He first tried his hand at surveying and farming before moving to Chicago in 1844, when he went into banking. From 1853 to 1861, he served as the Clerk of Cook County. Farwell was "one of the principal builders in business district" in the last quarter of the 19th century. That he was able to amass a sizeable fortune can be proven by the fact that he owned one of the finest mansions on Chicago's North Side.
Political career
Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives four times beginning in 1870, winning his first election to the House by a healthy margin over Chicago's "Long" John Wentworth. Farwell went on to serve in the House of Representatives in the 42nd, 43rd, 44th and 47th Congresses. In 1876, the Democrat-controlled Congress accepted John V. Le Moyne's challenge to Farwell's election and removed Farwell from office; Farwell declined to run again at the time of the general election later on in 1876. In 1880, he was elected to another term in Congress. Upon the death of John A. Logan in 1887, Farwell was elected to serve out Logan's term in the U.S. Senate, but refused to run for re-election to a full term. Significantly, in Farwell's first term as Senator, he supported the introduction of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have granted women's suffrage rights - simultaneously a landmark achievement of and a setback in the long struggle for voting rights for women that would not be overcome until the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920.
Later life
In 1879, Farwell and his brother John were part of a group of Illinois businessmen and politicians responsible for construction of the Texas State Capitol building. The Farwell's reward for this was to become owners of over 3 million acres of land in Texas, upon which they founded the XIT Ranch. The city ofFarwell, Texas is named for the Farwell brothers.
Personal life
In 1852, Farwell was married to Mary Eveline Smith, a New Englander who received a private education. Together, they were the parents of nine children, only four of whom lived to adulthood:
Walter C. Farwell, who married Mildred Mary Williams, a daughter of Gen. Robert Williams.
Grace Farwell, who married Dudley Winston, a son of U.S. Minister Frederick Hampden Winston in 1888. After his death, she married Robert Greaves McGann in 1906.
After a long illness, Farwell died in Lake Forest, Illinois on September 23, 1903. His daughter Rose inherited his estate, Fairlawn, at 965 E. Deerpath in Lake Forest. Upon her death in 1918, his other daughter Grace inherited the mansion, and when it burned in 1920, the McGanns hired New York architects Delano and Aldrich to rebuilt it in a Federal style with neo-Palladian brick and was finished in 1923 with original landscape was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
In 1876, at his wife's urging, Farwell underwrote the construction of College Hall, North Hall and a gymnasium at Lake Forest College. The couple also donated additional land to the college which had been struggling since the end of the Civil War. Part of their philanthropy was to ensure a co-ed liberal arts college near home for their daughter, Anna, who graduated from Lake Forest College in 1880. Anna later married the composer Reginald de Koven, and became a successful socialite, novelist and amateur historian. His daughter Rose was married to Hobart Chatfield-Taylor.
