An Expanding Family

When we started this Web site back in 2005, we were just going to focus on descendants of Lunsford Yandell Park and his wife, Isabella Ann Eliza Baron. The pages would therefore be called "The Park / Baron Genealogies." To our very great delight, we've had so many cousins check in from other lineages that we realized we had to expand our scope to include descendants of Lunsford's grandfather, James Park (1785-1866) and his wife, Martha Yandell (1785-1851); and we added a Yandell genealogy too.

But wait! Still more cousins have visited and inquired since then, so we're now expanding our scope even more, to include descendants of Moses Park (1738-1828) and his wife, Mary Hill (1749-1829). Thanks to Nancy Schwartz, a descendant of Moses's son, Thomas Park, we now have a page for Thomas plus a page for Thomas's grandson, Josiah Andrew Park. Both pages will be expanded in due course (along with hundreds of other names still waiting in the wings). Nancy also supplied some photographs, and we've implemented links to them from the names on the Josiah Andrew page. Links to photographs will be in green, with text of the names in small capitals. Stay tuned for further developments!

So in this ongoing saga, your Webmaster would like to ask the following:

• If you have any genealogical information you'd like to post on this site (names and dates, for genealogies, scanned documents, and especially photographs), please send me a note.


• Please be patient about the posting of information and, for that matter, the changing of the old "Park / Barron Genealogies" to the new genealogical page title, "The Park Family Genealogies," with its subtitle, "The lineage of Moses Park (1738-1828) and Mary Hill (1749-1829)."

Finally, do take a look at The Parke Society's website. This is a "surname" organization that helps descendants of immigrants from the British Isles whose last name was Park, Parke, Parks, or Parkes. The Society publishes a Newsletter three times a year (your Webmaster is the current editor), and has a lending library of Park/e/s-related genealogical materials, as well as a DNA project for those who wish confirmation of their ancestry. Just click on the link in the navigation panel, or the one in this paragraph (highlighted).

Who are you? Which Park do you come from?

Park Family members come in such a variety of flavors! Take Ethel Sloan Park. As Ethel Park Richardson she was the first to win $100,000 on the TV quiz show The Big Surprise. Her field: American folklore. Her second husband was James ("Mr. Jim") Richardson, but earlier she was married to Paul Jordan-Smith. Ethel and Paul had three children: Wilbur Jordan, Isabel, and Ralph Wendell. Wilbur had two sons, and so did Ralph. Isabel married Kirby Hansen, and they had a son, Kirby, and a daughter, Karen. Karen's daughter Sarah married Tadashi Okuno, and they have four children. So there are Smiths (and Jordan-Smiths), Hansens, and Okunos who are all Parks.

What about you? Where do you fit in with this expansive and ever-expanding family? Take a look at the outline of the Park / Barron genealogy. If you're a branch, a twig, a leaf, or a growing bud on this ever-growing family tree and we haven't included you, let us know and we'll put you right in: just let us know where. And if you've got names, dates, stories, or family photographs you'd like to have on the site, send us a scan.

The Park Family Reunion, Chattanooga, 2005

Last year's Chattanooga reunion was a spectacular success. Click on this line to read Cousin Ed's account of how it all came together.