i forgot in the prior message to note that my father, vernie rush, did tell me that our farris family originally came from ireland........and the spelling of our farriss name started with a ph then.......i think pharish....not sure tho.........and some of the farris family in missouri spelled farris like this "FarriSS", some only use one capitol S at the end.......my father was married before i was born and had 5 children, they spelled farriss like this Farris, whereas my brother and i spell it like this Farriss. of course my father quit school at the age of 10-12 to raise his 4 brothers because his mother passed away giving birth to the youngest....the story i was told was that my g-father had a sort of nervous breakdown when my g-mother passed away, then he ran away.......so perhaps daddy didnt know how to spell his name or for some reason they chose to change it...... anyway not only are the birthplace in missouri a mystery, so are the spellings of the last name.... thnx and welcome to our new people..........mary