Indian and buffalo hunters may have traversed the land where the village of Barlow now stands but the first recorded mention were surveyors who laid out the north-south line between townships 146-147 across what was to be Foster County in August 1874. They left their mark in the form of markers at mule or half mile intervals along the township boundaries.

Settlers started to come in 1883 when the construction of the Jamestown and Northern Railway had progressed as far as Carrington. Among the early settlers were an Arthur Ritchie and his wife who homesteaded the northeast quarter of section 12, Birtsell Township and Frederick George Barlow who did the same diagonally across the section line in the southwest quarter of section 6 in what is now Estabrook Township. They and a number of others had settled before the townships were surveyed and the section corners marked.

By the late summer of 1884 the railroad had been built as far as New Rockford and the four corners where Ritchie's and Barlow's land met was a logical place for a settlement just halfway between Carrington and New Rockford. The 1884 survey showed that there was a house on Barlow's land near the southwest corner of his quarter east of the railroad track. Barlow maintained a store and sold wood and coal.

Frederick G. Barlow was born in New Hampshire on a farm in 1839. His folks later moved to Canada where he received his education. He began teaching school when he was twenty-two years old. He taught school for two years. He then went to Wisconsin and located on a farm near Eau Claire. Barlow was elected to the Wisconsin Legislature in 1878. He came to North Dakota in 1883, spending some time in Carrington before he erected his 12 x 16 foot shanty on his farm near Barlow.

Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 156