The Barber House was likely built between 1810 and 1845 and reflects the Federal architectural style in its hall-and-parlor floor plan and symmetric chimneys. Robert Barber, the son of John Barber of York County, South Carolina, and his family are believed to have been its original owners. Robert married Sarah L. Stroud around 1839, and the couple soon moved to Cleveland County, where their only daughter, Mary, was born in 1841. In 1842, Robert bought the full 564 acres that John Barber had acquired from Daniel Cain in Cleveland County, North Carolina, for $787. Census records identify Robert Barber as a farmer, and the estate sale after his death included sheep, hogs, a cow and calf, ploughs, scythes, stocks, and other farm equipment and animals. Sarah and Mary remained on the land, and much of the property was used as Mary's dowry. In 1861, Mary married Robert N. Crawford of York, South Carolina. After he died in the Civil War, Mary and her son John continued to live in the house with Sarah. Mary remarried in 1868, and her marriage to Reverend Philip R. Elam produced five children. Sarah Stroud Barber died in 1881. In 1885, George Washington Ware purchased the property and house, and tenants working on the Ware farm lived there through the 1950s. In 2002, H.O. "Toby" Williams donated the house to the Kings Mountain Historical Museum.