THE DESCENDANTS & ANCESTORS OF CHARLES L. KETCHUM, JR.
My Dad. Throughout his life he was called Larry. He worked as a dairyman in his early years, and cut ice blocks from the lake during the winter months. He served in WWI, with Battery A, 79th Field Artillery. At the time of the depression, jobs were scarce, so he went to Buffalo, NY and found a job. His wife, my mother, did not care to stay in Buffalo and returned to her home in Binghamton, NY. My dad's mother came to Buffalo to help raise his two children, me and my sister Patsy Darlyne.
My Children. This is an early picture of my children, taken in June of 1960. From left to right: Donna Marie, age 1; Charles III, age 2 1/2; Patricia Lynn, age 4; Bonnie May, age 7; and Linda Sue, age 8. They all lived within 20 miles from each other in the Buffalo area, until October of 1999 when Donna left for Egypt as a missionary.
The name Ketchum as explained by John Insley Coddington, of Washington, DC, in his article printed in the American Genealogist, Volume XXX, No. 1, January 1954, listed several spellings of our surname as follows: (Cacham, Catcham, Catchman, Cecham, Cetchman, Chattham, Kecham, Ketham; in later generations also, Ketcham, Ketchem and Ketchum.) With this bit of information we can trace our name to an Old English personal name, "Caecca" and "ham", meaning "homestead or settlement", translated as Caecca's homestead. One of the earliest references to our name is Edward born about 1590 in possibly Kent, near Chatham, England. There is a record of a wedding of John Ketcham and Marye Buckhowse, registered in the church of Saint John Timberhill in Norwich, Co. Norwich, in 1571.