08/28/2026
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๐๐๐๐ Alma Richardson Farriss, the longest resident of what would later become the DeLand House Museum, moved to Durham, N.C., to live with her son, Carl. She had moved to the house at 139 West Michigan Avenue 41 years before with her husband, Stetson University Classics professor Dr. Charles Farriss, who died in 1938.
Daughter of a Baptist minister in High Point, N.C., Alma Richardson married the Rev. Dr. Farriss, a Baptist minister 12 years her senior, against her fatherโs wishes. They moved to Orlando, where Dr. Farriss served a large Baptist church, then to DeLand to accept the Stetson appointment. Well-educated and progressive, Alma was a founding member of the DeLand Womanโs Club, which was organized in her domestic sciences classroom at Stetson. She also gave piano lessons in her home and played at university and community events.
DeLand House was built in 1886 on land purchased from Henry A. DeLand. In 1892 John B. Stetson bought it to house new Stetson professors; and, in 1903 the Farrisses purchased it. In 1906, they employed carpenter Peter Lofquist to do a major renovation, adding an impressive portico with Greek columns on the east side and enlarging the second floor. Recently the West Volusia Historical Society partnered with the City of DeLand to restore and re-interpret the house museum, updating its time frame to the early 20th century to tell the stories of DeLandโs boom times after the First World War when the Farrisses lived there.
SOURCES: DeLand Sun News August 30, 1944; and reference materials in the Societyโs Conrad Education and Research Center Library. The Farriss family photo, taken outside what is now DeLand House, is from the Dreggors Collection in the WVHS Archives.
