Forrest Savage, born September 27, 1826 in Hartford, Vermont, was the son of William and Polly (Hazen) Savage, the Savages having been early English settlers in Connecticut. Forrest had two older siblings, Maria, who married a Hood, and Joseph.

In March 1849, Forrest Savage married Lydia Greely Worth in New Hampshire, who had been born in 1830. In 1854, Savage came out to Kansas as part of the second party of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, in 1856 pre-empting and settling on land a few miles south of Lawrence. In Kansas he formed part of the first musical band in the territory, and he continued to play music through the Civil War and afterward, including at Lawrence's Congregational Church, of which he was a member.

Forrest and Lydia Savage had four children: William, Emma, May or Mary, and Frank. Forrest's brother Joseph, who also came to Kansas during the territorial period, married Amanda B. Crandal, with whom he had one daughter, Susan Daphne, born in 1850. Susan married Daniel Stillman Alford, and they had six children: Alfred Cecil (who was the first Kansas casualty in the Spanish-American War), Anna Mary, Donald Stillman, Joseph Savage, Theodore Crandall, and Sylvia Daphne.

Forrest Savage died in August 1915, the last survivor of the second New England Emigrant Aid Company party. His wife Lydia had died in 1914.