Posts Tagged ‘family history’

 I can’t begin to tell my cousin Larry how grateful I am that he shared these photographs with me, and allowed me to add numerous photos of our shared ancestry into my own family tree!

Roderick Porter and Myrtle Nyberg Wedding Photograph

Roderick Remine Stocking Photograph

Roderick Remine & Frances (Hitchcock) Stocking’s tombstone

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
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

by Sherry Stocking Kline
02 April 2011

It’s time for more Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – the 1940 US Census. “   I was excited to learn when the census was going to be released, and was just wondering about that this week! And since it is after midnight, only 365 days to wait! 

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

1)  Know that the 1940 United States Census will be released for public viewing on the National Archives website on Monday, 2 April 2012 (366 days from today!).  My understanding is that, when it is first released, that there will be no indexes available – we will have to search them the “old way” – with known addresses, finding enumeration districts from maps and websites, and then go page-by-page to find our folks.  Eventually, there will be indexes available, but we don’t know how long after the release that will be.

2)  Which of your ancestral family members will be in the 1940 census?  Consider not just your ancestors, but also their siblings. 

3)  Where did your ancestral family members live in 1940 on Census Day?  Have you found all of the addresses in city directories or telephone books?  Please list the ones you know the addresses of, and the ones you need to find addresses for.

4)  Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, a comment to this blog post, or on a Facebook note or comment.

Note:  This idea came to me on Friday night while participating in the Geneabloggers Radio chat – we had a discussion of the 1940 census release.

1).  Eeek, no index?  I guess I’m getting spoiled!  Oh well, I can still search at midnight in my sweats!

2).  By 1940, my mom and dad had been married for nine years, had two sons, (my brothers) and were living on the farm (rural route, Mayfield, Kansas) where I grew up.

 By 1940, my dad’s father, Elmer Stocking,  had passed away two years earlier, and (I think) maybe my grandmother, Maud McGinnis Stocking, had moved from our town to Cedarvale, Kansas, to be near one of my uncles, Frank Stocking.  Grandma Stocking lived in Cedarvale until she passed away on February 28, 1962.

I can still drive to my grandma’s home in that tiny Kansas Flint Hills town, but I don’t know what her address was, and don’t even know if the little town had addresses.   I think getting addresses/locations documented is something I need to “fix”, not just on my grandma’s home, but on all our homes.  Many of my ancestors and close family members lived on farms, and that was well before the country got 9-1-1 addresses, so I will probably need to get farm legals or type in good directions.  GPS coordinates would be a good idea when I can go back to the exact spot and add those in.

By 1940, my great-grandfather, Roderick Remine Stocking, had lost his third son, thirty-seven-year old Roderick Porter, to an accidental electrocution, and he moved into Mayfield with his daughter-in-law, Myrtle Nyberg Stocking and her children.

On my mom’s side, her father and mother were still living, and lived on a farm just two miles straight east of Milan, Kansas on what is now known by locals as “the Old Highway” and is now  known as 20th Street South according to the 9-1-1 addressing.

by Sherry Stocking Kline

I’m trying to blog along with the “52 Weeks of Personal History and Genealogy.”  As you can see, I’m more than a little behind.

Week 12: Movies. Did (or do you still) see many movies? Describe your favorites. Where did you see these films? Is the theater still there, or is there something else in its place?

This challenge runs from Saturday, March 19, 2011 through Friday, March 25, 2011.

I grew up on a wheat and dairy farm, about 10 miles from the nearest theater, and my folks were not rich, so we didn’t attend movies a lot.

They used to show movies on the side of buildings…

I learned after I was grown that many of the small towns in our area used to show movies on the side of a building and folks came to town, sat around in cars and chairs, visited, snacked, and made a Saturday night get-together out of it.

In fact, that used to be one of the ways that the merchants ‘lured’ people to town to shop, and then they stayed open on Saturday nights.

My husband remembered doing that, and him just a year ahead of/older than me, but I sure don’t remember it at all.  I wish I did.  It sounds like a wonderful way for small towns to spend some Saturday night fun together.

I Remember When We Saw Old Yeller…

I was eight years old, which means my brother Gary would have been twenty when “Old Yeller” came to our local historic Regent Theater (now newly renovated re-opened)

My brother asked me if I’d like to go to a movie with him on Saturday night.

And I’m all like “Me and you?”

And he was like ‘Yes, me and you!”

I thought he was kidding, I mean he usually went out on a date or out with his friends.

So, he got all Saturday-night-dressed-up, and I did, too, and we met up with one of his friends who had also brought along his little sister.

They bought us popcorn and pop, and sat us two rows in front of them. (Close enough they could watch us along with the movie, but maybe not so close that everyone knew we together, you suppose?)

On the way into town, my brother warned me that the movie had a sad ending, and that “Old Yeller” was going to die at the end.

With all the superior wisdom of an eight-year-old that knew that Disney movies did NOT have sad endings, I told him he was wrong, that it wasn’t going to end that way.

And of course, he said “yes, it does.”

Life Doesn’t Always Have a Happy Ending…

Well, come to the end of the movie, and us little girls are sitting there sniffling about that little boy having to kill his dog, “Old Yeller” because he has rabies, and he’s all like “I tried to tell you”, and I’m sniffling and saying “they didn’t have to kill him….”

I think maybe that was my first introduction to the notion that movies, and life, doesn’t always have a happy ending, and that sometimes you simply have to do things you don’t want to do.

But when I look back on it, it was a good memory, and a really unselfish thing for a twenty-year-old big brother to do.

I wish he were still here so I could say “thank you….”  one more time.

My brother, Gary…

by Sherry Stocking Kline
April 1, 2011

My mom and two brothers, Gary, Dorothy & Fred Stocking - maybe dressed for church, with "Nancy Jane" before I was born.

Cars were an important part of our lives on the farm. They took me to school, helped herd dairy cows, took us to town for groceries, to the elevator for supplies and nickel pepsi’s, and  made ‘blood runs’ (high speed trips) to the parts store when the combine or tractors broke down.

Nancy Jane…

Our cars had personalities (some more ‘congenial’ than others) and Mom always, always,  named them “Nancy Jane.”

“Nancy Jane, you start now, we need to get to church,” she might say as we hurried off to church on a cold morning.

“Nancy Jane, don’t you dare get stuck,” she’d say as we slid sideways down slippery, muddy unpaved roads to and from our home.

It always seemed to me, growing up, that after Mom called the car Nancy Jane in a firm, encouraging, and sometimes scolding voice that the car made an extra effort to do exactly what Mom asked.

After she spoke to it,  ‘Nancy Jane’ nearly always came through for us.

Do I talk to my vehicles?

Surely you jest!  Of course I do!  How else are they going to know what’s expected of them!

“Come on, Baby,  we gotta go pick up the granddaughters from school….”

by Sherry Stocking Kline
March 19, 2011

At first no one knew what the little red,  itchy, dots were. They thought it might be allergies and that being the case, my three nephews were exposed right after I came down with “it”, whatever “it” was.

And then they thought it might be measles.

But it was not measles.

It was Chicken Pox.   By the time our parents figured out what I had, the boys, my nephews, 2 1/2, 4 1/2 years, and 6 1/2 years younger than I, were coming down with it, too.

So we were  miserable together.  We didn’t have air conditioning in our little farm home. It was summer in Kansas. It was Hot.  How in the world did we ever live without air conditioning, anyhow?

We had what was referred to as a squirrel cage cooler that ran air over water from an outdoor hose. It just barely cooled the air down, and it moved it around fast enough to blow your hair, and you had to talk loud to be heard over it.  It also added humidity to the air, so on hot, humid, muggy, days it was like trying to breath under water with that thing running.

No one wanted four miserable whiny kids in the house…

Anyhow, no one wanted four miserable itchy, whiny, hot kids in the house with them, so our parents set up old green Army cots under the shade tree by the water hydrant in the back yard, just a few feet from the back door in the shade and the south wind.  They probably gave us some books and coloring books,  and then they parked us outside in the breeze.

If we had a television then, and I can’t remember if we did or not, there were only three channels and few things that kids would be interested in watching.  I don’t remember much more about that time, except that we were sick, itchy, and bored beyond distraction.  We were close to a sand pile and a water source and we didn’t feel like playing, so we laid on the cots, scratched, and whined.

Fortunately for me, I got it first, so I got over it first, and so I was able to escape our exile sooner than my nephews could!

by Sherry Stocking Kline
March 17, 2011

Scrapbooking for the Family Reunion

We are having a family reunion this summer, so I’ve spent quite a bit more time lately working on my family trees, building digital scrapbook pages, and creating the album covers for the post-bound albums that the pages will fit into.

It has been so much fun that I just wanted to share one of the 12 x 12 post bound album covers and one  of the pages that I created for our family scrapbook!

I just love this photograph of my Mom and Dad, so I’m using it for the cover of the scrapbook album that I will be ordering this week!

I just love putting digital copies of these treasured old photographs into an album so the whole family can enjoy them.

You Can Personalize the Album Cover…

I also like being able to personalize the covers of my Heritage Maker’s scrapbook (affiliate link) to match the photographs inside the album!

I can’t wait to show it to this mom!  I think she will really love it!   (It might make an awesome Mother’s Day gift, but I don’t think I can wait that long to show her!)

Scrapbooking Links:

Make Wanted Posters for Your Scrapbook

Scrapbooking Your Family History

Make Your Own Handwriting Font (no longer free)

The Journal That Began a Lifetime of Journaling

Grandpa – Tell Me ‘Bout The Good Old Days…

Journal Your Photos – Now!

Make Your Own Heritage Albums with Heritage Makers

by Sherry Kline
15 Mar 2011

A copy of the following letter was e-mailed to me by cousin Valerie, whose grandfather was Herbert Deffenbaugh, and I have to confess to not knowing a great deal about this, my husband’s mother’s family.

I very much appreciate Valerie sharing not only this letter, but also several family photographs with me so that I can send them to the branches of the family who would most cherish them!  What an awesome, kind, genealogy-friendly thing to do!

Milan, Kansas
May 17, 1908
My Dear Brother,

I will write you a few lines today as it is rainy and not many coming in to bother me, I would of written sooner byt we have been very busy trying to get straightened up.  Lou has been staying with us and has helped a great deal.  We are just getting things now so we can live.  The girls are so tired at night they can hardly sleep.  I will be glad when they get things fixed up to suit them so they can rest a little.  I wish you could have been out here and seen the way (they) did us when we got home of course Pa can tell you all about it but that isn’t like as it you could see it your self.

I was very mutch disappointed  that there wasn’t more of you folks come I rather expected you to come if none of the rest did.  You know you always seemed a little nearer to me than the rest of my brothers did any way and for that reason I was more disappointed than I would have been. We had a very quiet Wedding there was only about 35 there but they made up for it when we got home.  The people certainly gave us a warm welcome and we appreciated it very mutch.

I don’t remember whether I thanked Mr. and Mrs. Sandy for their Picture or not but I intended to and you tell them if I didn’t that we thank them many times for it I think it just fine it looks as tho it had ought to talk it is so natural.

Well Hurbert I suppose you will come out to see us this summer won’t you?  We want you to be sure and come and bring Ma with you I don’t expect she would like to come by her self but there is no use of that you can come and bring her with you. 

We were so glad to have Pa come out to the Wedding and I think it did him good to get away from home a little while to.  It was so good of Harvey to let Pa have the money to come out here on.  I am so glad Harvey is good to the folks and hope he always is. 

I tell you we can never do to mutch for our folks the more we do to please them the better we will feel when they are taken from us we know they have worked hard to raise us and it has cost them lots of money and that isn’t all it has cost them lots of worry and hard work so we had ought to do all we can to make life a pleasure to them now when they are old and lifes pleasures are most over for them.

About all the satisfaction they get now it to see us children do what is right and get along well.  I do hope that none of us ever do anything to disgrace them in their old age.  Pa seemed to be so well pleased the way you boys all do.  He thinks you and Harvey are sutch good boys and how nice it is that you are it is sutch a pleasure to him to feel that you boys are thought so mutch of and to know that you are always ready to do what is right by everyone.

Now Hurbert I hope you won’t think I am saying to mutch but it does me so mutch good to know you are so good to the folks I can’t help but tell you about it.

My wheat is looking some better than it was when Pa was out here we have got lots of good rain and that has helped the wheat wonderful we will have to start the binder about the 10th of next month.  I will be glad when that time comes then I can tell about how my wheat is going to turn out.

Well I will close for this time as it is just about dinner time come and see us as soon as you can and give my best regards to all of my friends.

Good bye write soon.
Your loving Brother and sister,
T.A. and Lynne Deffenbaugh

Deffenbaugh Link:

Herbert Deffenbaugh Graduates from the Eighth Grade

by Sherry Stocking Kline
October 19, 2009

Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings issued this challenge on Saturday night!  I’m a bit late, but I don’t want to miss out on all the fun, so here goes!

Hey geneaphiles – it’s Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun for all Genea-Musing readers.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (and we need more of you to do this, otherwise it may end…), is to:

1)  Read Brenda Joyce Jerome’s post Who or What Do You Blame? on the Western Kentucky Genealogy blog.  She asks these questions:

*  Can you identify person or event that started you on this search for family information?

*  Did you pick up researching where a relative had left off?

*  Did your interest stem from your child’s school project on genealogy?

*  If you have been researching many years, it may be hard to pinpoint one reason for this journey.

2)  Write your responses on your own blog, in a comment to this blog post, or in a note or comment on Facebook.

Maybe I was always a little interested in family history, but after Hobart Stocking, a professor from Oklahoma researched, wrote, and published the Stocking Ancestry, I became more interested, and shared the information with my husband’s family.  And that’s when my father-in-law, Melvin Kline, stated that he wished someone would research their family tree.

And He Kind of Hoped They Wouldn’t, Too…

And, he said, he kind of hoped maybe they wouldn’t, too.  He said that he was afraid of “what we might find.”

The story that he had always heard went like this, “three brothers came west, fought along the way, and never corresponded again.”

And because there wasn’t any correspondence between Pop’s family, and his grandfather’s family, at least that he knew of, he believed the story to be true, and he was afraid that we’d find out that his grandfather might have been the the person who caused the problem.

But still, he really wanted to know.

Who could possibly resist a puzzle or a challenge like this?

Not me, for sure, so I took up the quest and along the way became  ‘hooked’ on genealogy and preserving family history.

I was woefully ignorant of how to get started, so it was quite a long time before I learned about at least one ‘family feud’, learned where the family had migrated to Kansas from, and ‘met up’ with some distant cousins.

Unfortunately, by that time, my father-in-law had passed on, and I really wish he were here so that I could say “Thank you” to him for starting me on such a fun and addictive hobby/pastime/obsession.

But I’d like to think that somehow, he knows.