William Farrar III

The eldest son of William Farrar Jr. and his wife Mary, was under legal age, when his father died in 1676, and his uncle John appears to have operated plantations which his father had bequeathed to his sons, particularly on Farrar's Island in Henrico County, which he bequeathed to this man and his brothers when he died in 1685. Their grandfather, also William Farrar had emigrated from England and became a lawyer, planter and member of the Virginia Governor's Council, but died in 1637 when both his sons were boys, as would his son (this man's father). His parents also had two other sons (Thomas and John) and daughter (Cicely III) who survived infancy.^[1]

William Farrar owned 700 acres in Henrico County in 1704, probably including Farrar's Island, but in that year his brother Thomas owned 1444 acres in the same county, probably including 550 acres on Farrar's Island that he sold to Thomas Randolph of Tuckahoe in 1627, about the time that this man's eldest son and heir, William Farrar IV sold 686 acres to the same man, and moved to what in that year became Goochland County.^[1]

Meanwhile, in 1685 this man had followed his father's, uncle's and grandfather's public careers by becoming a justice of the peace for Henrico County, and in 1698 he became captain of the militia, as well as served as county sheriff in 1690-92 and 1712–1713.^[1] This William Farrar won election to the House of Burgesses in 1700, and served alongside Thomas Cocke, but two years later voters elected two different burgesses, William Randolph and Francis Epps, both likewise of the First Families of Virginia.^[2]