan to Alfred H. Barr, Sr. (1868-1935), Presbyterian minister and graduate of Princeton (BA. 1889; M.A. 1892; B.D., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1896) and to Annie Elizabeth Wilson Barr (1868-1961), who attended Vassar College (1887-89). Both parents are descendants of families from southern Scotland. (There is a castle Barr located near Prestwick, Scotland, in County Ayr.)

The family house is on Concord Street, next to the Detroit University School. Dr. Barr is pastor (1896-1911) of the Jefferson Avenue Church.

 1911-12
Barr family moves to Baltimore, where Dr. Barr has been appointed minister of the First Presbyterian Church. The family lives in the manse adjoining the church. Alfred and his younger brother Andrew1 attend the Boys’ Latin School. At school, Barr becomes a friend of Edward S. King; they will be inseparable for many years.2

Barr collects tin soldiers and with his brother and friends he re-stages classic bat-tles such as Gettysburg and Waterloo. He also collects stamps; “have about eighteen hundred stamps,” he writes in his diary.
On Sundays he goes to church regularly, a habit that does not persist later in life. In 1912, at age ten, he writes in his diary that on Saturdays he either learns German, writes “a poem with five verses four lines each, [makes] some paper soldiers, [reads] the History of Rome” or goes to Washington: “First we went to the . . . museum, then to the zoo.”