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Earliest Members of the Century Association

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Gustavus Farley Jr.

Merchant

Centurion, 1888–1899

Born 4 July 1844 in Chelsea, Massachusetts

Died 19 March 1899 in New York (Manhattan), New York

Buried Cheney Cemetery, Manchester, Connecticut

Proposed by John H. Platt and James P. Kimball

Elected 3 March 1888 at age forty-three

Archivist’s Note: Father of Frank Cheney Farley

Century Memorial

Gustavus Farley, Jr., was a descendant of the early English settlers in Ipswich, Mass.

His grandfather, Robert Farley, and his great-grandfather Michael Farley, were soldiers in the Revolutionary war.

He was educated in private schools, and when seventeen years old went to London for three years of preparatory work before going to China to join the firm of Augustin Heard & Co. He made many voyages to China and Japan. He lived in Yokohama from 1866 until 1883, when he came to New York and was a member of the firm of Fraser, Farley & Co., of Yokohama, established in 1876.

He married, March 24, 1880, Katharine Sedgwick Cheney, oldest daughter of Frank Cheney, of South Manchester, Conn.

One son, Frank Cheney Farley, born in Yokohama, is now a student at Harvard.

In that tacit social solidarity of the Far East, uniting Americans and English alike in a common brotherhood, before the day of ocean cables, few were better known or more highly esteemed. To the now scattered members of that brotherhood at home and abroad, as well as to members of this Association who knew him well, he leaves recollections as a companion of unfailing amiability and responsiveness, and as one who, though reticent of speech and of retiring ways, combined rich and interesting experience with a fund of special information which it was ever a delight to draw upon.

Henry E. Howland
1900 Century Association Yearbook