Rev. William McLeod Barbour was born on May 31, 1827, in Fochabers, Scotland.

He was a minister who emigrated from Scotland to the United States in 1851. He graduated from Oberlin College and Andover Theological Seminary and was ordained as a pastor in 1861. He served as a minister of the Congregational church in Peabody, Massachusetts, from 1861 to 1868. From 1868 to 1877, he was a professor at Bangor Theological Seminary. He then became a Professor of Divinity and College pastor at Yale University from 1877 to 1887. During the period from 1879 to 1885, he held the position of Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Charge at Yale Divinity School. Subsequently, from 1887 to 1897, he served as Principal of the Congregational College of Canada at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Barbour received honorary degrees of D.D. from Bowdoin College in 1870 and M.A. from Yale in 1877. Many of his discourses were published.

In 1857, he married Eliza Ann Ransom (1831-1908). He died on December 5, 1899, in Malden, Massachusetts.