Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all the Baker and Finchum families.

Generations 1

     One thing that I really enjoy when going through photos, old and new, are those of generations of family all together.  When a baby is born that begins a new generation, the cameras come out and the flashes go off to document this event.  Why not continue with this as the child, the parent and the grand parent age?  I have no answer, only the question.

     Here are a couple of the generation pics that I have found to share from the Finchum - Baker family.

 Above photo - Bruce Finchum, Ralph Finchum (Bruce's father), Marti (Martha Frances Finchum) and Henry Baker (Bruce's Grandfather).

This is pretty special for the obvious; we have 3 generations here.  But there is another reason also.  Bruce's mom, also Martha Frances Finchum, had passed away before this time.  So we have the mixture of the Finchum-Baker with the generations to make it 4 layers.  This is the first time that Henry Baker got to meet the name sake of his daughter.

 

 Again we have that new baby and the generation picture.

Love it !  

Marti, baby from the first pictures in this post, is the one on the back left, along with her Grandpa Ralph Finchum, Bruce Finchum sitting and holding Tiffany, his grand daughter; and of course the great grand daughter of Ralph.  So wish Henry would have been around for another shot here.

 Here's another of Bruce's kids - on the left is Sarah Finchum with her daughter, Casey, in the middle and myself, Donna Finchum, the married into the Finchum-Baker family.  Again, three generations.

     My son Ryan Finchum, and the son of Bruce Finchum, is married to Tricia.  She has a great family still living and since I do consider myself a Finchum of sorts, it is only fair that I do the same with her.  Plus, she has great pics of generations to share.

This is Tricia's family which includes her mom, mom's husband, aunts, uncle, brother, aunt's kids, and her grand parents holding the kids.  See - great pic and with 3 Finchums and 1 married in Finchum it is a good one to share.

And - just once more with Tricia  -  here she is with her mom, grand mother and her great grandfather.   Not all that often this can be shared.  Even neater is that Tricia's great grandfather got to see even another generation in her children.  Maybe I can get more pics from these generations to share later.

IT'S A REALLY SMALL WORLD

     I am breaking protocol already.  My plan is for this site to be family stories from as many Finchum/Baker family members as I can talk into participating.  I also want and will be posting about fact that I find on ancestry.com.  There are so many interesting and amazing discoveries to be revealed.  One of these discoveries is the reason for the slight and temporary change in plans.   

                       This is truly a SMALL WORLD we live in.

     I am a Finchum by marriage so anything that has happened outside the realm of that family really doesn’t pertain, except that this story is so interesting that I will most likely post it on this site and the site of the Parrish/Darrow site that my brother is composing. 

         This is an example of how amazing ancestry.com can be.  

    After my divorce, back in the 80's, I met and dated a man for many years named Gene Chipley.  After some years of not being in contact we reconnected and are great friends once again.  You may be thinking – so?  Because of our closeness and my attachment to his family, I began to do a little research into his family.  His mom, still alive and crazy active at the age of 92, was born Cleo W. Butcher on August 28, 1920.  Her mom’s maiden name was Darrow.  Oops, my mother’s maiden name was Darrow.  How, after all these years, do I not know this?  Gene said that he just didn’t know much about his Grandma Butcher because she had passed away when he was young.  

Can you see where this is going?  

      To date, I have made the search Chipley/Butcher/Darrow family back to the early 1600’s.  Not too bad.   I went to the work that my brother is doing on our family tree to see how far back he has made it, on the Darrow side, and he is about the same place.  It is confirmed – we are related. My first thought is that this is really cool.  We have a bond that neither of us knew about.  Then my brother said – “Ahh, kissing cousins”.  Can you say creepy?  

     Much to my relief, I have traced the connections to Christopher Darrow, born 1678, and Elizabeth Packer, born 1679.  They had a house full of kids of which two are Christopher, born in 1702, and Jedediah, born in 1721.  Christopher’s marriage and life comes forward and leads to the Butcher/Chipley family.  The Parrish/Darrow family traces back to Jedediah.  I am pleased and relieved to know that Gene’s family and mine, we related almost 300 years ago.  

Not feeling so creepy anymore.  

Sometimes the middle is a good place to start

     There is no beginning and no end to our ancestry.  We may find road blocks in our research and we all know that our day will come when we will be that person who has reached our end.  Lucky for most of us, we will live on through our 'next generations'.

     I thought about starting my post with my own experiences with children, grand children and my great grandchild.  But I kept coming back to a person who was such an inspiration to me.  A man who was loved by everyone he met, with few exceptions.  And those must have deserved his attitude toward them.  I know what you are thinking - isn't this a remark that is commonly made about those who have past?
I bet that once a few post start appearing here by others besides my place, my point will be strongly made.

     My beginning will be in the middle - I will start with Ralph Burton Finchum.  Better know to most as Papa Ralph.

 

     Tho I could write for hours on end about this man I am only going to mention a few of the most important, in my mind, about him.  For now anyway.

     

     When I first met him I was surprised at his 'popularity'.  I was in high school and what I considered 'social' was based on a teenager's view.  Well this man was more 'social' than any friend I had.  Ralph has friends that were younger than his own children and old enough to be his father, and they all invited him to dinner, dancing, parties, camping, travel and the list goes on.  This man had few evenings or days off busy with friends and adventures.  

     Now about the name Papa Ralph - that came along with his first grand child, my daughter Marti (Martha) Frances.  He was very proud grand father and told all that he met, at work or in his personal life " Just call me Papa Ralph".   He worked at Sears, for many years, and to his many regular customers, he became Papa Ralph.  To most any new customer who came in with a child, he was drawn to this child and told them to call his the same. 

     Papa Ralph was the most loved person that I have ever known.  I am so thankful that myself and my children were lucky enough to have him involved in their lives.

In the beginning -

     In the beginning?  That is what this is all about. Where do our ancestors come from?  What did they do?  Who do we look like?  Don't we all think about these questions at one point or another in our life.

     My mother, Nina Darrow Parrish, spent thousands of hours and that much more in dollars she didn't have to search our past; ordering copies of official documents and asking relatives for photos that she could copy.  Back in the  70's and 80's we didn't have the Internet to do our searching.  It took many hours at the library, scanning through micro-fish, to get info.

     My father-in-law, Ralph Finchum, got into it after a while, supplying my Mom with his family information, to the best of his knowledge.  After his retirement he made trips to Indiana where he could obtain much of the exact information needed.  I now have two relatives, from two families, bringing our past to us.

     Here we are over 20 years later and my brother, Ray C. Parrish, signs up on Ancestry.com, to take advantage of modern

technology to start the search once again.  Now the funny part of this is his motive.  He has a desire to prove that our family is not truly related to the famous attorney, Clarence Darrow.  Ray has his own site called the Parrish-Darrow Family Tree, where his doubts are squished.  But that is a different story and site.  I am taking his advise and have started this site in hopes of sharing the little bit of information that I have and to encourage family members to include their stories and information also.

     In many ways this is the beginning. The reality is, the journey began hundreds of years ago, and we can trace back to it.