This story written by Mrs Octavia Finley and copied by Mrs Charles Pettie is inserted in the McKee story because (1)the journey to Kansas from Canada were identical to the McKees in terms of the year, (2)the mode of transportation and destination. So to I am of proud Finlay ancestry being the 6th great grandson of John and Anna Smith Finlay (as I read it). It is then likely they took this trip together considering that William McKees wife Mary Finlay and a compliment of their children ended up in Marshall County.
(History Begins) History and names of the Finley Family as far as I can give it with the help of the others. Especially Dr. Hawkins of Marysville, Kansas. This part is from him.
The Finlay family was headed by 7 brothers who left Scotland about 1650 and settled in North Ireland with their families. So the Finlays are Scotch Irish. In Scotland the name was spelled in various ways and were in all classes from kings down to Lords and Dukes and all members of the Episcopal Church.
The great-grandfather William Finlay of the first generation 1760 was born and died on the farm home called Balleneddin in the Wicklow Hills at the head of the River Slaney about thirty miles Southwest of Dublin. His wife Alice also died there. John (father of papas mother) and his wife, Susan Pierce with 3 children moved in from a farm home called Ballitool about a mile away. The rest of the family were born on the old farm Balleneddin. They lived with them until they died.
The three children of Richard and Susan were William (papas father), Alice (Dr Hawkins mother) and Thomas who remained in Canada. (Note: There were more children, but Octavia apparently did not know about them when she wrote this)
Richard and wife Susan with their family came to Goderich, Canada in 1847. He died of pneumonia on the Canada farm home Monday Dec 22, 1856. He was a farmer and a member of the Episcopal Church in Ireland and the Methodist in Canada. Susan the wife was born in Ireland on a farm that had been in Pierce family for generations. She died in Canada farm home of what was called ship-fever. Nine children were born in Ireland and one just a few months before her death in Canada. After her death, Richard married a Mrs. Dunkley (now notice that Octavia recognizes that there were nine children)
Richard Finlay (1) son of Richard and Susan, and Richard Finlay (2) son of John and Anna, came to Kansas at the same time settling on nearby farms. Richard (2) and his wife Annie first went to Manhatten Kansas and then later to Santa Rosa, California where they both died. Lottie and Eman still live there in California.
William Finlay, born March 23, 1829 on a farm in Ballitool in Wicklow Cty, Ireland. He came to Canada with his parents in 1847 on March 10, 1852. he married Susan Finlay, his uncle Johns daughter. He bought 50 acres of land there. At that time timber land had to be cleared. The first seven children were born there. They then moved to the USA and settled in Riley Co Kansas on a farm in the spring of 1870. One child, Maggie, dying in Atchison on the way out. On this farm home two more children were born. They were Frank, Minnie and another Susan died. The father (William) died of pneumonia on this farm Feb 28, 1880. He and his wife were of the Methodist Church.
Papas mother, Susan Finlay was born on the ship, June 4, 1833 on the trip coming over from Ireland to Canada. Her people landed in Quebec and came on to Peterborough, settling on farms. About fourteen years later, her fathers brother Richard moved to Peterborough and stayed several weeks, then moved to Goderich about 1849. Susan with others of her family went back to Goderich on a visit. Susans mother, Ann died there and the others settled on farms. Susan married William and the old father John went back to Peterborough alone. Susan also died on the Riley County, Kansas farm. She bled to death when an ulcer of long standing on her limb ate through an artery July 29, 1893. Living at the time in the same house with her son Will and family. Minnie being with her. Frank in College and Minnie had also been in College in Manhattan, Kansas but come home to care for her mother.
In 1870 on coming to Kansas the spelling of the name was changed to Finley by mistake at the land office, where they went for Naturalization papers- Traveling at that time was slow being mostly by oxcart or wagon and horses, at best it was too much trouble to make a trip to have it changed. As the father said it made little difference as they would never inherit any money anyway. So the succeeding generations spell it with and "e" instead of an "a" of those that came at that time.
(4th generation) Thomas Herbert Finley, born in Huron Co Ontario, Canada came to Kansas with parents and brothers and sisters in the spring of 1870. Married Octavia Wagner on Wed March 3, 1886 and settled on a farm in Peach Grove, Kansas neighborhood at that time. Lived there until 1901. (Im going to depart this particular story-and Insert the story of the Finlay trip to Kansas from Canada).
In the year of 1870, William and Susan Finley aged 41 and 37 with six children (Richard, John, William, Anna, Thomas, and Margaret) disposed of their farm seven miles southwest of Lucknow, Ontario Canada and set out for what they hoped would be a land of plenty in Kansas. While we have no written account of that journey from those who participated in the move, we are fortunate in having a story written by another daughter, Minnie Finley Bradshaw, who was born only six years after the arrival of the family from Canada.
Minnie Finley, the youngest child of the immigration family, has long been a "second mother" to the whole clan of cousins forming the first generation of those born in the United States. For many years Minnie, as a young woman, visited in turn the growing families of her brothers and sister. She was so beloved by all the children that threatening cases of jealousy often seemed near among the cousins when Aunt Minnies name was mentioned. The children of each family always insisted that she was "our Aunt Minnie". And so she will always be our "Aunt Minnie", loved and cherished by descendents of every group. I am happy to present you here "Aunt Minnies Story" written in 1955 of her recollections of the trails end of the Finaly migration from Canada to Kansas- Signed Howard H. Finlay.
In 1870, moved by the spirit to "go west" to find a better fortune, William and Susan Finley along with many others of the Finley family said a solemn goodbye to the soil of Canada and headed for "The States". Traveling by train they arrived at Atchison, Kansas where they stopped for rest and a more deliberate exploration to determine their final destination.
The journey had been a thrilling adventure for the children. I always remember my sister Anna telling me that when they were riding on the train, she always wanted to look out of the window at the passing country instead of playing with the other children. Some of the Finleys went to Ohio, others pushed on to the western part of Kansas to Marshall County, to Washington County and to Riley County.
Two families and Richard, one of WIlliams brothers, delayed their journey to Atchison. The second family was made up of another Richard and wife Margaret, with a number of children (this Richard was a brother of Susan). From Atchison the tree men, William, Richard and Richard went further west to Waterville, Kansas to pick out their farms.
My mother told me that one night while they were in Atchison, the two families of women and children were surprised by some unknown visitors who claimed they had come to see the men of the family. While they were talking, Aunt Margaret becoming alarmed, went upstairs and got the older boys out of bed and dressed. She had some girls, also, who were practically grown. Then she directed to walk around upstairs and the boys to busy themselves examining their guns. It was not long before one of the strange visitors said, "well, we might as well go," and so they did. My mother had thought that possibly the younger Uncle Richard had been too flush with the little money he carried while he was busy buying some things downtown.
Here, too it was that the first mortal price was paid for the long journey. Our little sister, Margaret was in poor health. Three months old she was at the time. There she died and was buried before the family went on. We have always thought of Atchison as the last home of little Margaret.
It was not long before the men got their farms. They homesteaded, I think. Our farm was on the south side of Parallel line and extended one-half mile south, and Uncle Richard, the young man, took the farms south of ours, extending to the section line on the south. Uncle Richard and Aunt Margaret and family got a home two or three miles north of the parallel line and one-half mile east.
Later, when a post office was established in 1876 on our farm, it was given the name of Parallel and that was the reason that the precise spot where the Finleys settled can be located on the map. It has become a permanent part of the geography of America, Parallel, Kansas.
Uncle RIchard and Aunt Margaret lived across the road north of the Spring Valley Church as long as the family lived in that section of the country. The buildings were all blown away by a cyclone in 1895, I think it was, the same one that blew down the church and crippled so many people.
The younger Richard married a niece of my mother and lived on the farm south of us until his family was grown and wanted to go to school in Manhatten. Three of the five children graduated from Manhatten College, and the other two went part-time. Those children were Franks and my best chums as we were growing up.
In ten years my father did a lot of work. he built a stone kitchen a little south of where built the old house that we lived in until I was 14 years old. It was torn down when I was 2 years old. I remember that building.
The old house was a large living room, 18 by 18 perhaps. At the east end of this big room were two bedrooms. They were small, and the attic over these three rooms with a window in the east gable and a door in the west gable. Several beds up there gave sleeping room for the big boys who were at home or cousins who were visiting from western Kansas. As I remember, we went up over a shed kitchen and in at the door in the west gable.
Father built a shed kitchen at the west end of the house and a large porch along the south side of the house, with a square room between the porch and and the shed kitchen that was built for the post office in 1876 and later joined with the shed kitchen as a kitchen. As Father was building the porch a little wren came and tried to build a nest at the outer corner of the house. The little wren would come back every spring for quite a while to fix her home in the same place. We enjoyed the wrens so much. We had robins, brown thrushes, black birds, crows, meadowlarks, wrens and other birds Im sure i dont remember. We, of course, had the quail and I remember prarie chickens so well.
I remember when my Father built a good granery out east of the house across the space left for the road leading to Uncle Richards place, as he bult in the center of his 160 acres.
We had a good well about 20 feet from the east end of the porch joined by large flat stones father quarried up in our pasture. It was a soft rock that Father made chicken troughs out of. It became very hard after standing a while. I remember a windmil over the well all of my life there and a tank on the southeast of the windmill outside of the yard in the pasture that came up to that part of the yard.
The big thing that my father did in the ten years that he lived was to plant trees. he planted a good orchard of apple trees, crab apples, a few trees and cherries with two or three rows of peaches around the west side the north side and a few trees at the south side, a row of poplar trees from the road down to the yard a blackberry thicket out west of the house. It was my job to pick the ripe blackberries.
Father planted shade trees around the east of the granery and stables, hen house etc, and sown a large side of the place, with a grove of walnut trees west of the place and a cottonwood grove south of the ravine where several picnics were held later. When I was growing up I enjoyed those big trees to climb in and sit up there reading and studying my sunday school lessons.
My father bought some land for my brother John and brother Will, and Tom was to have part of the home place, and Frank a part of it. The boys were to hep pay for part of their land.
In the Spring of 1880, Father took pneumonia, and the closest doctor was fourteen miles from us, and having no other way to come back and forth only by horse and buggy, he was not able to get the best of the sickness, and Father became very sick. He was very glad to go on saying "I am drinking at the fountain,"etc., picked his funeral text and talked until his voice seemed to be coming from the world beyond. He would have been disappointed if he couldnt go on at the last of his sickness.
(Again the previous by Minnie Finley Bradshaw, 1955 re the Kansas Finleys)
There is Finlay History that goes back to 1000-to Fearchar McFinlay, born around 1200, and thence back to Duncan McDuff in 1000AD- (remember McDuff in Shakespears McDuff).
You can E mail the folks below for more information of Finlays, or go to Finlay lines to see a chart. This families history has deep roots-and are history rich!
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