Ethan Bennett "E.B." Farnum
1826-after 1900. Merchant and Deadwood's first mayor
Ethan Bennett Farnum was born on November 10, 1826, in Massachusetts, the eldest of seven children, and served as postmaster at Springfield, Wisconsin, before heading west. He came to Deadwood from Wisconsin in 1876 and opened a general store.
The mayor
On August 18, 1876, he won the camp’s mayoral election with 672 of 1,139 votes cast. The town had no legal status, since it stood on land reserved by treaty, but he governed as if it did. He had a pest house built during the smallpox outbreak, started street cleaning, founded a fire department in December and opened the first school in November. On December 1, the new telegraph line let him exchange messages with Mayor Bresnahan of Cheyenne. City records spell his name Farnam at this point; most sources use Farnum.
The justice
His offices included head of the school board, justice of the peace and judge. In the last role he presided over many trials and over the town’s first marriage, that of Fannie Garrettson and Daniel Brown. HistoryNet adds that he sentenced horse thieves and cattle rustlers to hang, a claim worth treating cautiously, as the same article also credits him with the Grand Central Hotel.
Television and the record
HBO’s Deadwood made him a hotel proprietor in a highly fictionalized portrayal. His real business interests were in retail, Main Street property, the Laura Mine and Prince Oscar Lode, and a toll road toward Centennial. HistoryNet still calls him owner of the Grand Central, so the sources do not line up neatly.
After Deadwood
The great fire of September 26, 1879, destroyed many records of his activity, which is why so little else is known. After the fire he lost a race for justice of the peace, moved to Chicago and does not appear in the 1880 Deadwood census. He turns up again in the 1900 census in Maury County, Tennessee. No source consulted gives his date or place of death. For a founding mayor it is a thin ending, but it is what the record allows.