Ephraim Wilder Farley

Ephraim Wilder Farley (August 29, 1817 – April 3, 1880) was a U.S. Representative from Maine and a mid-nineteenth-century Whig politician who was active in both state and national government. He was born in Newcastle, Lincoln County, Maine, where he spent much of his life and to which he remained closely connected throughout his public career.

Farley was educated in the common schools of Newcastle before pursuing higher education at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He enrolled at Bowdoin in the early 1830s and graduated in 1836, joining the ranks of the college’s growing body of alumni who would go on to careers in law, politics, and public service. His classical education at Bowdoin provided the foundation for his subsequent legal and political work.

After completing his college studies, Farley read law in preparation for admission to the bar, following the customary practice of legal apprenticeship of the period. He was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in his native Newcastle. In addition to his legal work, he became involved in local affairs and quickly emerged as a figure in Maine’s Whig Party, which was then one of the two major political parties in the United States.

Farley’s formal political career began in the Maine House of Representatives. He served as a member of the state House in 1843, and, after a brief interval out of the legislature, returned to serve again from 1851 to 1853. During these years he participated in the legislative life of Maine at a time when the state was grappling with issues of economic development, transportation, and the evolving national debate over slavery and sectionalism. His repeated elections to the House reflected the confidence placed in him by his constituents in Lincoln County.

Building on his state legislative experience, Farley was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-third Congress, representing Maine in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1853, to March 3, 1855. His term in Congress coincided with a turbulent period in national politics, including the debates surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the shifting party alignments that would soon lead to the decline of the Whig Party. Farley sought reelection in 1854 to the Thirty-fourth Congress but was unsuccessful, a result that mirrored the broader collapse of the Whig organization in Maine and across the country.

After his service in the U.S. House, Farley continued his involvement in state politics. He served as a member of the Maine Senate in 1856, extending his legislative experience to the upper chamber of the state legislature. His Senate service marked the culmination of a public career that had included multiple terms in the Maine House of Representatives and a single term in the national Congress, reflecting a steady engagement with public affairs over more than a decade.

Farley spent his later years in Newcastle, where he had begun his legal and political life. He died there on April 3, 1880. He was interred in a tomb on the family estate in Newcastle, underscoring the enduring ties between his public career and his lifelong home in coastal Maine.