by Sherry Stocking Kline
16 October 2011

I love to check out the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges that Randy Seaver sends out way each Saturday Night, and this one looks like a great way to quanitfy what research I need to do next!  So tune up the “Mission Impossible” music, check out the challenge, and play along!

Hello, genea-world! 
It’s Saturday Night (in the USA!) — time for some worldwide 
Genealogy Fun! 

Your mission, should you decide to accept it is to: 
1)  Participate in the Ancestors GeneaMeme created by Jill Ball on the Geniaus blog. 
Thank you to Jill for the SNGF idea!  Jill is collecting Ancestors MeGeneaMeme entries too.The rules, and the Meme list, is given below in my response. 
Here’s mine:  The Rules:  

2)  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook Status post or note, or in a Google+ Stream item. 

 The list should be annotated in the following manner:

Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
You are encouraged to add extra comments in brackets after each item

The Meme:

Which of these apply to you? 

 

3.  Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents.  (I do have photos of all of them, thanks to my mom, and my generous aunts and uncles who have shared their holdings so that I might scan and digitize them.)

4.  Have an ancestor who was married more than three times. (I have some who were married three times, but haven’t located any that I know of that were married more than three.)

5.  Have an ancestor who was a bigamist.  (Not that I know of… Would  make the family tree more interesting though, wouldn’t it?)

6.  Met all four of my grandparents. (I Couldn’t.  Both grandfathers passed away before I was born. I did meet and know both of my grandmothers.)

7.  Met one or more of my great-grandparents.  (I remember my great-grandfather even though I was about 2 1/2 years old when he passed away.)

8.  Named a child after an ancestor. (We did, though not intentionally. My husband’s great-grandfather was named James Kline, and we gave that name as a middle name to our son without knowing that there was an ancestor bearing that as a name.)

9.  Bear an ancestor’s given name/s.  (Not only do I not bear an ancestor’s name, my grandmother was unhappy with my mom, her daughter, for giving me the name of an alcholic beverage.  Unhappy enough that for a time, when I was very, very small, I wondered if the “Carrie” that took an axe to the bars and saloons in Kansas was my grandmother…)

10.  Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland. (I have an ancestor from Great Britain, and I probably do from Ireland as well, but have yet to find that link or proof of it.  Very difficult with the name Jones!)

11.  Have an ancestor from Asia (No.)

12.  Have an ancestor from Continental Europe. (Probably. My geography isn’t what it should be….)

13.  Have an ancestor from Africa. (No, but my granddaughters do.)

14.  Have an ancestor who was an agricultural labourer (in the US and UK) (Yes, most of my ancestors were involved in farming, right up to my own father, and the same on my mother’s side.)

15.  Have an ancestor who had large land holdings (what’s large?  Larger than 40 acres?  Yep.  Larger than 640 acres?  Probably.) (Yes, by yesterday’s standards my ancestors had large land holdings.)

16.  Have an ancestor who was a holy man – minister, priest, rabbi (Jonathan Oatley in Killingly CT in 19th century, several more in 17th century) (We have ministers in my family, and one of my ancestors was “Deacon Samuel Stocking, son of George Stocking.  George was born in circa 1582 in Suffolk, England.  Deacon Samuel was born in England also and immigrated to America in 1633.  They became part of Thomas Hooker’s party, and George was one of Hartford, CT’s founding fathers.)

17.  Have an ancestor who was a midwife (unsure) (Not that I know of.)

18.  Have an ancestor who was an author (unsure) (Not that I know of.)

19.  Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones (many Smiths, no Murphys, only one Jones line) One large Smith line, one Jones line that quickly turns into a huge brick wall.

20.  Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng.  (No.  Not that I know of.)

21.  Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X.  (Not that I know of.)

22.  Have an ancestor with a forename beginnining with Z (three generations of Zachariah Hildreths, and a Zechariah Barber)  (Not that I know of.)

23.  Have an ancestor born on 25th December.  (Yes, my great-grandfather, Roderick Remine Stocking was born 25 December 1853.)

24.  Have an ancestor born on New Year’s Day.  (Not that I know of.)

25.  Have blue blood in your family lines (supposedly if Royal Descendants book is right) (No.  Not that I know of.)

26.  Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth.  (No.)

27.  Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth (nope, one great-grandparent born in Canada is the last one born in another country) (No. Two lines came to America in the 1600’s. Need to get other lines back that far.)

28.  Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century (all but 3 or 4 of my 32 3rd great-grandparents.  (Have several lines back to the 18th century.)

29.  Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier (quite a few) (some, not as many as to the 18th century.)

30.  Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents (Austin Carringer, Della smith, Georgia Kemp, Frank Seaver, Thomas Richmond) (Just Roderick Remine Stocking, thus far.)

31.  Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X (not that I know of) (My earliest Stocking ancestor, George Stocking, Hartford, CT founder, signed his will with an X.  He was, besides being a farmer, a surveyor, so I wonder if he was just no longer able to sign his name due to advanced age, rather than not being literate.)

32.  Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university (not that I know of) (Yes, both my grandparents on my father’s side, Elmer and Maud (McGinnis) Stocking attended college, though I believe neither graduated with a four year degree. My grandmother received a teaching certificate and taught for a year or two, perhaps a bit longer.)

33. Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offence (several are in Sex in Middlesex book)  (Not that I have found yet.)

34.  Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime (logic says someone in 12 generations must have been, not sure about this one) (Probably, but I have not found it yet.)

35.  Have shared an ancestor’s story online or in a magazine (probably in Genea-Musings…) (I have shared several ancestor’s short stories online on my blog here, and in the small town history book that I co-authored, “Mayfield: Then & Now.)

36.  Have published a family history online or in print (two books self=published and shared with family) (I haven’t published a book, just a notebook that I take to family reunions.)

37.  Have visited an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries (several in New England, and the Ranslow Smith Inn in Wisconsin) (Yes, several here in Kansas, and one ancestor’s home in Kentucky.)

38.  Still have an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family (not in the family…the Ranslow smith Inn in Wisconsin would qualify if I’d bought it) (My grandfather’s farm was bought by my parent’s and is still owned by my mother.  It has been in the family now since 1903.  The house burned down several years ago, however.)

39.  Have a family bible from the 19th Century (have Bible pages for births, marriages, deaths, but not the Bible) (The only family Bible that I know of is owned by my Uncle and his family.)

40.  Have a pre-19th century family bible  (No.)



by Sherry Stocking Kline
October 12, 2011

I have been blessed this year with so many who have shared family photographs with me, and this past spring, my cousin Larry brought me a huge box of photographs to scan!  I have yet to measure the box, but it is approxinately 1.5 feet by 3.5 feet, and chock full of family photos!

Needless to say, I spent hours scanning and am still trying to make time to organize the results!

The following photograph is my Great-Aunt Myrtle Nyberg Stocking and her husband, Roderick Porter, who was called Porter by his family and friends.  Porter and Myrtle were my cousin Larry’s grandparents.

Roderick Porter & Myrtle (Nyberg) Stocking

Porter and Myrtle were married on December 30, 1908, and Porter was killed on July 5th, 1924 when he was working on electrical lines.

by Sherry Stocking Kline
October 12, 2011

My Mama was a really, really good cook. So when I asked myself what favorite food should I write about, it was a challenge to pick between her home-made ice cream, cinnamon twists, snow white divinity, or many other yummy foods.

But sitting here on a Sunday afternoon, I remembered that Sunday was my favorite meal of the week because we always, always had roast beef for Sunday dinners, usually along with home-made pies or cakes.  And I loved our own raised-on-the-farm, cooked till it was juicy and tender roast beef.

We almost always went to Sunday School and church at the Mayfield Federated Church (Methodist & Presbyterian combined) in the nearby little town of Mayfield and we weren’t home in the morning to cook Sunday dinners, so Mom used her trusty electric skillet, set on low, to make the best, lightly browned, tastiest roast beef dinners cooked with potatoes and carrots.

She started out with our own farm-raised beef and added in potatoes and carrots (sometimes from the garden, though by the time I came along, the potatoes and carrots were almost always store-bought ones) and then all we had to do was come home and cook some fresh corn on the cob or home-canned green beans, slice up a few tomatoes (all usually from our garden), stir up some gravy, pop in some brown and serve rolls (or home-made rolls) for a fast, tasty Sunday dinner that was my hands-down favorite meal of the week!

Mom always had room at her table for more, and food enough for an army if one showed up.   If company came home with us we weren’t expecting, we just added more veggies, an extra quart of green beans, a few more ears of corn, and a few extra tomatoes to make enough.  And if Mom was expecting company, there was room in the skillet for an extra roast and more potatoes and carrots.

It may sound like a simple meal now, no duck a l’orange for us, but my mom had a special touch with everything she made, and it was just one more thing that made Sundays special for me.

My mother is still alive, (Praise the Lord) but with just three months to go before she turns 100, it’s me in the kitchen doing the cooking now, and I have to confess that I don’t have my mother’s love of cooking, nor her magic touch, but we do still enjoy lots of garden fresh veggies, though usually not from our own garden!

by Sherry Stocking Kline
06 June 2011

It’s a couple of days past Randy Seaver’s June 4th Saturday night challenge, but this challenge really resonated with me!  If only I could turn back the clock or jump into a time machine and re-do a few things!

Greetings, genea-philes. it’s SATURDAY NIGHT – time for more GENEALOGY FUN!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  On GeneaBloggers Radio last night (www.blogtalkradio.com/geneabloggers/) the discussion turned to regrets that we all have about our genealogy and family history experiences.  Someone said “If I knew then, what I know now, I would have…” I thought that it would make a good SNGF topic, and it may be a general topic on a future GeneaBloggers Radio show.

2)  Tell us about your “If I knew then what I know now, I would have…” regret in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status or note.

High on my list of wish I could re-do is the opportunity to document my sources better from the very beginning, so if you are in the same boat, check out Randy Seaver’s June 4th Saturday Night Genealogy Challenge at www.geneamusings.com!  When I first started, I had so few family ‘lines’ going, and I really, truly believed I would remember where each piece of information came from.  And, frankly, I just wasn’t thinking.

But it isn’t the citations and sources I most wish I could re-do.  It’s the missed opportunities to ask the people who would (or might) actually KNOW the answers to questions that I now want to ask them.  Oh, if only.

1.  I wasn’t into genealogy when I was eight years old (that’s how old I was when my Grandmother Jones died), but if I could ask her now, I would ask her what she knew about her father-in-law’s father (he’s a huge Jones brick wall!).  Did she know his name?  Did he even know his own father’s name?  What was herding cattle all day on horseback in Nebraska like when you were barely old enough to attend school?  How scared were you when the Indians stopped by your home to get food?  Did they ever come back?  Which one of the two young ladies in the neat photo you left behind is your niece, and which is her friend?

2.  And oh, if only I could hear my Grandmother Stocking re-tell her stories of my father’s childhood?  Why didn’t I write them down?  I was only ten, eleven, or maybe twelve, but how I wish I had taken the time to write them down.  Now, it is only bits and pieces that I remember.  I know the horses spooked, and my dad got hurt.  His teeth poked a pretty good hole in his lip.  But what spooked the horses?  I don’t remember.  And if only I could ask her where the farm was where she grew up in Illinois?  What was it like? What schools did she attend?  Now, I will spend hours, and days, and still never have all the answers.  And the one question I really wanted to know when I was in grade school, who was our Native American ancestor?  What was his/her name?  Were they actually Cherokee?  Where did they live/come from?

3.  And why didn’t I think to ask my Great-Aunt Dr. M. Ethel McGinnis more questions about her fascinating life as a teacher, professor, and gifted student?  And her life with my grandmother Stocking when they were children? 

I have many more ‘if only’s’  but they all involve asking my much older relatives questions that I wasn’t interested in knowing the answers to for many, many more years.   

If.  Only.

by Sherry Stocking Kline
19 May 2011

I just finished reading a great post “Beyond the Obituary: Researching Your Family Tree in Newspapers” on the Legacy Family Tree’s website.  It gives several excellent reasons for checking newspapers for your family, shares the different information you may be lucky enough to find, and showcases the ease of searching Genealogy Bank’s digitized and indexed records as well.

Many times I’ve bemoaned the fact that my ancestors lived in tiny little rural towns that Genealogy Bank doesn’t have in their collection. (I’m crossing my fingers that they will be added to the Genealogy Bank collection soon!)

Many of my ancestors lived or spent some time here as farmers, ranchers, and teachers in rural Sumner County, Kansas. 

So first I determined the town(s) that my ancestors lived near.  Many of these small rural towns in the area where my ancestors lived are about five miles apart.  For instance, Milan and Mayfield.

So my next stop was to go to the Kansas State Historical Society website and search through their newspaper microfilm lists to see what newspapers I might be able to research.   

Many times those small town happenings were included in both small-town newspapers as well as the larger newspaper(s) in Wellington, Kansas.  At some periods of time, I found anywhere from 3 to 6 newspapers that might have my ancestor’s information. 

When I typed the name “Mayfield” into the KSHS newspaper database I found the following:

For a very short time, my tiny little town had its own newspaper! 

 Woo Hoo!  Better and better, my Stocking ancestors lived in rural Mayfield for approximately twenty years at that point, and even better than that, this microfilm is available locally at the Sumner County Historical and Genealogical Society Research Center (open Tuesdays from 10 to 4, closed for lunch or other times by appointment) and the Wellington Public Library.

Next, I typed in the name of Milan, and found the following results:

Wow!  Over the years, Milan had four different newspapers!  

While both my ancestors and my husband’s ancestors settled there before these newspapers came into being, it’s still a good way to locate many of their doings, their family get-togethers, and in some cases even the fact that they traveled with friends by train into Wellington fifteen miles away to shop for the day.

I believe that the Kansas State Historical Society  sells these microfilms or loans the microfilm out to some libraries, http://www.kshs.org.  But not all libraries have the capability (or perhaps it is funding) to to do this interlibrary loan.

I know this post may help Kansas researchers locate the newspapers they need to search for family info, and I hope that this post will help others looking for  their family in other states.

Without the indexing, it takes a lot of time to hunt through microfilm after microfilm, but the good news is that here in rural Kansas, many of my ancestor’s events, and not just their birth and death announcements, but also when they traveled, where they traveled, how they traveled, and even who they may have had for Sunday dinner may be included in those small-town local newspapers columns.

Many thanks to Taneya who left a comment on this blog post, and a link to a great resource to help find other newspaper microfilms!

You may also wish to check the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America site for a directory of newspaper microfilm holdings across the country if you need to ever expand beyond Kansas: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

by Sherry Stocking Kline
18 May 2011

My cousin Maxine and her son Larry loaned me a HUGE box of photographs.  It’s so heavy that I can’t lift it!  I’ve spent the past 2 – 3 weeks scanning off and on, and some time this week to re-organize and locate the ones that I have questions about. 

But just one of the treasures that they’ve loaned me is here below, a photograph of my great-grandfather, (and my cousin Larry’s as well) Roderick Remine Stocking. 

I was between 2 and 3 when Great-Grandpa died, and I remember him as a very tall, white-haired gentleman.  My mother, his granddaughter-in-law, dearly loved and respected him. 

He and his wife, Frances Hitchcock Stocking homesteaded in Sumner County, Kansas, just west of Mayfield and the Chisholm Trail. 

 Their first home was 10 X 12 and they had to put the table out at night to put their bed down, and their oldest child, my Grandfather Elmer Leverett Stocking was born while they still lived in that home.

 I think he is a very handsome and distinguished looking gentleman.  And I sure wish I had had the opportunity to get to know him better.

And to ask him all the questions that I now have about family history!

Related Posts:

Where Were My Ancestors during the 1930 Census!

Carnival of Genealogy – the J. H. Stocking Bible

Carnival of Genealogy – Scrapbooking My Family History – One Page at a Time

How Many Descendants Does Roderick R. Stocking Have? 

Roderick & Frances Stocking’s Tombstone – Osborne Cemetery, Mayfield, Sumner County, Kansas

by Sherry Stocking Kline
15 May 2011

Nearly every day, at least one person stumbles across my website looking for software to create their dog a family tree, and so finding this blog post at Legacy Family Tree  gave me a way to share the “how-to” with folks who want to get started using Legacy to track their dog’s Family Tree.

Not only are there links to downloading the great Legacy software, there are tips, and links to more tips on how to fill in the blanks, plus comments from other Puppy Pedigree builders!

My dog is a “Rescue” dog, and her pedigree probably includes a German Shepherd, maybe a coon hound, perhaps a bit of husky, and I think she has a Beagle smiley face and pretty brown eyes!  

 O.K., so that doesn’t sound pretty, but she really is, and she loves to sit on her dog house, and survey the world she guards! 

Related links:

Legacy Family Tree

Roots Magic Genealogy Software – Free downloads

by Sherry Stocking Kline
Saturday, May 14th, 2011

Recently, bloggers using Blogger found themselves unable to blog, and also found some of their blog posts had disappeared, and this blogging challenge from Randy Seaver comes from that 20 hour stint of not being able to blog!

Hey genea-philes – it’s Saturday Night – time for lots more Genealogy Fun!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  We all know that Blogger (www.blogspot.com) was down for 20 hours from Thursday afternoon to Friday morning.  What did you do with yourself during that time period?

2)  If we lost our blogging platforms for awhile (but not the Internet as a whole), what would you do with your genealogy time?  What projects would you start, continue working on, or try to finish instead of blogging?

3)  Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment on this post, or in a status thread on Facebook.

I don’t blog on the Sumner County Historical & Genealogical Society blogsite at http://www.ks-schgs.blogspot.com everyday, so I didn’t know that Blogger was ‘down’ for 20 hours and created lots of problems for Blogger bloggers and giving everyone serious blogging withdrawal!

So, what would I do if my self-hosted WordPress went down for 20 hours? 

Panic.

  Then spend time trying to find out what went wrong and what I needed to do to fix it. 

 Then once I learned that the glitch wasn’t up to me and was out of my control, I’d ‘play hookey.’ 

Which is what I did today!   I played ‘hookey’. 

I had ‘stuff’ that needed doing, but the little ‘bug’ that landed in our house this week wasn’t helping me feel like getting things done around the house, and so for a few hours I played hookey.

I went to the Illinois State Genealogical Society, and began searching for the two surnames that I knew came from Illinois to Kansas, McGinnis and Corson. 

And Voila! 

There they were, my great-great grandparents, Richard S. Corson and Mary Corson, buried in the Bethel Cemetery in Sangamon County, Illinois.  I knew it to be them, because I had some of their information already, but I did not know where they were buried. 

And now, I do.

And that reminded me that I might just be lucky enough that some kind soul had posted their tombstone photo on Find-A-Grave.com.  

Once again, luck was with me and Richard’s and Mary’s tombstone photo was online and may be found right here.   The contributor was listed as “anonymous,” and I just want to say “thank you” to the anonymous contributor who put their tombstone photo on the website. 

I’ve Done Very Little Research on the Corson’s…

I have done very little research on the Corson line as I’ve been focusing in other areas, but as I said, I was playing ‘hookey’ today, and simply out searching to see what fun thing I might find, so I headed on over to Ancestry.com  and then to FamilySearch.org  to try to find them on as many census and other records as were possible.

I was able to locate the Corson family on three different census records, and have to admit that I now have a new puzzle.  On three different census records 1870, 1880, and 1900, there is a person with a different name with the same birth year.

In 1870, there is a 13 yr old male, Francis E, born it appears in 1857.

In 1880, there is a 23 yr old female named Emma, born it appears in 1857.

In 1900, there is a 43 year old female daughter named Fannie and a granddaughter named Fannie (they have different initials).  Fannie would have been born in 1857. 

So, was Francis and Fannie twins?  If so, where was she in 1870? 

My guess is, and it is nothing but a guess, that the Francis E listed in 1870 should have been Frances Emma or Emmaline, and listed as a female. Then it would be sensible for her to be there at the age of 23 listed as Emma, and back home at 43 listed as Fannie, and with a daughter named Fannie also, who was born in California.

I’m Done Playing Hookey for Today…

But, without further research I won’t know the answer to those questions, and since I’m done playing hookey for today, those questions will have to wait.  But the cool thing is, I now know the names of a few of my Great-grandmother Margaret Corson McGinnis’ siblings!

And maybe, just maybe, I will be very, very lucky, and one of my great-grandmother Maggie’s siblings will find this blog, and write me a note that explains this mystery!!

Related Links:

Margaret “Maggie” (Corson) McGinnis Dies at Age 101

Margaret “Maggie” (Corson) McGinnis Sang for Abraham Lincoln

Gr-Grandmother Maggie (Corson) McGinnis & Maud McGinnis Stocking Scrapbook page

Thomas J. McGinnis Obituary

The Corson Family Association

Book: “Three Hundred Years with the Corson Family” by Orville Corson

Milt Stocking, 86, local music teacher
Palo Alto Daily News – Nov 28, 2001

R. Milton “Milt” Stocking, a retired Palo Alto music teacher, has died.  He was 86.

Stocking died Saturday (Nov 24^th) from complications of Parkinson’s disease at the Manor Care Nursing Home in Sunnyvale.

He was born Aug 10, 1915, in Topeka, Kansas. He earned a degree from Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, then a master’s degree in music education from the University of Colorado, in Boulder, and took doctorate courses at Columbia University in New York City.

During World War II, Stocking served in the Air Force in Europe. He continued to serve in the Air Force Reserve and worked for the Veterans Administration in Wichita, Kansas.  He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1975.

He taught music in Kansas, Sacramento and in Palo Alto Unified School District schools. He also taught jazz at Foothill College after he moved to Palo Alto in 1956.  He retired after teaching for 23 years.

He was a member of the First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto and a member of BPO Elk’s Lodge No. 1471 of Palo Alto for 27 years.

He was also a past charter member of the Schola Cantorum Community Choir and director of church choirs in Kansas and in Los Altos.

He is survived by his wife, Martha; former wife, Lea; daughters Raina Glazener of Seattle and Annie Stocking of San Francisco; and many nieces and nephews and other relatives.

Friends are invited to attend a memorial service to be held at 1 p.m., Monday, Dec. 3^rd, at the Alta Mesa Memorial Park chapel, located at 695 Arastradero Road in Palo Alto.

Contributions may be made in Milt’s memory to the Parkinson’s Institute, 1170 Morse Ave., Sunnyvale, CA. 94089, First United Methodist Church, organ fund, 625 Hamilton, Palo Alto, CA 94301 or the American Red Cross of Palo Alto, CA.

 by Sherry Stocking Kline
April 28, 2011

I love the “Favorite Current Technology” Carnival Challenge, and can’t wait to read everyone’s posts. I know I will learn about some cool new technology to add to my gotta-have-it list!

 The topic for the next edition of the COG will be: Favorite Current Technology, and you can read more about it at Creative Gene and post your own blog post at Blog Carnival.

What’s your favorite technology of the moment? Do you love your iPad? Do you find yourself spending a lot of time on the site of a newly discovered database?

Do you have a handy new cell phone app you’d like to share with others? Are you learning a new piece of genealogy software? Got a new digital camera?

Tell us all about your latest and greatest technology and how it benefits your genealogy research or the recording of your family history. 

Deadline for submission is May 1st. 

After seeing all the ads on the television, doing research, reading reviews, and even tweeting “how do you like your Incredible?”,  I bought a Droid HTC Incredible. (iPhone wasn’t an option in my rural area at the time.) 

Now I understand why everyone who tweeted me back said “I love my Droid” because I think this phone is one of the handiest little gadgets to come along in a long time.

How do I love my Droid? Let me count the ways.

1.  First, I love that it ‘connects’ with my G-mail/Google account. When I update my G-mail contacts on my computer they’re immediately on my phone.  When I update my phone’s contacts, they’re immediately on my computer. Woo Hoo!   It’s all searchable and it’s all backed up on-line. (No more drowning the phone in cherry Coke and losing my friends & family!)

I love that when my friends and family call me, their photo flashes on the screen before I have time to read the Caller ID.  (After uploading the photos to my Google contacts.) It’s like a warm and fuzzy ‘hello’ from my favorite people!

I’m Gonna Love Having my Family History info in My Pocket!

2.  I can’t remember how many times that I’ve wished I had my family tree with me when I’ve gotten an unexpected research opportunity. Now, I’ve got my choice of one of the new genealogy family tree apps in the Android Market, such as “Gedstar Pro,” “Family Bee” family tree viewer, or “Families” by TelGen Limited.  I just have to choose which one to try and which one to buy.

3.  I just downloaded (haven’t tried everything out yet) the “Quickoffice” app. It was reasonable and I will be able to take Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files with me, and tweak them if I want to.  I think that’s going to be handy; I have a lot of Word files that contain family history.  The website states that it will sync with Google Docs, and Dropbox, (I need to go to Legacy Family Tree and listen to Thomas MacEntee’s webinar Dropbox for Genealogists again and create my own Dropbox), as well as Sugar Sync, Box, and MobileMe. (I sure hope I can figure that all out!)  

GPS Your Tombstones?

5. A while back, I downloaded “GPS Status.”  Now  I need to go back to the cemeteries, and get the latitude and longitude of family tombstones and add them to my Tombstone Tuesday posts and from now on, when possible, I will include the latitude and longitude coordinates along with my photograph.

Not only will that make it easier for others to find the stones, it will make it easier for me to go back and find them again as well.

6.  And speaking of posting on my blog, there are both WordPress and Blogger apps for the Droid, so if I wanted to (and I don’t) I could update my blog on the run.

7.  I also love that when I get an unexpected opportunity to stop at the library and do some genealogy research the Droid actually does a fair job of snapping a readable photo of the book that I can’t quite squeeze into the photocopy machine. And then, it lets me e-mail it home to be added to my genealogy files.

8.   I also like it that when I’m sitting in the courthouse trying to read the fine print in my ancestor’s will that my Droid has a magnifying glass app. (Yes, there’s an app for that!)  And actually, there’s more than one app, several of them are free, and most not only magnify, but they also shed more light on the subject while doing it.

9.  Did I mention that the Droid’s have “mobile hotspots?” For a few bucks more a month, your Droid can be the hotspot that your laptop needs to access the internet.  Pretty handy! 

 Patience is Not One of my Virtues…

10.  And number 10 on my list, but not in my heart, I love my Droid because patience is not one of my virtues. I hate to wait in lines, in doctor’s offices, or even in the fast food line.  I can pull my Droid out of my pocket, check my e-mail, text a friend, open up my Kindle or Nook app, my New International Version Bible app, or even my Bubble Breaker app, and the time passes a lot more quickly.

Did I mention I love my Droid?  

 I do.  Not just because it’s a fun little gadget, but because it makes my life easier, keeps me in touch with the people I love, keeps track of where I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to be doing, and I didn’t even mention the “Find a Grave”, Tweet Deck, Facebook, or Grocery List (handy to text your grocery list to your kids to pick up what you need!) apps that are also pretty nifty to use!