Dr. Bernard Gaines Farrar Sr., 1785–1849

Dr. Bernard Gaines Farrar Sr. was born on 4 July 1785 in Goochland County, Virginia. He was an infant when his parents moved to Kentucky, and Bernard was first educated there, graduating from Transylvania University in Lexington. He then received his doctor’s degree in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Farrar came to St. Louis in 1807 and was the first physician to practice west of the Mississippi. He served as a surgeon during the War of 1812, after which he returned to St. Louis where he continued his practice until his retirement in 1835.

Bernard and Sarah Stubbs Christy were married in 1811 in St. Louis. Sarah was the daughter of William F. Christy and Martha Thompson Taylor and was born in Kentucky on 4 July 1794. She died in St. Louis on 3 November 1817 at the age of twenty-three, following the birth of their only daughter, Martha Jane Farrar.

Bernard married Ann Clark Thruston as his second wife on 10 February 1820 in Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky. Ann was the daughter of Charles Minn Thruston and Frances Eleanor “Fanny” Clark. Ann was born on 4 November 1798 in Caroline County, Virginia, and died on 14 March 1878 at the age of seventy-nine in Helena, Lewis and Clark County, Montana.

Ann’s mother, Fanny (Clark) Thruston was the younger sister of Gen. George Rogers Clark (a celebrated Revolutionary War officer) and Gov. William Clark (of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and later governor of the Missouri Territory). She had previously married Dr. James O’Fallon.

Bernard Gaines Farrar and Ann Clark Thruston had seven children: Charles Thruston, Dr. John O’Fallon, Benjamin O’Fallon, Gen. Bernard Gaines Jr., Hannah, Maj. James Sweringen, and Ellen Frances Farrar.

Dr. Bernard Farrar died on 1 July 1849 at the age of sixty-three of cholera during a major epidemic in St. Louis.

Written by Ted Steele
February 2021

© 2021, St. Louis Genealogical Society

Return to St. Louis City/County Biographies.

Last Modified: 22-Oct-2021 16:41