In Part 1, W.H. Farner left Iowa and became a Denver city councilman and physician to the 1st Colorado Infantry. After he accused the soldiers of misdeeds in the field, he went to Texas.
Confederate service
W.H. Farner became an assistant surgeon with Riley’s Regiment, 4th Texas Cavalry, in April 1862. He was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas.
A year later, Farner was captured at Bayou Teche, Louisiana, and paroled on May 11, 1863, below Port Hudson.
Brazos County, here I come
Farner bought 20 slaves (possibly as a broker) in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Farner valued the slaves at $14,000, and “refugeed” them to Brazos County, Texas, far from invading Yankees.
Now a slave owner (at least on paper), 42-year-old Farner married 24-year-old Sarah Swindler in Brazos County. It is assumed that Farner and his wife, Mary, had gotten a divorce.
Epidemic
In 1864, a man arrived in Galveston aboard a blockade runner from Cuba. He carried Yellow Fever. No one knew that mosquitoes carried the disease to others.
Two weeks later, a resident died. Fatalities climbed to 13. Farner wrote that the disease began a “gradual, persistent, and fatal march from house to house.”
People panicked, leaving if they could. Farner and other doctors stayed. Fourteen of them got sick, and three died.
Reportedly, some 250 people died, representing about a tenth of the civilians and soldiers who remained in the city.
Divided family
While Farner battled Yellow Fever in Texas, his son and namesake, William Henri Farner Jr., joined the Wisconsin Infantry Volunteers.
Freedmen’s Bureau
The following year, Farner surrendered with other Trans-Mississippi forces at Millican, Texas, in Brazos County, on June 26, 1865. Less than six months later, former slave-owner Farner worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau in Millican. He served the Republican administration. One of his goals? To see that former slaves were paid and treated fairly.
Historian Dale Baum (Counterfeit Justice: The Judicial Odyssey of Texas Freedwoman Azeline Hearne) explains: “Farner was too sympathetic to the planters and often too quick to administer cruel physical punishment to the ex-slaves.”
Some freedmen complained that Farner punished them, stringing them up by their thumbs. In May 1866, military authorities ordered his arrest.
Ever resourceful
Farner wanted to be appointed “District Judge, or Chief Justice of the County.” He cited his “year of sacrifice & toil for the present dominant party.” Farner listed his Republican credentials:
I started the first out & out Radical paper ever issued in the State of Iowa [and] canvassed the State for Fremont and Dayton … Our efforts swept over the State like a whirlwind … revolutionized the State and forever fixed it a brilliant satellite in the galaxy of universal freedom.
He wasn’t appointed to the bench, but he became a Radical Republican newspaper editor. In that role, he helped a former slave appeal for help from the Freedmen’s Bureau.
Thereafter, Dr. Farner moved to Illinois, practiced medicine, and died in 1878.
His co-editor’s view
Farner’s former co-editor Dixon recalled:
A sense of personal obligation never startled his conscience. He was without sympathy, and without affection, and without any grace which has its abode in the human heart; and yet he was hypocrite enough to seem to have them all in profusion.
Making sense of Farner
The Daily Iowa State Register commented:
Intellectually considered, he was rather a brilliant man … erratic, in all his ways, and yet there was the divinity of genius about him …
Naturally, he was not a bad man, but he was as capricious as April, and too lazy to resist temptation! He always kept half a dozen dogs frisking about his heels; and we never knew a man to turn out well with such barking associates.
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Thanks for reading my blog! Please leave any comments below.
venvs70
12 Apr 2016You really do a great job of introducing us to individuals, at least speaking for myself, that are interesting and yet relatively unknown in the shaping of not only our state, but that section of history.
David Connon
12 Apr 2016Hi, Venvs70.
Thank you for your kind comment! I have been very fortunate to find some interesting individuals.
Randall Schroeder
12 Apr 2016This is one of your more interesting characters. “As capricious as April” seems the perfect description.
David Connon
12 Apr 2016Hi, Randall.
I thought the same thing: “As capricious as April” seems to describe Dr. Farner. I was fortunate to find enough documentation to tell the story. Thanks for reading my blog!
Sarah Kay Bierle
13 Apr 2016Hmm…what a life of irony. “Hypocrite” was certainly an interesting (and likely accurate) description of this guy.
Did he have any room for outward religion in his life? Associated with any particular church? Or not religious at all?
David Connon
13 Apr 2016Hi, Sarah.
I can understand why you might describe Dr. Farner as a hypocrite. I’ve wrestled with how to understand him. I’ve moved from thinking him an opportunist and possibly a bad man, to thinking of him as brilliant and impulsive, hence unpredictable.
I don’t have any information about Dr. Farner’s religious affiliations or practices, unfortunately. Thanks for reading my blog!
Kathleen Parsons
15 Apr 2016Thanks for ‘the rest of the story’, reminiscent of the great late broadcaster Paul Harvey. My only disappointment was that you didn’t formally document when his wife divorced him … assuming you didn’t in Part I. Keep writing, your stories are fascinating and excellently written.
David Connon
15 Apr 2016Hi, Kathy.
Thank you for your encouragement! I found Dr. Farner to be a very interesting fellow. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any documentation of when he and his wife divorced.