George Luther Farrow (1885 - 1956)

Born 6 Apr 1885 in Boone County, IN

Ancestors

Husband of Grace Glendona (Shields) Farrow — married 9 Sep 1908 (to 10 Dec 1918) in Boone County, IN

Husband of Carolyn Ellen (Arend) Farrow — married 28 Jan 1920 in Anderson, IN

Descendants

Died 8 Jul 1956 at age 71 in Daleville, Delaware Co, IN

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Biography'

Boone County, Indiana

Fifteen year old George appears first in the US 1900 Census (Roll 361 Bk.1, p151a) of Jackson Township, “Jamestown town”, enumerated on June 12, living at home with six siblings, father John Farrow and wife. They were near the Shields family who were enumerated next including ten year old Grace who would become his first wife. He attended school in Jamestown. The 1904-5 school year was 130 days, according to the attendance reports. He had 22 classmates in his ninth year (1903-4) and 13 in the tenth. That year there were only 5 students in the 12th grade. On both reports, locally highly respected teacher and principal Granville Wells, the father of future Indiana University President B. Herman Wells, is listed as teacher of the seventh and eighth grades. The 11th year report (1906) is hand written on note paper and shows the best grades: Gen History 99, Literature 98, Latin 87, Geometry 90. A fourth report stated that Gorge had "...attained the Scholarship necessary to obtain a certificate of Graduation from the Common Schools". It was a busy year for him. In 1907 he graduated high school, passed his church examinations, was ordained and licensed by the Indiana Methodist Protestant Church. Next year he married the girl next door, Grace Glendona Schields.

Rural Church Circuits to Elwood

From 1907 to 1916 Rev. Farrow served rural church circuits reached by horse and buggy in Worthington, Forrest, Hanfield, and Jonesboro, IN. In 1917 he moved to Elwood, IN as pastor of the Methodist Protestant Church, no longer extant but then at the corner of South D and Anderson streets, where wife Grace became a victim of the notorious 1918 flu epidemic, leaving him with two small children.

Indianapolis

Early in 1920 married Carolyn Ellen Arend and two years later was appointed to the Methodist (then Protestant) Victory Memorial Church in Indianapolis, IN. The church and next door parsonage are visible in street level photos on Google Earth. Search Victory Memorial United Methodist Church, 1930 Woodlawn Ave., Indianapolis, IN. He was pastor there for seven years and was appointed President of the Indiana Methodist Protestant Conference in 1929.

Advance, Indiana

During the depression years the Conference was so financially distressed that it could not pay his salary. While serving at churches he was normally furnished with a home, the church parsonage, but these were not available to the Conference President. He and his family lived in a rental property near his former church. When the Conference literally ran out of money, it became necessary to move his family into a property he owned in tiny Advance, IN where his mother and father were living and where there was enough space to cultivate a sizable garden. He and wife Carolyn were both good gardeners and home canned some of their harvest. George also sometimes helped his younger brother David who owned a small farm nearby where they regularly butchered hogs in the Fall . Although there was no cash, there was never any shortage of food and the family survived the depression years without feeling impoverished.

Greenfield - Daleville Indiana

When his term as Conference President was completed in 1934, his next church assignment was in Greenfield, IN where he was pastor until 1941. During the early part of his service there his Methodist Protestant denomination joined with Methodist Episcopal denominations to become the United Methodist Church.

Rev. Farrow completed his ministry with church assignments at Roanoke (1942-1944), Selma (1945-1951), and Daleville, IN and was beginning to think of retirement when overtaken by cancer in 1956.

Sources Federal Census data, Indiana State Library biographies and marriage indexes, personal papers preserved in his files and in the family history files of his son Farrow-440.

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