The next in our line of McFarrens is the brother to Amelia, John McFarren 1792, second son of Reverend John McPherrin 1757 and Mary Stevenson McPherrin. It appears that possibly all of his siblings remained in Pennsylvania, but this John was quite a wanderer.
As a young man, still in Pennsylvania about the year 1816-17, John 1792 married Anna Maria Elizabeth Foust, the daughter of Jacob Foust and Anna Maria Catherine Laty.
Another note about names seems to be required here, this time regarding German customs. The Foust/Faust family, a name that also had alternate spellings, were from Ravolzhausen, Hesse, Germany. According to Dr. Howard Faust, a Foust/Faust family researcher from Indiana, the family emmigrated from Germany to Pennsylvania in 1733. Anna Maria Elizabeth’s father, Jacob Foust, was born in 1772 in Greenwich Twp, Berks, PA, as was her mother who had a similar German heritage. The mother’s family name was a variation of Laty, Lady, Ledy, Leidy, with or without an umlaut (accent or aid to pronunciation).
The spelling is not all that becomes a challenge with German family research. In addition there were customs in some German areas where you will find that all of the sons in a family had the same first name, frequently Johann, and all of the daughters also, often Anna. This helps us understand the reference in some areas to the wife of John 1792 (by then with the spelling McFarren or a variation thereof). She was called Anna Maria Elizabeth Foust in the Foust/Faust research. She was just called Elizabeth in later census, and in all other written records, like land deeds. Some of the extended McFarren family tell us that Elizabeth was also commonly referred to as "Martha," and entered as such on death certificates for her children. Fun, eh? (And then there are the Gleffes, but that’s another story!)
Back to our narrative. Before leaving Pennsylvania around 1819, John 1792 and Elizabeth expanded their young family by two with the birth of daughter Maria and son Jacob. They then left the McPherrins and traveled with the Foust family to Highland County, Ohio. Foust family records tell us that in:
...1818, Daniel (Elizabeth’s brother) and his oldest son, Jonathan, walked via the old Zanes Trail to Zanesville, Ohio, thence southwest through Chillicothe to Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio. Here they both found work and were then followed by other members of the family, including the McFarrens.
John 1792 and Elizabeth McFarren resided in Salem Township, Highland, Ohio, until about 1837-9. Here they added 2 sons and 4 daughters to the family, for a total of 8 children. Bernard Harrold led me in the direction for finding land records and census information for the family in this location. He tells us:
In Highland Co. John McFarren lived in Salem twp. where Jacob Faust lived. Since John owned no land in Highland Co. it is reasonable to suppose he farmed all or part of Jacob Faust's land-perhaps he continued to do so after Jacob's death in 1830 until Anna Maria's (Elizabeth’s) inherited interest was sold in 1839, about the same time she and John moved to Wells Co., IN.
At the sale of Jacob Faust's personal effects, John McFarren bought 3 lots of crockery ware, a chopping axe, 2 buckets, 10 pewter plates and 1 pewter basin, 1 calf skin and under leathers for shoes, and 1 field of wheat. When John Faust, his brother-in-law, died in 1831 John bought a pen knife, a pair of suspenders, 5 pairs of pantalons, and one blanket. In all, John spent $17.26.
John McFarren 1792
When the McFarrens made the move to Indiana, they joined other families who became the fabric of life in Huntington and Wells Counties, and eventually in their own family’s lives. The McFarren children married into many of Wells County’s founding families. In fact, reading the Census for Wells County from 1840 onward becomes overwhelming because nearly every household has some relationship to the family. Talk about cousins! The community has a healthy interest in genealogy, lucky for us. I’ve been able to make contact with a number of researchers from the area and we have hashed out details and had many great conversations over the years. Some Jackson, Foust and McFarren family who still live in the area, and others who grew up there and still have ties, have very generously sent me pictures of ancestors and tombstones, copies of bible records, wills, etc.