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.
Early life
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.
Kansas Pioneer
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.
H.W. resigned from the Kansas Senate May 1, 1861, in order to accept an Indian Agency appointment in Morris County at Council Grove, Kansas, and in June 1861 President Abraham Lincoln appointed him as agent to the Kaw Indians. Joseph James (Joe Jim), a mixed-blood Kaw Indian, was an interpreter for H.W. H.W. became an Indian Commissioner June 24, 1864, by order of Abraham Lincoln who appointed "Hiram W. Farnsworth, Indian Agent a commissioner on the part of the United States and the chiefs and headmen of the Kansas Tribe of Indians." H.W. was still living with his family at the Council Grove Indian Agency June 3, 1868. On that date a skirmish of the Cheyenne with the Kaw Indians occurred. This battle was full of sound and fury but had no casualties and this was the last Indian battle in the state of Kansas. It was conducted at the Council Grove Indian Agency and other locations with some arrows even landing in the grounds of the agency — the Farnsworth family members were spectators. During his tenure there, H.W. was appointed on March 13, 1862, for six months to be Commissioner on the part of the United States to negotiate treaties with the Kansas Indian tribes. Treaties concluded at the Kansas Agency with about one hundred tribes were signed by H.W. with his signature and seal.