In 1822 Backhouse married Deborah Lowe, and in 1824 he was admitted as a minister in the Religious Society of Friends. As a dedicated Quaker and clerk of York monthly meeting from 1825, he travelled in the ministry from that year. His commitment and evangelising were central to his life. He addressed a crowd at York racecourse, which his sister Sarah put at two thousand, on 'the iniquity of the frivolities in which they were engaged, and to call their attention to the weightier concerns of eternity' (York Courant, 9 August 1825).