Luther Gustavus Barrett was born on December 5, 1838, in Watertown, Massachusetts, to Luther and Margaret Barrett. His father was a painter. He attended school in Watertown, and he graduated from Harvard University in 1862. He then enrolled at Newton Theological Institution in September 1862. During the Civil War, he spent three months accompanying the Army of the James as part of the United States Christian Commission. He graduated in 1865, and he was ordained later that year.

 

He married Mary A. Hawkes on June 9, 1869, and they had at least three children: Florence, born around 1870; George, born around 1876; and Helen, born around 1877. By 1870, the family was living in Winchester, Massachusetts, and he owned $500 of personal property. He also employed at least one white servant. He served as a minister in towns across New York and New England. His wife died on March 16, 1877, and he married Ella Maria Short on September 15, 1885. Their son Herbert was born around 1886.

 

In the 1880s, he also worked as a professor of Biblical interpretation and classics at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1894, he became president of Jackson College in Jackson, Mississippi, and he remained there until 1911. He settled in Melrose, Massachusetts, in the 1910s, and he died in Melrose on December 24, 1932.

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