My Genealogy Hound

JAMES McFERRAN, Sr., born in Woodford county, Ky., twelve miles from historic Lexington, July 22, 1810, in the blue-grass country, where he was raised until twenty-one years of age. In 1831 he removed to Ralls county, Mo., in the Salt River country, where he kept a grocery, and two years later emigrated to Lafayette county, Wis., where he engaged in mining for eighteen years. Married Susan Hardy, of Scott county, Ky., Nov. 20, 1836, who was born Sept. 6, 1821, The names of the children are Samuel, Charles (died Nov. 25, 1847), Susanna, Mary, James A., Charles L., Virginia, Elizabeth, Joseph (died Sept. 2, 1875), William W., Hugh, Ellen, and John. The subject of this sketch removed to Jasper county in 1874, where he now resides on a farm near Carl Junction comprising about 300 acres of land, about 120 acres of it under cultivation. There is a fine orchard of five acres on the farm; good crops were harvested the past season. Both are members of the Catholic Church, and now in the eve of life can look back over a long, eventful, and well spent life of usefulness and comparative prosperity. Mr. McFerran’s ancestry are of the pure Irish stock, hailing from County Antrim, Ireland, on his father’s side. His father came to America in 1798 for practical reasons. His maternal ancestors were the O’Harra’s, of the County Connaught, Ireland, and are descendants of a very ancient Catholic family. His wife’s people are of the Hardy family, a mixed race of Scotch, Irish, and English, and also the McAtee’s, who were among the old Maryland emigrants who came to this country with Lord Baltimore, settling in St. Marys, Md. It is a saying eminently true that blood is little thicker than water, but the ancestry of a family who have endured the scenes of wars, famine, and the toils incident to pioneer life, usually thicken their blood by such experiences, and the progenitors of the McFerran race are no exception to this rule.