FARMER,
Alonzo C., son of Bradley and Lydia (Cushman) Farmer, was born March 1,
1831. His paternal great-grandfather, Benjamin Farmer, was born in 1749,
and was a sergeant-major in the War of the Revolution. He came to Burke
in 1799, and settled at the "Hollow." He died in 1845, aged ninety- six
years. He had three sons, one of whom, Uzziah, was the paternal grandfather
of the subject of this sketch. He married Priscilla Briggs and had ten
children, one of whom was Bradley, father of Alonzo C. He settled in Charleston
and married Lydia Cushman, a descendant of Robert Cushman, the Pilgrim
father. They had four sons born to them: Alonzo C., Charles C., Hiram B.,
and J. Wesley.
Alonzo
C. Farmer, when a mere boy of eighteen, went to Ohio, which at that time
was the "far West." Three years later, in 1852, he took the overland Route
to California in search of gold. He was 139 days on the plains. He later
went to Sacramento, and was present at the burning of that city. On his
return home he took the sea route and was cast away for forty-eight days,
finally reaching Nicaragua, which he crossed to the Atlantic coast.
He
soon settled at Island Pond, and married Martha, daughter of Rev. Lewis
Jenkins (see Jenkins family, Kirby), who lived fifteen years. He afterwards
married her sister, Susan, by whom he has had four children: Frank E.,
a physician at Middlebury, who married May 20, 1903, Lulu Baldwin of Lyndon;
Martha A. (see Robert Simonds, St. Johnsbury); Fred A., who lives at home,
and married June 4, 1903, Aimee L. Hazen, and Ida A., who graduated from
Johnson Normal school in 1898, and as a trained nurse from Mary Fletcher
hospital in 1903.
During
the Civil war he served as a sergeant in Company E, Fifteenth Vermont volunteers.
Alonzo
C. Farmer resided at Island Pond for seventeen years, and then moved to
Burke and bought his father-in-law's farm, now known as Belmont Stock farm,
which contains 325 acres, and has 2,250 sugar trees. He is a progressive,
energetic type of the thoroughly up-to-date Vermont farmer.
Source:
Successful Vermonters, William H. Jeffrey, E. Burke, Vermont, The Historical
Publishing Company, 1904, page 160-161.
Source:
Successful Vermonters, William H. Jeffrey, E. Burke, Vermont, The Historical
Publishing Company, 1904, page 160-161.
Prepared
by Tom Dunn, August 2007
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