John H. Farmer, a farmer and prominent business man of Chestnut Bluff,
Crockett Co., Tenn., was born in Williamson County, Tenn., April 14, 1838, and
was the oldest child of a family of seven sons and four daughters born to H.
E. and Minerva A. (Mallory) Farmer, and is of French-Irish descent. His
father was born and partly raised in North Carolina, but his parents moved to
Williamson County when he was a boy, and he was educated there, also married
there, and lived in that county until 1858, when he moved to Mississippi, and
from there to Crockett County, Tenn., where he still lives. The mother was a
native of Virginia, and is still living in Crockett County. Our subject, John
H. Farmer, was raised on a farm, and received a good education. He has always
farmed in connection with merchandising and other business, and for four years
has been a magistrate in his district. He was in the Confederate Army, and
was in the Forty-seventh Tennessee Infantry, but was soon released on account
of disability. February 16, 1864, he was married, in southern Illinois, to
Miss Sara Lee, daughter of Peter Lee, a farmer and merchant Tamaroa, Ill.
Mrs. Farmer was born in Illinois in 1846, and belongs to the Missionary
Baptist Church. Mr. Farmer is in politics a Republican, and cast his first
presidential vote for John Bell. He owns 2,100 acres of land, and raises
cotton and grain. He is a member of the board of management, and a
stockholder in the Forked Deer Flouring-mills, located at Dyersburg, Tenn.,
and is a man of fine business qualifications.

Goodspeed’s Biographies of Lauderdale Co., TN