Doctor Peter Fahrney, founder of the Fahrney family in Maryland, was born May 8, 1767, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the youngest of three children of Doctor Jacob Fahrney, who was born at Frankfort, Germany, studied medicine, and came to America in 1756 to settle in Lancaster County. In his early manhood Peter Fahrney learned the trade of a tanner in Lancaster County and near the close of the eighteenth century moved to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where in 1791 he married Eve Durnbaugh. Their children were Catherine, Eve, Samuel, and Jacob. After Eve died in 1803, he came to Mapleville in Washington County, Maryland, purchased land, and continued his business as a tanner. Around that time he was thrown from his horse and became a permanent cripple. He then took up the study of medicine in Chambersburg, and about 1805, at the age of thirty eight, married Ann Sartoris. Their children were John, Peter, Elizabeth, Susanna, Joseph, Sarah, and Daniel. Because of his infirmities he could not ride horseback, so he walked to visit his patients with his hose carrying remedies for the sick. He was unremitting in his attention to the sick and afflicted, and in his will he requested that poor people be exempt from having their accounts on his books collected. He died April 9, 1837.