Husband Judge John Farrar 1 2 3
AKA: John Farrer 4
Born: 7 Jan 1818 - Mt. Pleasant Twp, Washington Co, PA 1
Christened:
Died: 6 Jan 1875 - near Burgettstown, Smith Twp, Washington Co, PA 1
Buried: - Candor Cemetery, Candor, Washington Co, PA
Father: Samuel Farrar ( -1867) 5 6 7
Mother: Jennie Simington (1800-1882) 7
Marriage: 1840 1
Wife Phoebe White 1 4 8
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Died: 1870 3
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Father: John White (1786- ) 8
Mother: Mary May ( - ) 8
Children
1 F Mary L. Farrar 10 11
AKA: Mary Farran,9 Mary L. Farrer 4
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Died: Bef 1910
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Spouse: Billingsly Morgan (1840-Aft 1910) 4
2 M Prof. Samuel Clark Farrar 10 11 12
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Spouse: Marietta Cooke ( - ) 12
3 M Preston W. Farrar 10 11
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4 M John W. Farrar 3 10
Born: 2 Mar 1847 - Smith Twp, Washington Co, PA 3
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5 M Watson W. Farrar 10
AKA: William W. Farrar 11
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6 M George W. Farrar 10 11
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General Notes: Husband - Judge John Farrar
He was a prominent Republican and for some years served in the office of associate judge of Washington County, Pennsylvania. During the early part of his business life he conducted a store and was a well known merchant. After disposing of his mercantile interests, he purchased a farm of 196 acres, in Smith Township, which was later owned jointly by his two sons, John W. and Clark Farrar. He resided on this farm during the remainder of his life. He was a leading member and an elder in the Raccoon Presbyterian Church.
His early education consisted of that afforded by the common schools of that day, but he was possessed of a taste for literature and a thirst for higher education so strong that some years after arriving at maturity he studied the Latin and Greek classics, higher mathematics, and some of the natural sciences. For several years after this he engaged in farming, teaching school during the winter. Farming was a very discouraging business during those years famous for "hard times," so the young farmer, having a knowledge of the mercantile business, obtained while employed as a clerk previous to his marriage, forsook the fields and embarked in the merchantile business, which he continued for a decade. During the first part of this period he strongly contemplated studying a profession, and at one time took initiatory steps to this end, but the claims of a wife and young children depending upon him for support caused the final abandoning of this intention.
His attention was attracted to politics by the famous campaign of 1840, when he cast his first Presidential vote for William Henry Harrison. In the great political questions that agitated the country after the Mexican war he took a deep interest, and from that time henceforth was a close student of national questions.
He removed with his family to Rock Island County, Illinois, in 1853.
During the Presidential campaign of 1856 political excitement ran high in that land of Lincoln and Douglas, the champions of the opposing parties. Although a quiet farmer at the time, Farrar's zeal overcame his native modesty, and he mounted the stump in his own county for John C. Fremont and anti-slavery. Returning to his native county in 1857, he engaged in mercantile business in Burgettstown for several years.
At the breaking out of the Rebellion, party hostility in this region became so bitter as to rupture society, churches, and families. Men engaged in business depending on the patronage of a community generally either kept their lips sealed or exercised great caution in expressing themselves on the questions that were distracting the country, lest their business should suffer. Contrary to this rule, and in opposition to the advice of his warmest friends, John Farrar, eminently a man of strong convictions, and fearless of consequences when duty directed, was outspoken in his zeal for the cause of the Union, as well as in his denunciation of its enemies North and South.
In 1866 he was elected to the office of associate judge for a term of five years. When he entered upon the duties of this office, a system of granting licenses to sell intoxicating liquors existed, under which it was a very easy matter to obtain a license, and as a consequence almost every village and hamlet in the county was afflicted with drinking-houses. Always having been a warm advocate of the temperance cause, he immediately went to work with his characteristic zeal to correct the evil, taking a firm and resolute stand against all licenses applied for under the then existing laws. Ere the close of his term of office, with perhaps two exceptions, not a drinking-saloon or bar-room remained. It was thus largely through his influence that Washington County was elevated to an honorable and noble position on this question.
Notwithstanding the frequent and perhaps true assertion that ardent temperance men invariably suffer at the polls, he was elected a member of the State Legislature in 1874, when a number of other honorable candidates of the same party from the same county were defeated. But death came, and he was carried to his grave the same week that he was to have taken the oath of office.
It was, however, as a Christian gentleman that Judge Farrar was best known and most esteemed. In early manhood he became a member of the Presbyterian Church of Raccoon, next a teacher in the Sabbath-school, and then its superintendent, and ever afterwards connected with and working in the Sabbath-school in some way.
Soon after settling in Illinois he gathered together and established a flourishing Sabbath-school, from which soon resulted the organization of Beulah Church of the Presbytery of Rock River. In this church he was a ruling elder until his return to Pennsylvania, after which he served in this capacity in the church of Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, and in Raccoon Church until the close of his life.
Socially, he was gifted with a rare combination of qualities, easy, graceful manners, fine conversational powers, and a warm, generous, and sympathizing nature. Regarding no one, however poor and ignorant, as beneath his notice, nor looking up to any, however wealthy and aristocratic, as above him, he was claimed alike by the high and lowly as a friend. The universal esteem in which he was held is manifest from the positions he occupied at the time of his death. Filling honorable and responsible offices both in the Church and in the State; chosen to the one by the voice of the members of the church of his childhood, and to the other by the voice of the citizens of the county of his nativity, are facts that make an eulogy of words superfluous. [HWC 1882, 929]