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Surnames: Farmer, Black, Telfer, Beghtel, Barsh,
Classification: Biography
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/gh.2ADI/5397
Message Board Post:
From Biographical Memoirs of Huntington County, 1901, pages 683-684
George Farmer, a respected and well-to-do farmer of Clear Creek township, Huntington
county, Indiana, was born in Stark county, Ohio, June 3, 1848, a son of Jose C. and Lydia
(Black) Farmer, who were the parents of seven children.
Jose C. Farmer was a native of Pennsylvania, and was brought to Ohio by his father, George
Farmer, an early settler of Stark county. It was there Jose C. was married, and the seven
children born to this union were named as follows: Martin, who was a private in the
Forty-seventh Indiana Volunteer Infantry, died in 1863 in hospital at Helena, Arkansas;
Jason, an ex-soldier, is now farming in Clear Creek township; Caroline is the wife of
George A. Telfer, also of Clear Creek; George, whose name opens this review; Mary A., wife
of Isaiah Beghtel, of Clear Creek township; John A., a United Brethren minister, now in
Kosciusko county, Indiana; and Geneva, wife of Orlando Barsh, of Columbia City.
In the spring of 1850 Jose C. Farmer brought his family to Huntington county, Indiana, and
for a few months lived in Warren township. In the fall of the same year he settled on the
farm of eighty acres where our subject now resides, for which he paid four dollars per
acre. The land was heavily timbered with walnut, beech and sugar trees, and here Mr.
Farmer erected a log cabin of one room, on the site of the present handsome dwelling now
occupied by our subject. On this farm the father died in March, 1878, at the age of
sixty-eight years, his wife following him to the grave in June of the same year. They
were consistent members of the Christian church, and after the close of the Civil war the
father affiliated with the Republican party.
George Farmer, the subject proper of this review, was but two years old when his parents
settled on the home farm in Huntington county, Indiana, now over half a century ago, and
this has been his home ever since. March 19, 1876, he married Miss Mary J. Sickafoose,
who bore him three children, viz: Carrie A., wife of J. A. R. Beghtel, of Jackson
township; Melvin E., at home; and Orville T., also at home.
Mrs. Mary J. Farmer was called away December 7, 1885, and on the 16th of February, 1888,
Mr. Farmer wedded for his second wife Tracy Kunce, and this union has been blessed with
two sons, Chester W. and John H.
Mr. Farmer was twenty-two years old when he began business on his own account by renting
the home farm from his father, and at the death of the latter bought the interest of the
other heirs in the property and now owns one hundred and twenty-five acres, all in one
body. He erected his present fine brick dwelling in 1890, and has otherwise greatly
improved the place, and has been engaged in general farming from the beginning, making a
thorough success of his vocation.
In politics Mr. Farmer is a Republican, and from 1895 until 1900 served as trustee of
Clear Creek township. He is a member of the United Brethren church, of which he has been
a trustee for six years, and socially he and family are among the most respected residents
of Clear Creek township.