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I was born in St. Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y. on June 23, 1902. My parents were Annie Fairbanks Hutchinson, a native Syracusan and daughter of a retired sea captain, and Samuel Boyce Craton, a native of Rutherfordton, N.C. who had taken his medical degree at Syracuse University and settled in Syracuse to practice as an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist, finally concentrating on eye work. My parents were married on June 12, 1901 and were living in a flat on Delaware Street around the corner from West Onondaga Street at the time of my arrival. The officiating physician at my birth was Dr. E.W. Belknap and I mention him mainly because his son became a distant friend of mine but more importantly because his son's first name was McCamley, thus producing a most euphonious moniker, McCamley Belknap. At this time, I believe that my father shared an office with Dr. Wynkoop, a pediatrician who was to guide me successfully through my early years. It is my understanding that their office was on the second floor of a building standing on the bank of the Oswego Canal where it joined the Erie Canal, which would put it on the south side of James Street near Warren Street and conceivably above Andrews grocery store. My first recollection of my father's office is the one at 500-501-502 University Block on Washington Street which was perhaps [[underline]]the[[/underline]] office building of the period. Perhaps one reason for selecting the flat on Delaware Street was that it was only a few blocks from where my Grandmother Hutchinson, widowed in 1900, lived in an upper flat on Kellogg Street which was also home base for her brother, Uncle Jim Hutchinson, a tour director for Thomas Cook & Son, who was away most of the time and had circumnavigated the globe some 29 times in addition to crossing the Atlantic so many times he'd lost count. I might add that my father was 38 and my mother 32 at the time of their marriage. Just why they married so relatively late, I don't know and this is an illustration of why I would like to have comprehensive diaries of both of them. They were both personable people from good families, my father the great-grandson of Joshua Forman, the founder of Syracuse, and my mother the granddaughter of General Orrin Hutchinson, a prominent man in early Onondaga County. In those days, it took some ten years to get a full medical education, and my father served also in the Spanish War, both of which may account for some of the passage of time. I believe, without knowing any details, that my mother had an unhappy love affair which faded away before she ever met my father, which may account for some of her delay in marrying. At any rate, that is about all I know of this particular period. For further details on the family backgrounds of both my father and mother, a perusal of the genealogical information which has been gathered and organized by my mother and me, will be rewarding, carrying the lines back to the MAYFLOWER in two instances, and to Revolutionary soldiers in several more including Susannah Twitty, the Heroine of Graham's Fort in the Battle of King's Mountain in the Revolutionary War.