County of Marker: Parmer County.
Location of Marker: 401 3rd St., courthouse lawn, Farwell
Marker Erected by: The State of Texas
Date Marker Erected: 1936
Marker text:
Named for John V. Farwell and C. B. Farwell. Builders of the Texas Capitol, 1882-1888, in exchange for three million acres of state land. Founders of the XIT Ranch, 1885.
The Person (John V. Farwell):
"FARWELL, JOHN VILLIERS (1825–1908). John V. Farwell, wholesale dry goods merchant and member of the Capitol Syndicate, was born at Painted Post in Steuben County, New York, on July 29, 1825. He was the third of five children born to Henry and Nancy (Jackson) Farwell, who made their living by farming and shipping lumber. In 1838, when John was thirteen, the family moved to Ogle County, Illinois, and settled in the Rock River valley near the town of Oregon. There John spent the remainder of his youth; he and his brothers helped build the family home, which often served as a local meeting house on Sundays. In 1845, after graduating from Mount Morris Seminary, John went to Chicago, where his older brother had moved the year before. After working briefly for the city, he became a bookkeeper for the Hamilton and Day dry goods firm, with which he remained for four years. On April 16, 1849, he married Abigail Gates Taylor. She died on May 9, 1851, a month after giving birth to their daughter. In the meantime, Farwell had joined the firm of Wadsworth and Phelps (later Cooley, Wadsworth, and Company), of which he was made general manager. In 1854 he married Emeret Cooley, a sister of a business associate; they had three sons and a daughter. In 1862 the firm became known as Cooley, Farwell, and Company, then in 1865, after he took it over, John V. Farwell and Company. Marshall Field, Potter Palmer, Levi Z. Leiter, and S. N. Kellogg were numbered among Farwell's partners at one time or another, and the Farwell Company was for many years Chicago's leading dry goods store.
"Unlike his brother and partner Charles, who helped form the Republican party and later served in both houses of Congress, John Farwell rarely participated in politics; however, he was an elector for Abraham Lincoln in 1860. In 1869 he was appointed a commissioner for Indian Affairs by President Ulysses S. Grant. He was a devout Methodist who headed the Chicago branch of the United States Christian Commission during the Civil War and was a leading friend and supporter of Dwight L. Moody's ministry. Farwell helped build the First Methodist Church in Chicago and was also a zealous supporter of the Young Men's Christian Association; he donated land in downtown Chicago for the first YMCA building.
"Farwell entered the Texas cattle-ranching scene in 1882, when, as a leading member of the Capitol Syndicate, he helped finance the building of the new Capitol in Austin. Both he and Charles were directors of the Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company, organized in London in 1885 to handle the land that became the XIT Ranch. In addition, he was for a time managing director of the XIT. In that position, Farwell spent some time at the ranch, where he occasionally held church services for the employees; his nephew Walter erected a summer residence near Channing that served as the new XIT headquarters.
"Farwell died on August 20, 1908, and was interred in Chicago. Even after ceasing cattle operations in 1912, the Farwell estate continued ownership of XIT properties in the form of a trust known as the Capitol Reservation Lands, organized in 1915. This trust remained in existence until the last of the Panhandle properties was sold. The family also maintained the dry goods business in Chicago until 1926, when it was sold to Carson, Pirie, and Company. Two towns in Texas were named for Farwell." ~ TSHA online
The Person (Charles B. Farwell):
"Farwell was born in Painted Post, New York and attended Elmira Academy before moving to Illinois in 1838. He first tried his hand at surveying and farming before moving to Chicago in 1844, when he went into banking. From 1853-1861, he served as the Clerk of Cook County. Farwell was "one of the principal builders in [Chicago's] business district" in the last quarter of the 19th century. That he was able to amass a sizeable fortune can be proven by the fact that he owned one of the finest mansions on Chicago's North Side.
"Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives four times beginning in 1870, winning his first election to the House by a healthy margin over Chicago's "Long" John Wentworth (mayor) (by some 5700 votes). Farwell went on to serve in the House of Representatives in the 42nd, 43rd, 44th and 47th Congresses . In 1876 the Democrat-controlled Congress accepted John V. Le Moyne's challenge to Farwell's election and removed Farwell from office; Farwell declined to run again at the time of the general election later on in 1876. In 1880, he was elected to another term in Congress (the 47th Congress). Upon the death of John A. Logan in 1887, Farwell was elected to serve out Logan's term in the U.S. Senate, but refused to run for re-election to a full term. Significantly, in Farwell's first term as Senator, he supported the introduction of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have granted women's suffrage rights (the right to vote) - simultaneously a landmark achievement of and a setback in the long struggle for voting rights for women that would not be overcome until the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920.
"In 1876, at his wife's urging, Farwell underwrote the construction of College Hall, North Hall and a gymnasium at Lake Forest College. The couple also donated additional land to the college which had been struggling since the end of the Civil War. Part of their philanthropy was to ensure a co-ed liberal arts college near home for their daughter, Anna, who graduated from Lake Forest College in 1880. Anna later married the composer Reginald de Koven, and became a successful socialite, novelist and amateur historian. His daughter Rose was married to Hobart Chatfield-Taylor." ~ Wikipedia
The City:
"FARWELL, TEXAS (Parmer County). Farwell, the county seat of Parmer County, is at the junction of U.S. highways 60 and 84, on the New Mexico state line in the southwestern part of the county. The townsite was located at the point where the Pecos Valley and Northern Texas Railway entered New Mexico, on land originally part of the XIT Ranch. R. H. Kemp established a lumber company nearby in 1904. The site, named for the brothers Charles B. and John V. Farwell, who headed the Capitol Syndicate, was surveyed in 1905. Farwell was made headquarters for the company's resident representative, James D. Hamlin, and its land commissioner, F. W. Wilsey. Almost immediately several substantial buildings were constructed: a large brick warehouse for R. C. Hopping and the Robertson brothers, who operated a grocery store in Texico; a group of brick stores and offices known as the "Hamlin Brick"; and later the Farwell Inn, a three-story brick hotel. A Congregational church built in 1907 doubled as a public school until separate facilities were built in 1910. A post office was established in 1906. Farwell supplanted Parmerton as county seat when Parmer County was organized in 1907; Hamlin was elected county judge. In 1908 the First National Bank of Farwell was chartered, and the Santa Fe Railroad established a freight depot, warehouse, and coalyard on the Texas side. B. F. Fears started publication of the State Line Tribune by 1910, when Farwell's population had grown to more than 800 and the town had begun to rival Texico and Clovis, New Mexico, as a railroad shipping center. The citizens had voted to incorporate in 1907, but Farwell was disincorporated and the bank closed in 1910 when city funds became badly depleted. The bank was rechartered in 1912 as the Texas State Bank of Farwell.
"Farwell grew while real estate developers continued to parcel off XIT lands and attract more settlers. A permanent courthouse was erected in 1917. That year C. A. Roberson sought to establish an automobile and tire manufacturing plant, but that scheme folded when he was jailed for selling fraudulent stock. By the mid-1920s the town had modern utilities, and further improvements were made on the waterworks by 1930. In 1950, with a population of 1,250, the town voted once again to incorporate and established a mayor-commission government. A medical clinic was built in 1955, and a year later a volunteer fire department was organized. The last thirty-nine acres of XIT Ranch land in Farwell was sold in 1963.
"The industries that serve modern agriculture in Farwell include a fertilizer plant, an irrigation pipe plant, several feedlot operations, and four grain elevators with a total storage capacity of more than six million bushels. The town has five churches. By 1960 the population was just over 1,000, and by 1967 Farwell supported more than ninety businesses. The annual Border Town Days is held the last weekend in July. The population in Farwell increased from 1,185 in 1970 to 1,354 by 1985 and 1,373 by 1990. In 2000 the population was 1,364." ~ TSHA online