The following is from "The Family of Willis Vernon Farr" by Jayne E. Bickford:
There follows accounts of the death of Louise's third great grandmother, Lucretia (Whitney) Farr. I found these accounts among my mother's papers after her death and presume they originally belonged to my grandfather, Willis Vernon Farr. It is stated in one of the accounts that Lucretia's grandfather, Joshua Whitney, was the first settler of Bridgewater, Vermont, but this is disproved (see last page of this section).
“Mrs. Harlan Farr died Saturday after an illness of less than two weeks, although she had not been in good health for a long time. They had this spring moved into the village and she was anticipating much pleasure in her new surroundings but she had a stroke of paralysis and steadily declined. She was a very social woman, a kind neighbor and will be much missed. She leaves only one child a daughter of fifteen. Her funeral was attended by Revs. Wiswall and Mitchell on Monday and she was buried beside her son in Westminster.”
“She leaves only one child a daughter of fifteen” of course, was an incorrect statement, and the following account of Mrs. Farr's death correctly shows her to have also left a son.
“Death of Mrs. Harlan P. Farr
“Lucretia Whitney, 61, wife of Harlan P. Farr, died about 9 o'clock Saturday morning from the effects of a shock of paralysis May 3. She had had heart disease for over a year, and under the strain of the paralytic stroke her heart was unable to maintain its action. Mrs. Farr was born in Bridgewater, this state, in that part of the town known as Bridgewater Hollow. Her father was Joshua Whitney, whose father was the first settler in Bridgewater. Her father died In 1848, and when she was 16 years old the moved to Westminster with her mother. She married Mr. Farr of Westminster and continue to live there until they moved to East Putney, where, for many years, Mr. Farr has been a prosperous farnier, working several hundred acres of land. About two months ago Mr. Farr bought and moved into the F. 0. Pierce house, on the Brattleboro road in this village. Mrs. Farr was striken with paralysis while working in her kitchen, and steadily failed until the end. The funeral was held at the house at 1 o'clock Monday, Rev. E. F. Mitchell officiating. The burial was in Westminster. Besides her husband Mrs. Farr leaves a son, Frank, in Westminster, and a daughter, Alice, who lives at home. She was a sister of Mrs. Lucia Chapin, Mrs. Minerva Church, Mrs. Clarissa Allbee of Westminster, Mrs. Ann Atwood of bloodstock, Norman Whitney of Putney, Francis Whitney of Indiana and George Whitney of Colorado.
It is to be noted that Lucretia Whitney's brother Norman married Ellen Mary Farr, sister of Harlan Page
Farr.
Recent acquisition of a newly compiled History of Bridgewater by Gladys Adams disproves the statment in Lucretia (Whitney) Farr's obituary that her grandfather was the first settler of Bridgewater. There were a number of persons there earlier. In fact the census of 1790 shows 60 heads of families, and it wasn't until 1801 that Joshua Whitney arrived on the scene. The above history states:
“Joshua Whitney came to Bridgewater from Wendell NH in 1801 and settled near Bridgewater Hollow. His name appears in Wendell records on a list of those who had just purchased land in town and made some small improvements and then went volenters into the army in differant departments.' Joshua Whitney died Bridgewater Dec 1 1816, age 70, leaving a wife Sarah and ten children some of whom had moved to northern New York."
The ancestry of this Joshua Whitney has not yet been proved by your compiler, which she would like to do in order to establish the relationship between him and the Hannah Whitney who married Samuel Farr (son of Stephen and Mary Taylor).
