The Ferris Family Before the Wheel

The Ferris Lineage is the descendants and stewardship page. This page is the historical network around the engineer: Greenwich, Herkimer County, Galesburg, Carson City, Riverside. It uses only public claims about deceased people. Family photographs stay private by default.

The immigrant Jeffrey Ferris (c. 1610–1666) of Greenwich, Connecticut, whose English origins the compiler explicitly records as unproven.^[1]

In the James Ferris compilation the generation between Jeffrey’s son James and the James Ferris born in 1699 is struck through with the compiler’s note “This has been questioned so many times, I am deleting it,” so the family’s descent from the immigrant runs through one link the compiler himself marked as questioned.^[2]

The family compilation identifies a Revolutionary-era Sylvanus Ferris of Greenwich and South Salem (born 1737) as the father of Silvanus of Galesburg; the compiler himself flags a conflict between 1821 and 1824 for the death date on the stone.^[2]

Knox College’s 1912 anniversary history names Silvanus Ferris among the first trustees and the purchasing committee; the family record places him among the Galesburg founders with the Rev. George Washington Gale.^{[3][4, p. 22 and plate caption][5]}Knox College’s own 1912 anniversary history names Silvanus Ferris among the first trustees elected on 7 January 1836, when the subscribers accepted the purchasing committee’s report.^{[3][4, p. 22]}

By the family record, George Sr. was born at Norway, New York, on 14 May 1818, the youngest son of Silvanus, and married Martha Edgerton Hyde in Knox County in September 1840.^[3]The family record lists ten children; by its own birth dates the eldest was Albert Roland (born 1841), with Frederick Hyde (born 1843) the first in the compiler’s numbering and the eldest surviving son after 1887.^{[3][6, pp. 60, 112, 114, 124–125]}

The family record says George Sr. was named for the Rev. George Washington Gale, Silvanus Ferris’s friend and co-founder of Galesburg and Knox College; the engineer inherited the full name.^[3]George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on 14 February 1859 (the family record also preserves a variant of 16 February).^{[3][6, p. 60][8, Item 8, Statement of Significance][12, pp. 515–516][13, pp. 32–34]}

The family record places Nathan Olmsted Ferris as Silvanus of Galesburg’s second child and as the father of the Riverside pioneer Sylvanus Harvey Ferris; it records Nathan’s death at Weaverville, California, in 1850.^[3]His brother Frederick served with the 33rd Illinois Infantry in the Civil War, according to his 1925 obituary as transcribed in the family record (which itself notes some service details are inexact).^[3]

In 1864 George Sr. sold his Galesburg farm and took his wife and eight of his ten children by wagon to Carson City, Nevada, a journey of nearly five months; George Jr. was five.^{[3][6, p. 127][8, Item 8, quoting S. Allen Chambers Jr. (HABS)]}The family first farmed in Carson Valley, where George Sr. imported and planted large numbers of eastern shade and forest trees; Thompson & West’s 1881 History of Nevada, as quoted in the National Register nomination, is the contemporary notice of that work.^{[3][8, Item 8, quoting Thompson & West, History of Nevada (1881)]}The family record, and later Carson City notices, credit him with planting trees on the State Capitol grounds. A contemporary planting contract has not yet been read.^[3][9]

Gregory Alvin Sears built the house at 311 West Third Street, Carson City, in 1863.^{[10, Section 8][11, p. 3]}G. W. G. Ferris Sr. purchased the Third Street property (Block 28, lots 2 and 3) on 10 March 1868.^{[10, Section 8]}The family home at Third and Division Streets is listed on the National Register as the G. W. G. Ferris House and now known as the Sears–Ferris House.^{[3][8, Item 8; NRIS record 79003438][10, Section 8][11, p. 3]}On 29 April 1870 the Carson Daily Appeal reported fruit and shade trees “on the premises of Mr. G. W. G. Ferris, Third Street the old Sears place.”^{[10, Section 8][11, p. 3]}

His sister Margaret (“Maggie”) married the Carson Valley rancher Fred Dangberg in 1866 and lived to 1946 (family record; Weingardt).^{[3][6, p. 125][6, p. 64]}By a family tradition Weingardt recorded in 2007, the Dangbergs invested in the Wheel; no stock record has been seen.^{[6, p. 78]}Both the family record and Weingardt say his niece Eva Dangberg rode sixty-four times; Weingardt adds that a certificate signed by Ferris survives in the Dangberg family papers.^{[3][6, p. 96]}

The youngest child, Mary Amanda “Mame” Ferris (1861–1951), married Alexander M. Ardery of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad in 1880; in 1890 George Sr. sold her the Carson City house, which remained hers until 1922 and was long known as the Ardery House.^{[3][8, Item 8]}

The family compilation, quoting a Riverside county history, says nephew Sylvanus Harvey Ferris bought Magnolia Avenue land in 1879 for himself, for O. T. Johnson, and for his uncle George Sr., and settled there in 1881.^[3][7]The family record says George Sr. settled at Riverside about 1880, after his nephew had secured Magnolia Avenue land for him in 1879; later local notices use 1881–82 for the colony’s Ferris houses.^[3][7]

The family record and Weingardt agree that his parents visited the fair and, on 5 September 1893, a reunion of some sixty Ferrises at Lake George near Galesburg.^{[3][6, p. 98]}George Sr. died at Riverside, California, on 20 April 1895, and Martha on 23 March 1897; both rest at Olivewood Cemetery (family record, quoting the 1895 Galesburg obituary; Weingardt).^{[3][6, p. 109][6, p. 116]}

James Gary Ferris (1942–2025), great-great-nephew of the engineer through Frederick Hyde Ferris, compiled the four research collections over decades and published them for years on his website Bombs & Bones.^[3]Living relatives named on the stewardship page are not repeated here. The collections themselves are indexed on Sources and collections.