Hiram Warner Farnsworth

Hiram Warner Farnsworth (born October 13, 1816 in Brattleboro, VT and died 26 July 1899 in Topeka, KS) was an abolitionist, Kansas pioneer, educator, Indian agent and community leader.

Hiram Warner Farnsworth (H. W.) was educated at Brattleboro, Vermont. H.W. attended Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1836 and graduated in 1840. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He taught school in Tuskegee, Alabama, from June 1840 to December 1841. He was appointed Principal of the New London Female Academy in New London, Connecticut. , a position he held until March 1855.

On March 17, 1842 H.W. married Deborah (Della) Torrey Lerow in Boston. She was born on July 5, 1815 in Orange, Massachusetts. She was a teacher of French and Botany at the New London academy. They had three children one of whom died thirteen months after his birth. Della died on June 5, 1850.

He also served as the railroad agent at New London for one year for the Northern Railroad. On December 3, 1855 H.W. married his second wife, Harriet Ann Stoddard (born May 28, 1822).

In the 1850s H.W. participated in the public discussions of the era concerning slavery. H.W. was a Congregationalist and abolitionist. As the political turmoil increased he decided on a course of action inspired by the New England Emigrant Aid Company of Boston. This company was formed to facilitate overland treks to Kansas of Free-Stater families to help throw pre-statehood Kansas into the abolitionists camp. The New England Emigrant Aid Company was formed to help fund resettlement of abolitionist sympathizers in Kansas prior to referendums to determine if Kansas would be a slave state. Three groups sponsored by the Society set out for Kansas – the first in March 1855. H.W. didn't leave New England until March 4, 1856 with his new wife who was pregnant and with his two small daughters from his first marriage. It took six weeks to trek by wagon to Kansas.

On May 9, 1856, H.W. and his family arrived in Lawrence in the Kansas Territory which was quickly seen to be unsuitable even though Lawrence had been founded by the New England Emigrant Aid Company. The family moved on to Topeka, Kansas arriving May 16, 1856. Topeka was laid out in 1854 as a Free-State town. Pioneer H.W.’s first act in Topeka was the purchase of a farm and then the start-up of the Topeka Mill Co., a saw, grist and flouring mill, in association with A. Merrill and S. T. Walkley. On July 14, 1856, H.W. helped found and became one of the first deacons of “The First Free Congregational Church of Topeka”. H.W. was then elected on December 6, 1859 to the first Territorial Senate of Kansas prior to statehood. He was a Republican representative of Shawnee County. The following year he was elected as the fourth mayor of Topeka. After much turmoil, Kansas was admitted to the union as a free state on January 29, 1861.

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