My Genealogy Hound

G. W. Farris is the eldest of eight children born to Minor and Mary (Brockman) Farris, who were Virginians by birth. The father came to Missouri with his parents in 1806. His father, George M., settled on a tract of land about twenty-eight miles from St. Louis, where he made valuable improvements and lived many years. He was a soldier in the War of 1812, serving for some time under Gen. Harrison, and received for his services a land warrant. In 1850 he left St. Louis County and bought land and settled in what is now Moniteau County, where he died in 1857 at the ripe old age of eighty-eight years. Minor Farris owned an excellent farm in St. Louis County, which he afterward sold, and moved to Moniteau County in 1855, where he bought 240 acres of land; he is now (1889) living, aged eighty-nine years. Our subject, G. W. Farris, was born in St. Louis County, on his father’s farm, in 1827, and after attaining a suitable age entered forty acres of land there. Here he made his home until 1856, when he sold out and removed to Moniteau County, where he purchased 120 acres of mostly wild land in 1863, and settled down to getting it in good working condition. He devotes a considerable portion of it to stock-raising, and has a fine orchard of 100 bearing trees. In 1847 he was married to Therisa C. Carney, by whom he became the father of twelve children: Charles E., Missouri C. (wife of A. M. Slaton), Margaret V. (wife of J. H. Etter, died November 28, 1889, leaving three children), Douglas, Oliver J., Reuben B., Jefferson Lee, Eliza May (wife of Grant Bond), Mollie, George (deceased), Thomas J., and a daughter that died in infancy.