Taylor County, West Virginia Biography of Ray M. PARRISH ************************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: Material may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material, AND permission is obtained from the contributor of the file. These pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for non-commercial purposes, MUST obtain the written consent of the contributor. Submitted by Valerie Crook, , March 1999 ************************************************************************** The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 82 RAY M. PARRISH, president of the Parrish Realty Company of Grafton, has been a resident of West Virginia over twenty years, and his business interests have had an increasing scope and range of importance. Outside of his private affairs he has exercised a decided influence for good in the community of Grafton, his public spirit being one of the reliable assets in any concerted movement tor the common welfare. He was born in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, January 9, 1879. His father, Robert Parrish, was born in Potter County of the same state March 12, 1850, was reared there and acquired a liberal education, being a graduate of one of the Pennsylvania state normals. He was a cheese-maker in Craw- ford County, then an oil field worker, and gradually drifted into the lumber industry. For a time he was a merchant in Jefferson County of his native state, where he organized a trust company. His home is now at Reynoldsville, Pennsyl- vania, and he continued active in business until past the age of seventy. His first wife, Effie Scott, a daughter of C. D. Scott, was born at Spartansburg, Pennsylvania, and died in 1894. Her children were: Ray M.; Fern, wife of J. S. Howard, of New York; Leah, wife of Virgil Martin, of Gallipolis, Ohio; Florence, the widow of George H. Pryor, of Martins Ferry, Ohio; and Otis Everett, of Grafton. Robert Parrish by his second marriage, to Carrie Fleming, has two children, Frank and Olive, the former a graduate of Allegheny College and now a sophomore in the law department of the University of Michigan; while Olive is teacher of English in the high school at Kittanning, Pennsylvania. Ray M. Parrish spent his youth and acquired his public school education in Crawford, Warren and McKean counties, had four months of high school work at Marionville and a business college course at Warren, this constituting the broad basis of his business training and experience. A valuable asset to him as a real estate man was a year's course in the Sprague Correspondence School of Law at Detroit. The successive steps in his early business career included a brief service with Elisha K. Kane, a lumber manufacturer at Kane, Pennsylvania, and in February, 1898, leaving Forest County, he came to West Virginia as bookkeeper for the Clarion Lumber Company in Taylor County. At the end of the first year he was promoted to manager, conducting the business four years. This was followed by an independent venture as a lumber manufacturer, associated for a year with E. L. Sawyer. Selling out, he returned to the Clarion Lumber Company, which transferred him to the management of the plant at Manquin, King William County, Virginia, where he remained twenty-one months. On his return to Grafton he engaged in the printing busi- ness, organizing and operating the Eclipse Printery in associ- ation with U. S. Huggins for two years. Mr. Parrish then became associated with his father and with C. A. Yeager, under the firm name of Parrish & Yeager, in the real estate business at Marlinton, Pocahontas County, specializing in timber lands. A year later Mr. Parrish returned to Grafton, and under the name R. M. Parrish began his operations in the local real estate field and also handling insurance. The Par- rish Realty Company was incorporated in August, 1913, Mr. Parrish being president and owner of the majority of the stock. His brother Otis E Parrish, has been in the firm since 1918, and is secretary-treasurer of the company. With every organized effort since he came to Grafton, with a view to promoting the commercial and civic welfare, Mr. Parrish has been associated. He was a charter member of the old Board of Trade, the predecessor of the former Business Men's Association, and was secretary of the board. Then came other organizations, including the Chamber of Com- merce, and the reorganization of this body was largely due to his personal influence and leadership. He is president of the Chamber of Commerce, which is now engaged on a broadly constructive program for the advancement of Grafton and vicinity. Mr. Parrish was chairman of the finance committee and member of the water committee of the Grafton City Coun- cil some ten years ago, when the contract was let for the new water works and the city park purchased as a water plant site; this has since been improved tor a public park, bathing and recreation center. Mr. Parrish is a republican, was chairman of the county campaign committee in 1916, was a delegate to the state convention at Wheeling where delegates to the national convention were chosen, and was a member of the congressional committee of the Second District when W. G. Conley was the party candidate. Mr. Parrish married at Wheeling, in 1901, Miss Rosalie Thayer, daughter of John R. Thayer, a retired farmer of Grafton and one of the county's earliest and best known citizens. Mrs. Parrish died in October, 1911, leaving three children, Helen, Coral and Hubert. December 25, 1919, Mr Parrish married, in Taylor County, Miss Helen Cricken- berger, a native of Giles County, Virginia. Her father, Rev. P. T. Crickenberger, is a Lutheran minister of Grafton. Her mother was member of the Payne family, and her maternal grandmother was an Early, Mrs. Parrish being a great-niece of General Jubal Early. Mr. Parrish attends the Baptist Church, and while he is not a member he is in thorough sym- pathy with the church and organized religious endeavor. Mrs. Parrish is a member of the Lutheran Church, of which her father is the pastor.