The partnership of Headley & Farra operated the Henry Clay Distillery (RD #5) from 1858 to 1873. The partnership consisted of John A. Headley and James A. Farra.
The partners were involved with the establishing in 1870 of the private bank of Headley, Anderson & Company. Headley and Farra, along with Hamilton A. Headley and Richard T. Anderson founded the bank. In January 1870, the firm acquired the old Bank of Kentucky Branch Bank for $9,000 from the First National Bank. During 1872, the bank was renamed Headley, Farra & Company.
In 1873 the bank was reorganized as the Farmers & Traders Bank, when James M. Hocker and T. Logan Hocker, his son, assumed the management of the bank. The bank closed in 1883.
In 1873, Headley and Farra sold sixty acres on South Broadway to the city for a fairground for $20,000. The Federal government supplied the funds to replace the fairground burned during the Civil War.
Headley died in 1880. Farra died in August 1887 on his farm on Versailles Pike, five miles from Lexington. He was 58 years old. [i]
[i] Lexington Observer & Reporter, January 1, 1869, page 2, column 2; Lexington Press, July 12, 1872, page 4, column 3, March 11, 1877, page 4, column 4 and March 29, 1877, page 4, column 2; Lexington Transcript, August 10, 1887, page 4, column 4 and the Lexington Leader, February 16, 1904, page 3, column 4.
