New article by Karen

Mary Susan (Mayhan/Mahan) Farnham
By Karen Cuccinello

This interesting memoriam booklet was donated to the Stamford Village Library by the Hobart Historical Society. The booklet lists where the service took place at Sutton’s Funeral Home Stamford, clergy, cemetery, floral offerings, pall bearers (Chester Lane, Clyde Darling, Ward Stevens and Arthur Rogers) and parents.
Mary was born probably 1851 in Gilboa to William M. (1823-1860) and Lucinda (Wallace 1827-1908) Mayhan. She had two younger sisters Elizabeth/Libbie J. (Mrs. Cyrenus Parsons 1853-1921) and Ella F. Mayhan (1856-1904). She and her sisters lived in Jefferson in 1860 and then lived with her grandparents Henry and Mary Wallace in Gilboa as her father had died shortly after her youngest sister was born.
Mary was a scholar of Mr. C.S. Lewis at the New York Conference Seminary and listed as a teacher in Gilboa in 1870. She married George W. Farnham, 18 years her senior, about 1895 and lived in Long Island and New Haven, CT. She spent the year 1911 with her sister Libbie in Stamford before returning to the area and getting an apartment in Stamford about 1914. Her husband was 76 years old in 1910 so I suspect she returned because her husband died. She listed as a widow in the 1920 Stamford census.
Mary died, November 16, 1932, at the home of her nephew Clyde Parsons of South Gilboa and is buried in the Stamford Cemetery section D-66. I do not believe she had any children.
An interesting side note; her mother Lucinda was the toll gate keeper for 22 years at the toll gate house that was East of Stamford on the Grand Gorge Road (Rte. 23). The toll house was donated by Fred Murphy and moved to the Delaware County Historical Association museum grounds in Delhi 1968.