McFarland, Joel B.

Born: 1812-04-25 Pennsylvania

Died: 1861-04-20 Indiana

Joel B. McFarland was a physician, state legislator, and militia officer. McFarland studied medicine in his native Pennsylvania. He began practicing medicine in Hamilton County, Ohio in 1835. In 1840, he married Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he eventually had at least four children. He soon also became involved in local politics. From 1841 to 1843, he represented Butler County in the Ohio General Assembly. Soon thereafter, he moved to Lafayette, Indiana. McFarland was an early officer in the Lafayette Lodge of the Order of the Odd Fellows, and in 1848, he was a charter member and the chief patriarch of the Wabash Encampment. McFarland was an early member of the Lafayette Medical Society, and he later became a member of the Indiana State Medical Society. In 1850, he was living in Lafayette’s Second Ward and practicing medicine and owned real property valued at $2,500. In 1850 and 1851, he represented Tippecanoe County at the Indiana state constitutional convention. From 1855 to 1857, McFarland was a member of the Board of Trustees for Indiana University. By 1860, McFarland owned real property valued at $1,500 and had a personal estate of $10,000.

Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993, 17 November 1840, Butler County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 2, Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, IN, 68; Burton Dorr Myers, Trustees and Officers of Indiana University 1820 to 1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1951), 214-15; Biographical Record and Portrait Album of Tippecanoe County, Indiana (Chicago: Lewis, 1888), 242, 243, 295, 296; Journal of the Convention of the People of the State of Indiana, to Amend the Constitution (Indianapolis: Austin H. Brown, 1851), 6; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, IN, 180-81; A History and Biographical Cyclopaedia of Butler County, Ohio (Cincinnati, OH: Western Biographical, 1882), 183; Bert S. Barlow, et al., eds., Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio (n.p.: B. F. Bowen, 1905), 142; Gravestone, Greenbush Cemetery, Lafayette, IN.