Sometimes she walked and sometimes she got to ride in the wagon. There were times Susan was excited about the journey to Illinois and other times she hated it. Travel for the Farr’s was limited to foot or horse and their sturdy covered wagon. Susan Farr was born on September 3, 1847 in Anderson Township, Hamilton County, Ohio which is nine miles east of Cincinnati. She was the third child of William and Azuba Farr. Susan was six years old when her parents moved the family by covered wagon from Ohio to Fulton County, Illinois in 1853. It was a journey of 350 miles from just east of Cincinnati, Ohio across Indiana to western Illinois. Susan grew up on the family farm her father bought near Ipava, Illinois. As all farm children, she helped the family by making candles, sewing clothes, preparing fibers like wool and flax to spin and weave and cared for younger brothers and sisters Samuel, Aryeline, Ben, John and James. At the age of 18, Susan married William Horner on November 16, 1865. He was a local boy. His father owned a farm not far from the Farr’s.
But soon Susan was to become a statistic, women in the United States suffered a staggering mortality rate of one in eight when giving birth in the 1800s. Sadly, Susan was one of those statistics she died after giving birth to her daughter, also named Susan on January 24, 1866. Little baby Susan Horner died four months later on May 22, 1866. Grief stricken William Horner buried his wife and daughter at Montgomery Cemetery in Fulton County, Illinois.
Farr's of Fulton County, Illinois 