Norfolk County MA Archives Biographies.....Farrington, Edmund F. 1820 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com March 10, 2006, 6:02 pm

Author: E. O. Jameson (1886)

EDMUND F. FARRINGTON, ESQ.

EDMUND F. FARRINGTON, son of Asahel and Henrietta (Fisher) Farrington, was born
Oct. 25, 1820, in the "southwest room of the old Otis Fairbanks house," which
formerly stood on the road from West Medway to the Village. His maternal
grand-parents, Leonard and Betsey Fisher, resided for years on the borders of
Franklin. Their bodies rest in the old burying-ground in West Medway. They
originally came from Wrentham, as did his paternal grand-parents. Mrs. Henrietta
Farrington, his mother, resided, during the later years of her life, in West
Medway, and became a member of the Congregational Church in that place, but died
in 1846, in Warren, Mass. "Incompatibility of temper" caused an early separation
between Asahel and Henrietta Farrington, and the guardianship of Edmund was
assigned to his mother, who returned to her father's house. Asahel settled in
one of the northern towns in New Hampshire, married again and became the father
of nine sons and daughters. He finally died at an advanced age in Lyndon, Vt.
Some years before his death he became a Methodist lay preacher. Edmund
Farrington in early life was frail in body, bashful and retiring in disposition,
imaginative and unstable in mind. A few summers and winters in the district
school and one term at Leicester Academy sufficed him for schooling in "book
learning." The hand of poverty was ever upon him. In his tenth year he was "put
out" on the farm of Sanford Ware, in Franklin. After one season of farming we
find him making cotton wadding with A. M. B. Fuller, in what is now known as
Daniels' box factory, in North Franklin. Subsequently he worked for Hiram
Metcalf, making stocking yarn in the same building, and a year or two more as
card stripper and piecer in White's and Gills' factories. At the age of eighteen 
he began to learn the carpenter trade. He afterward worked for "Boss Daniels" at
boot making, having been instructed by William H. Temple. Leaving Medway in
1839, he went on a whaling voyage from New Bedford, was left in the Azore
Islands, shipped from there to the coast of Africa; thence to Brazil, and coming
up to the West Indies, he ran away in San Domingo, whence, after a sojourn of
several weeks, he shipped and worked his passage to Boston in the brig "Sea
Eagle." Soon after his return from sea he joined the Fourier Association at
Brook Farm, West Roxbury. Here he became acquainted with such men as Ripley,
Dana, Parker, and Greeley, and became dimly conscious that he had a mind and a
soul, and that there might be a place and a work for him in the world. At Brook
Farm he learned last making, which he followed in Boston, Maiden, Lynn, and
Danvers, Mass., and in Gardiner, Me. In Lynn he edited for a time a paper called
The Forum. He contributed also to various papers at different times and rode the
"lecture hobby" with some success. He took up gas and steam fitting in Portland,
and superintended gas works in Gardiner, Me. He married in 1847, in Lowell,
Mass., Miss Emma A. Smiley, of Gardiner, with whom he led a happy life until her
death in 1880. They had four children, but only a son and a daughter survive. In
Lowell he assisted to build and fit up the large carpet mill, and afterward went
to Chicago and engaged in building. He returned to Poughkeepsie, N. Y., where he
remained for eighteen years, engaged mostly in contracting and building. He
removed to New York and followed the same business, but failed in it during the
first years of the war. While looking over a scrap of The New York Herald, in
which a workman had brought a lunch, he saw an advertisement for a master
carpenter on the Covington and Cincinnati suspension bridge. He answered this
advertisement, was accepted and spent nearly three years in the position,
mastering meantime all the mysteries of the business. He was next appointed
superintendent of construction on the new suspension bridge at Niagara Falls,
where he remained a year. He afterwards erected two suspension bridges over the
Delaware River, between New York and Pennsylvania, at Hancock and Lordville. He
was called to East River Bridge in 1870, and placed in charge of the wood work
of that structure, to which was soon added the iron work, and finally the wire
work, when he was installed master mechanic. He remained on this bridge twelve
years and four months, when he retired July 31, 1882, on account of failing
health. While on this work he went through the operations of sinking the
caissons safely; got over all the temporary wire ropes and erected the
foot-bridge after his own plans; and first crossed the space from one anchorage
to the other in a "boatswain's chair," attached to the smallest of all the
ropes. He erected the machinery for cable making, made the cables and suspended
a large portion of the superstructure, and inspected and prepared the lumber for
the roadway. No other individual had any previous knowledge of suspension bridge
building except Col. W. A. Roebling, Engineer in Chief, and for nine years this
gentleman was unable to visit the work, or to give it proper personal attention,
so that the burden fell on Mr. Farrington. How well he bore it and how
patiently, in face of the intrigues of place-seekers and the opposition of
assistant engineers, arising from professional jealousy, the completed work and
the encomiums of the public, who watched him in its daily progress testify. When
he left the bridge, little remained but routine work to be done and men who had
grown up under his instruction remained to do it. Mr. Farrington retired in 1882
to his native town to recuperate, where he remained until 1884, when he returned
to New York to engage in new enterprises. Mr. Farrington's townsmen have reason
to feel somewhat of pride and gratification in the success of one born among
them who was a weak, friendless child, thrown on the world and his own resources
at an early age, drifting for years on the tide without chart or compass, but
who finally became an esteemed Christian, honored and even famous for his
mechanical achievements.


Additional Comments:
THE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF PROMINENT PERSONS,
AND
The Genealogical Records
OF
MANY EARLY AND OTHER FAMILIES
IN
MEDWAY, MASS. 1713-1886.
Illustrated
WITH NUMEROUS STEEL AND WOOD ENGRAVINGS.
BY
E. O. JAMESON,
THE AUTHOR OK "THE COGSWELLS IN AMERICA," "THE HISTORY OF MEDWAY, MASS." ETC.
MILLIS, MASS. 1886.

Copyright, 1886.
E. O. JAMESON, MILLIS, MASS.
All Rights Reserved.

J. A. & R. A. REID, PRINTERS, PROVIDENCE, R. I.


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