Ralph Parsons

PARSONS KRUGER

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 10/13/2010 at 18:18:01

History of Woodbury Counrty, Iowa 1984

Ralph Parsons
By Ralph Parsons

I was born on November 25, 1910, the son of Charles and Minnie Parsons of Batavia, New York. Graduating form high school there I went on to further things such as business school in Rochester. Soon after that I was given a challenge. It was to lead me to New York City and to sea as a steward on luxury liners that took me all over the world. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, I was in Sydney, Australia. From then on until the end of World War II my time was spent at sea during thick and thin until the War ended in 1945. This started on July 16, 1934 and ended about October 16, 1945.

My family history can be traced back to the Earl of Rosse of the ninth century in Scotland or northern England. The ancestry in this country dates back to about 1637 when two brothers, Joseph and Cornet Parsons, witnessed an Indian treaty near what is known today as Newberryport, Massachusetts. Among those who migrated West soon after the Revolutionary War was Marshfield Parsons. He settled in or near LeRoy, New York. He came form Lynne, Massachusetts. His sister, Betsey, married Hiram Pratt. (He, as a child, ran away, with a sister, from their home in Buffalo to what is known as Buffalo at the time of the War of 1812. He later became the first elected Mayor of Buffalo and one of its more influential citizens.)

A little more than three years after returning to Batavia in 1949 I went to work for Neisner Bros., the variety chain, and started my journey to Sioux City, Iowa. Of course I had to take training the Neisner way. When, in Evanston, Illinois, I was told that I was being transferred to Sioux City, a town I’d never heard of, I took it as another venture which has turned out probably to be my last as I am well pleased.

I am Ralph A Parsons, who married Esther Kruger on October 18, 1853. She was born on a farm just west of Herman, Nebraska. She started her journey to Sioux City a few years prior to my arrival. Where did we meet? In Neisner’s, the ‘Five and Ten cent’ store.