Oliver La Farge

Who was Oliver La Farge?

Oliver Hazard Perry La Farge was an American writer and anthropologist, best known for his 1930 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Laughing Boy.

Named for his uncle, Oliver H.P. La Farge, he was the grandson of the artist and stained-glass pioneer John La Farge, and his wife Margaret Mason Perry. Her father was Christopher Grant Perry, the son of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry and Elizabeth Champlin Mason. He was a descendant of Gov. Thomas Prence a co-founder of Eastham, Massachusetts, a political leader in both the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, and governor of Plymouth; and Elder William Brewster, the Pilgrim leader and spiritual elder of the Plymouth Colony and a passenger on the Mayflower.

His great-grandmother was Frances Sergeant who was the daughter of Chief Justice Thomas Sergeant and Sarah Bache, the daughter of Sarah Franklin Bache and Richard Bache. Frances was a great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America and Deborah Read.

He was the son of the noted Beaux-Arts architect Christopher Grant La Farge, and father of the folksinger and painter Peter La Farge.