Alexander Allen Faris

[1][2] Alexander Allen Faris was born March 1, 1840, on his father's plantation in Mississippi County, Missouri, opposite Hickman, Kentucky.

His father, Richard Alexander Faris, was a native of North Carolina and spent his active life as a planter in Mississippi County, Missouri.

Ethelinda's father, Samuel Harris, was a member of the Rowan County, North Carolina Committee of Safety during the Revolutionary war.

His spirit of service was not to be daunted, and he hastened to Valdosta, Georgia, where he rejoined his command,[1] reporting to Gen. Frank Cheatham for duty as a one-armed Confederate soldier.

[2] Though he had lost an arm in the civil war, he developed a very high degree of skill as a surgeon, and was one of the few men thus handicapped who achieved distinction in that branch of the profession in his era.