Lucian Nester Farris

Name in Records

His middle name appears as both “Nester” and “Nestor” across different sources. The biography compiled from Civil War records (ARN0000233) uses “Nester”; some compiled sources use “Nestor.” Both refer to the same man.

Vital Facts

The Man Who Came from Illinois

Lucian Nester Farris arrived in what was then Ripley County, Missouri, around 1840 — a twenty-year-old from Franklin County, Illinois, making his home in the Ozark hills. He came before Reynolds County even existed (it was carved from Ripley and Shannon counties in 1845). He married Nancy Hyatt that February, settled in, and over the next three decades became one of the county’s most prominent citizens: a farmer, a twice-elected state legislator, and a Confederate officer.

The 1850 census found him in District 76, Reynolds County — the same district where John Carter Rayfield Sr. was farming at the same time. At thirty, he had a wife, young children, and land. At thirty-eight, he was winning a seat in the Missouri State Legislature. At forty, the Civil War would sweep through and upend everything he had built.

The Legislature

In 1858, Lucian was elected Reynolds County’s representative to the Missouri General Assembly. It was a remarkable thing for an Ozark hill farmer: a seat in a chamber of 133 men in Jefferson City, making laws for the state.

He wrote to his wife Anna from Jefferson City on January 12, 1859 — one of the only personal letters in this family’s entire documentary record. It survived. The spelling is phonetic (he writes “rite” for write, “rote” for wrote, “no” for know), which tells you something about the limits of frontier schooling, even for a man capable of winning an election. But the voice comes through clearly: a practical man who loves his wife, worries about his family at home, finds Jefferson City ugly, and has real opinions about Kansas border raiders.

The letter was written in the same legislative session in which Kansas border violence and the slavery question were roiling Missouri politics. The “Montgomery” he names is almost certainly James Montgomery, the antislavery Kansas jayhawker whose raids across the border in 1858–1859 killed settlers and freed enslaved people. Lucian, a Missouri Democrat in a slaveholding county, saw those raids as terrorism.

“Little Johnny” — asked to be kissed by his father from 200 miles away — was almost certainly a young child by his second wife Anna Carter, married 1856. He would have been an infant or toddler by January 1859.

After serving his first term (1858–1860), Lucian came home. Two years later, the war came with him.

The Civil War

Missouri never seceded, but Reynolds County was Confederate territory in everything but law. When the war began, Lucian went with the Confederacy. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel in the 3rd Regiment of Infantry, 1st Division of the Missouri State Guard, beginning service on August 9, 1861.

He served until around March 1862, then returned to Reynolds County. Nearly a year later, on February 1, 1863, Union forces captured him in Reynolds County itself. He was taken to Pilot Knob — the Iron County Union stronghold — and from there sent to Myrtle Street Prison in St. Louis around February 12, 1863.

He was released on an oath of loyalty and a bond of $1,000, restricted to remaining within Iron and Reynolds Counties. But Union records indicate he didn’t stay out. He reportedly rejoined Confederate forces for Price’s Missouri Raid in 1864 — Sterling Price’s last major Confederate push through Missouri — serving as Captain of Farris’s Company, Clardy’s Battalion, Missouri Cavalry. When General M. Jeff Thompson surrendered that unit on May 11, 1865, Lucian was paroled at Wittsburg, Arkansas, on May 25, 1865.

His two eldest sons, William and Seth, both served as officers in Missouri Confederate units.

The Years Between the Wars and the Second Term

The Missouri Constitution of 1865 included the Drake Amendment, which required an oath that one had never supported the Confederacy. For former Confederate officers like Lucian, this meant being barred from voting, holding office, and in some cases practicing professions, for years. He had been elected to the Legislature once before the war. He could not be elected again while the Drake Amendment stood.

When it was repealed in 1871, Lucian ran again. He won a second term as Reynolds County’s state representative, serving from 1872 to 1874. He was fifty-one years old, a decade out of Confederate service, and still the kind of man his county sent to Jefferson City.

Death and Burial

Lucian Nester Farris died on August 8, 1876, in Reynolds County, Missouri. He was fifty-five years old. His death notice ran in the St. Louis Republic on August 16, 1876 — a notice, not an obituary, which suggests his death was known to readers beyond the county.

He is buried at Buffington Cemetery, the community cemetery on the ridge above the Buffington valley in Reynolds County. John Carter Rayfield Sr. — whose son had married Lucian’s daughter — would be buried there too, twenty-seven years later. In 1948, the Army Corps of Engineers closed the dam that created Clearwater Lake. The valley flooded. The cemetery, on high ground, survived.

Census Timeline

Family

First Marriage: Nancy Hyatt (married February 15, 1840; died ~1854)

Nancy was the daughter of Seth Hyatt. She and Lucian were married in what was still Ripley County (Reynolds County was created in 1845). Their marriage produced six known children before her death in 1854:

Second Marriage: Anna Carter (married September 7, 1856)

Anna was the daughter of William and Nancy Carter. She was approximately twenty-five years old when she married Lucian in 1856. His January 1859 letter — “ciss by sweet little Johnny for your dear” — refers to their son John Carter Farris, born 1858. The “Carter” in his name was almost certainly taken from Anna’s maiden name, a common 19th-century practice. Anna and Lucian had nine children together. Their last child, Ella, was born on May 2, 1876 — just three months before Lucian died on August 8. What became of Anna after his death is not yet documented.

Children’s dates sourced from census records via Ancestry tree. Nancy Ann is the only child confirmed by multiple independent primary records in this research set; all others are probable based on census evidence and should be verified independently.

What We’re Still Looking For

Several pieces of Lucian’s story remain incomplete. If you have family records, photographs, or memories that might help, please get in touch.