Peter Dennis Fahrney was born on June 21, 1843, on the family farm near Mapleville, Maryland. His parents were Elizabeth Emmert, age 32, and Peter Fahrney, age 36.

THE FAHRNEYS OF PENNSYLVANIA

Peter's namesake grandfather, born a British subject in 1767 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the years before American independence, was a medical doctor.

For reasons unknown, Peter's namesake father, born in 1806 in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, chose to live the life of a yeoman farmer.

However, Peter's uncle, Dr. Daniel Fahrney, born in 1819, followed his father in the medical line and passed the profession on to our subject, who reportedly began his medical studies at the age of 13 at his uncle's knee!

THE EMMERTS OF MARYLAND

Peter's mother was born Elizabeth Emmert in 1811 in Washington County, Maryland.

Elizabeth's branch of the Emmert family came to America from Bavaria in 1732 when Johann Jorg Friedrich "George" Emmert (1718-1796) stepped off a small ship named 'Loyal Judith' in colonial Philadelphia. George and his wife, Eve Maria Graff, became naturalized British subjects in 1751, but then disavowed the king in 1778 when George pledged allegiance to the State of Pennsylvania before Judge Peter Spycker in Berks County. (Unlike his arguably more passionate son who we will meet next, the always-prudent George seems to have waited to see which way the wind was blowing before fully committing to the American independence cause and reneging on his 1751 oath to support the king.)

George Emmert's son was Leonard Emmert, the beloved "Old Pathfinder" of the Brethren church. Leonard was born to George and Eve Maria in Bethel Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, British Colonial America in about 1745. He served as a militiaman in the Revolutionary War before turning away from Lutheranism and in 1798 moving his family to Washington County, Maryland to join many other followers of Alexander Mack settling there. Leonard Emmert's impact on the growth of the Church of the Brethren would reverberate down through the generations, and would reach into Illinois, Wisconsin, and even overseas to India and Denmark. Leonard Emmert was Elizabeth's grandfather, and Peter's great-grandfather.

In the generations following Leonard Emmert's death in 1804, many members of the family emigrated to Illinois in the 1840s, then to Iowa in the 1860s and 1870s, most of them carrying the Church of the Brethren west with them. Other family branches like Elizabeth's never strayed far from Maryland though.

PETER'S YOUTH

Peter grew up to the farming life along with his nine siblings. Peter fell in about the middle of the brood age-wise.

We can safely assume the Fahrney children — or at least the boys — received a good elementary education.

Peter was 18 when the Civil War broke out, but he successfully resisted the urge to enlist that caught up so many of his peers. The July 1, 1863 draft registration found the 20-year-old unmarried and a student in the Boonsboro District of Washington County.

According to the 1905 Frederick Almanac, Peter graduated in 1867 from the Philadelphia University of Medicine and Surgery. The records of the American Medical Association show that he was licensed to practice medicine in Maryland.

MARRIAGE

Peter married Roemma (or Roenna or maybe even Roseanna) Welty Good in Pennsylvania on November 19, 1867, when he was 24 years old. Roemma was about one year younger than Peter.

According to J. Maurice Henry in his 1936 book, "History of the Brethren in Maryland," Peter was Baptized into the Brethren faith by Andrew Cost in 1868. But given his Emmert ancestors' long association with the church, he was surely no stranger to the practices of adult Baptism by trine immersion, love feast and communion, feetwashing, and anointing with oil.

Peter and Roemma had at least six children between 1869 and 1879. During those same years, Peter was not only practicing medicine, but he was also building a lucrative business in patent medicines. More on that later.

DEATH

Roemma Welty passed away on November 25, 1879, at the age of 35. They had been married 12 years. We think she died in Maryland, but her remains were buried in her parents' plot in the Antietam Church Cemetery in Waynesboro, Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

Death was soon to visit Peter twice more. Daughter Ida passed away on December 2, 1881, at the age of 2. And daughter Mary Roemma died less than a month later at the age of 3. Both were buried near their mother in the Antietam Church Cemetery.

REMARRIAGE

The federal census shows that on June 17, 1880, a 17-year-old young woman named Emma Katherine "Katie" Eavey (or Avey) was one of two domestic servants living and working in the home of the widowed Peter, and helping to care for Peter's six now-motherless kinder. Then, on February 7, 1882, Peter took Katie to Hagerstown, Maryland, where they were married.

Katie, who was just 19 when she was wed, would give Peter five more children between 1884 and 1904. All five would live to adulthood.

LATER LIFE

Peter was elected to the office of church deacon in 1880, and called to the ministry at Bush Creek in 1888. He took great interest in the work of the church and paid most of the support of W. A. Gaunt, R. A. Nedrow, and I. S. Long, who served as part-time pastors of the early Frederick City church. It was also through Peter's untiring efforts that Elder Jacob Trostle began to preach in Frederick as early as 1878 in the Methodist church. Through a gift of Sister A. D. Worman, a lot was purchased, and a church was built in Frederick, which was dedicated by Elder James Quinter, July 18, 1886.

Peter's father passed away on July 31, 1885, at the age of 78. His mother followed on July 23, 1887, at the age of 76. Both were interred in the Mount Zion Mennonite Church Cemetery in Mapleville, Washington County, Maryland.

A story in the Washington Post newspaper on August 2, 1908, reported on the 'first annual Fahrney family reunion', reportedly attended by 500 family members.

Peter and Katie lived in Frederick, Maryland, until about 1912 when they moved to Hagerstown, Maryland. There, Peter continued to practice medicine and served faithfully in the church. He also continued manufacturing and selling a line of questionable patent remedies.

PATENT MEDICINE CONTROVERSY

Peter had begun making and selling patent medicines as early as the 1870s. The first product was named Old Blood Purge, renamed Victor Liver Syrup in 1884. According to print advertisements, this concoction purified the blood, renovated the liver, and acted upon the bowels, "thereby cleansing the entire system!"

Proceeds from this business were used in part to back annual Brethren church conferences in Fredrick, Maryland, in 1897, in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1899, and in Bristol, Tennessee. We know this because conference souvenir shot glasses carried the Victor logo. Peter incorporated his business as Victor Remedies Company in 1902 in Maryland.

Fahrney family advertising claimed their medicines were family recipes passed down from generation to generation. True or not, the Fahrney name became marketable: Along with Peter's growing business, his cousin, Dr. Daniel Fahrney, started his own manufacturing firm in Hagerstown, Maryland. This growing line of Fahrney brand "remedies" claimed to cure teething pain, colic, bad blood, worms, sore muscles, and even consumption (tuberculosis).

Spurred in part by concern over such concoctions, but even more so by public outrage over the shockingly unhygienic conditions in the Chicago stockyards described in Upton Sinclair's groundbreaking 1906 book, "The Jungle," Congress finally enacted sweeping federal consumer protection standards with the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act.

Harvey Washington Wiley, who at the time was chief chemist of the Bureau of Chemistry of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, used the new law to go after companies like Peter's. The result can be witnessed at Notice of Judgment No. 144, issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on February 8, 1910. In it, D. Fahrney and Sons of Hagerstown were fined $100 for interstate commerce in a teething syrup that was ineffective as a teething medicine, never mind label claims about colic, gripe, diarrhea, nervous peevishness, and general liver and kidney troubles. Worse, the infants' syrup was deemed by the USDA to be patently unsafe insofar as it included morphine, cocaine, alcohol, bromide, chloroform, cannabis indica, sweet spirit of nitre, and other noxious ingredients.

In addition to increased government pressure, Dr. Arthur J. Cramp, who claimed to have lost his daughter to one of these dangerous "medicines," published a book entitled 'Nostrums and Quackery' in 1912. Other exposés would follow.

Clearly, the clock was running out for the Fahrney medical empire.

DEATH COMES FOR THE DOCTOR

Peter died in Hagerstown on September 22, 1917, at the age of 74. His remains were returned to the earth at Mount Zion Mennonite Church Cemetery in Mapleville near his parents' graves.

The obituary published in the Catoctin Clarion of Mechanicstown, Maryland, on Thursday, September 27, 1917, mentioned that Peter was a former minister of the Church of the Brethren, and that he had died apoplexy. It was also noted that he was one of the promoters of the Frederick County Telephone Company and "a number of industrial enterprises," but there was explicit mention of his patent medicine empire.

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Researched by P. A. White, JD
2020 for @NewWorldAncestry – All Rights Reserved
Subject's relation to author: 2d cousin 3x removed
Primary sources:
1. J. Maurice Henry, History of the Brethren In Maryland at 444-445 (Brethren Publishing House, 1936)
2. Obituary published in the Catoctin Clarion of Mechanicstown (Thurmont), Maryland on Sept. 27, 1917
3. Dr Peter Dennis Fahrney at https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/L71F-L42