Biography | Jim Farley — The Benedictine Campus on Corys Lane

People look for a Ford chief in Dearborn or Detroit.

The school that finished his secondary education sits on Corys Lane in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, above Narragansett Bay.

James Duncan Farley Jr. was born on 10 June 1962 in Buenos Aires, where his father, the banker James D. Farley, was posted in Citibank's Latin American work.

The family soon moved to Greenwich, Connecticut.

Summers still ran back toward Michigan, because his maternal grandfather, Emmet E. Tracy, had been an early Ford factory hand.

In public talks Farley has identified that grandfather as employee number 389 and has said he keeps the badge on his desk.

Accounts differ on whether the first plant was Highland Park or the Rouge; the family story that matters is the drives past the Rouge and Piquette works.

Before university he boarded at Portsmouth Abbey School, a Benedictine college-preparatory campus at 285 Corys Lane.

The abbey and school occupy more than five hundred acres on Aquidneck Island.

He graduated with the class of 1981.

Forty-four years later, on 25 May 2025, he returned to give the commencement address on that same campus.

The school is public enough to visit by appointment; it is not a house.

What the pin records is formation, not a private address.

A visitor standing on Corys Lane is looking at the Benedictine quadrangle that sent a banker's son, already nicknamed for cars at home, toward Georgetown and then toward two automakers.

The Detroit Free Press account of the 2025 address notes the 1981 class year and the early summer job rebuilding engines in Southern California.

That engine work funded a black 1966 Mustang.

The Abbey years sit between Buenos Aires and the Hilltop.

They are the first American campus that can be walked without guessing a hospital name in Argentina.

Photo: campus and abbey views circulate under standard documentary licences; portrait use should credit the named photographer on the file page.