Bio: Farnham, Jeffery A. (1881)
Contact: Janet Schwarze.

Surnames: Farnham, Johnston, Sanborn

----Source: The History of Northern Wisconsin (Marathon County, Wis.) 1881, page 560

JEFFERY A. FARNHAM, Wausau. Came to Wisconsin in November, 1844, and taught school the following Winter in Wauwatosa; spent part of the next Spring and Summer in Milwaukee. In the Winter of 1845-46, taught school in Troy, Wis. In the Spring of 1846, he located in Watertown, Wis., and commenced land surveying, being by profession a civil engineer. He continued surveying until the Spring of 1848, when he laid out and engineered the construction of the Milwaukee and Watertown Plank Road between those two points, which occupied his attention about two and a half years. In the Spring of 1851 he went on the Illinois Central road, and had charge of division construction in Illinois until the Fall of 1854. He was City Engineer of Watertown until he constructed the Watertown & Madison Railroad. He was in Watertown until June, 1858, employed as Engineer of Railroads, and at other work. He came to Wausau the last day of June, 1858, and organized and commenced a banking business, under the corporate name of the “Bank of the Interior,” being himself president and manager. When the war broke out, Mr. Farnham had virtually become proprietor of the bank, and continued the business until Jan. 1, 1875, when the bank was merged into the Marathon County Bank. Mr. Farnham was president of the latter institution until 1877, stock, when, on account of the ill health of himself and wife, he sold his bank stock, and moved to Clyde, Kansas, where he lived nearly two years, returning to Wausau in the Fall of 1879, and since then has been engaged in the real estate and tax paying business, dealing in scrip, land warrants, tax certificates, etc. In 1859, he was appointed County Treasurer by the County Board. He was a member of the School Board and held other offices before going to Kansas. Mr. Farnham was born in the town of Scipio, Cayuaga Co., N.Y., Oct. 27, 1817, and was married in Jefferson, Jefferson Co., Wis., Sept. 12, 1864, to Mrs. Emily S. Johnston (nee Sanborn), who was born in Vermont, and died April 2, 1881. She had one son by her former marriage, George S., who was born June 18, 1858, and resides in Wausau, being now in the employ of Dunbar & McDonald, lumber manufacturers. He was educated in the schools and academies of Wisconsin.