Albert Elwood Ferris (1897-1968) was a Quaker politician, farmer, and businessman of Milton, Indiana. Ferris was born into a Hicksite Quaker family near Milton, February 22, 1897, the son of Charles and Mary (Way) Ferris. He graduated from Milton High School in 1915, and attended Purdue University for two years as well as completing a correspondence course law. He became active in the Farm Bureau, serving as president of the Wayne County branch, and as part of the staff of the Purdue University Farmers Institute visited almost every county in Indiana. After the Hicksite Friends meeting in Milton was laid down in 1911, he attended, but did not join the Milton Christian Church. About 1958 he became a member of the Dublin Friends Meeting. Although politically and socially conservative, he was theologically liberal and was attracted to the great Protestant modernist Harry Emerson Fosdick. He died in Van Wert, Ohio, May 20, 1968, while traveling. In 1934 Ferris was elected to the Indiana Senate, where he served three terms. He was a conservative, anti-New Deal Republican. Typical is his comment on the 1936 election: "Republican snowed under the New Deal supported by dregs of society," or in 1964: "Wayne County &10th District go Republican. All else to h." after losing the Republican primary election in 1946, he served until 1965 as the Senate parliamentarian. He remained active in local and state Republican politics as well, writing frequent letters to the editor that appeared in the Richmond Palladium-Item and other newspapers. On August 3, 1921, Ferris married Elma Henby (1898-1996), a 1920 Earlham College graduate from Dublin.

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