KyGenWeb > Kentucky Biographies
Kentucky: A History of the State, Battle, Perrin, & Kniffin, 7th ed., 1887, Gallatin Co.
David ORR, a wholesale tobacco dealer, of Warsaw, Ky., was born in
Scotland May 12, 1843. His father, William ORR, a native of Ayshire
County, Scotland, was born in 1815, and was a wholesale merchant in
Beith, in which business he successfully continued for more than forty
years. He was an active man in politics for many years, and was a
leading member of the Church of Scotland. He married Agnes Longwill,
a native of Scotland, and a daughter of David and Jane (Gibson)
Longwill, also natives of Scotland, and the former a land owner. The
birth of four sons and five daughters followed their union, of whom the
subject of this sketch if the third child. William ORR died in 1880.
Robert ORR, the paternal grandfather of our subject, was a native of
Scotland, and a prominent merchant and land owner. David ORR read law
for three years with Daniel S. Love, of Beith, until 1867, when he
immigrated to Owensboro, and engaged in the tobacco business with John
A. Faulds, with whom he remained five years. He then removed to
Princeton, Ky., where he followed the same business until 1880, when he
removed to Warsaw, and engaged in buying and selling tobacco. He has
three large warehouses, and handles about 1,000,000 pounds of tobacco
annually. In 1860 he volunteered and served for one year in the Sixth
Ayrshire Rifle Volunteers, to protect Britain from French invasion.
April 27, 1880, he married Ella Blackmore, a native of Gallatin County,
and a daughter of T. M. and Emily (Brooking) Blackmore, natives of
Madison, Ind., and Montgomery County, Ky. The birth of one
daughter--Mariam Agnes--followed their union. Mr. ORR is a Royal Arch
Mason of Warsaw Lodge, at Warsaw and became a Master Mason of St. John's
Lodge, No. 158, in Scotland. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and his wife is a member of the Baptist Church.