Joseph Alfonsos Farren was born on December 20, 1884 in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was Patrick H. Farren, a fifty-two-year-old commercial traveler, who had emigrated from Ireland. His mother was Sarah F. Farren, a forty-year-old native of Massachusetts. He was the youngest of their five sons. The family lived at 130 Worthington Street in Boston.
By 1900 his father had died and his mother moved the family to 57 Aspinall Avenue, Brookline, MA, a Boston suburb, where she lived with all five of her sons, four of which were working adults. The oldest was thirty-five, while Joseph was still in school at age fifteen.
He enjoyed art and worked on the school newspaper. His older brother, John, had already finished school and was working as a staff artist at a Boston Newspaper.
In 1903 he graduated high school and found a job working in the art department of The Boston Post newspaper.
In 1910 he married his wife Ada Burns Farren. They moved to 212 Kilton Street in Boston, MA, where they raised three children, Joseph Jr., Donald, and Lorna.
In 1912 he drew the comic strip "Hank and Knobbs" for The Boston Globe. From 1916-1918 he drew the comic strip "Terry and Tacks" for The Boston Post. He later drew sports cartoons for The Boston Herald. He was an avid golfer, and he competed in Massachusetts statewide tournaments. He was offered a steady job as an Advertising Salesman for a golf and ski shop, the Thomas H. Logan Company.
On September 10, 1918 he reported for the draft registration for the Great War. At the age of thirty three with a wife and children, he was exempt from military service. He was recorded to be of medium height and build, with blue eyes and brown hair. His mother lived with him to help to raise the children. They lived at 1157 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.
In 1926, at the age of forty, he was hired to draw political cartoons for the New York Times. He moved to half of a two-family home at 3220 Eighty-third Street in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY, which he rents for $75 a month. In 1930 he bought a home nearby at 3420 Eighty-Fourth Street.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s he began to work as a freelance artist drawing pen and ink interior story illustrations for pulp magazines, such as Detective Fiction Weekly.
On April 25, 1942 during WWII he registered for the draft. He was recorded to be five-ten, 175 pounds, with blue eyes, gray hair, ruddy complexion, and completely deaf. He was listed as self-employed, but his business contact was listed as Mr. W. T. Tate at the Frank A. Munsey Company, 280 Broadway, NYC, which suggests he had steady work with that pulp publisher.
After the war he drew freelance pen and ink story illustrations for pulp magazines, such as Clues Detective Stories, Exciting Western, Fifteen Western Tales, Popular Sports, Thrilling Mystery, and West.
In 1950 he illustrated a popular book for young readers, South Pole Husky, by Charles S. Strong.
Joseph A. Farren died of a heart attack in his home in Jackson Heights, Queens, at the age of seventy-nine on February 9, 1964.
© David Saunders 2009 |
