Thomas Chalmers Furnas was born in Sheridan, Indiana, near Indianapolis, on April 7, 1876 into a Quaker farming family who lived and worked a 160 acres farm. His mother, Eunice Furnas, was a Quaker minister in charge of social activities of the Western Yearly Quaker Conference. His father, Joseph Furnas, was a relative of Robert Furnas, founder of the Furnas Ice Cream Company. Chalmers had three siblings: a brother Walton C. Furnas, and two sisters, Annie M. Coyner, and Calista Fellows. He graduated from Dannville Central Normal College and attended Purdue University's Short Course in Agriculture from 1895-1897 but did not receive a diploma until 1899. He was the first and only student to be granted a certificate for the two year course by President Smart. At Purdue, he met and married Clara Evana Spray on August 25, 1897. Mr. Furnas served as florist and grounds supervisor on private estates and at the French Lick Springs Hotel in Indiana. He also taught nature study and applied horticulture and floriculture to young people. The family moved often and lived in Sheridan, Plainfield, Jeffersonville, New Albany, French Lick, on Dr. Cole's estate in Crow's Nest outside Indianapolis, and in Knightstown where Furnas worked at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's home at Knightstown, Indiana from 1923 to 1925. In 1927 he moved to Rockland County, New York where he taught in the Graham School at Hastings-on-Hudson. He then went up river to be florist and grounds supervisor at the New York State Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York where he also served on the staff of the school teaching landscape and greenhouse work. He also ran his own florist and nursery business throughout.
The Furnases purchased the Dingman farm in Columbiaville, New York where they made their home until Chalmers' death on October 29th, 1934. With the assistance of the Amesbury Society of Friends meeting he was buried in Amesbury Cemetery, Amesbury, Massachusetts near to the grave of his favorite poet, John Greenleaf Whittier. Mr. Furnas spent much of his free time in meditation and reading and the composing of poems and sketches, which embodied his ideals of the wholeness and unity of all life. In 1929 Mr. Furnas published a series of his poems on nature in the Hudson Daily Star and other papers. During the 1920s and 1930s, Chalmers' son, Clifton Joseph Furness [who had legally changed the spelling of the family name to the original of his English ancestors] began writing a memoir of his father's writings entitled In My Father's House to send to family members. With his father's untimely death, he added much about the funeral and his reminiscences. A shortened version appears on pages 170 to 280 of Sparkle Furnas' Furnas Family Fragments. The original manuscript is in the Clifton Joseph Furness Papers, MS 215.
From the description of T. Chalmers Furnas papers, 1894-1974 bulk [1894-1946] (SUNY at Buffalo). WorldCat record id: 715446569
