Archive for September 22nd, 2009

Roderick & Frances Stocking's Tombstone

By Sherry Stocking Kline
September 22, 2009

My great-grandparents, Roderick Remine and Frances “Fanny” Hitchcock Stocking are buried here, in the Osborne Township Cemetery near Mayfield, Sumner County, Kansas. This cemetery lies on the Chisholm Cattle Drive Trail.

Roderick and Frances came to Kansas from Michigan in the 1870’s, homesteaded just north and west of this cemetery, in a one-room house so small they had to put the table out of the house at night to put down their beds.

Their first child, my grandfather, Elmer Stocking, was born in that tiny house! Fortunately, they built a bigger house before they had three more sons, Ralph Hurlburt, Roderick Porter, and John Lester.

My great-grandmother passed away from cancer in 1920, but my great-grandfather Roderick lived to be nearly 98 years old, passing away in 1951. I remember him as being tall and distinguished looking.

My mother, his granddaughter-in-law, says he was a “fine, gentle, man” and she always thinks of him when she thinks of this verse, “Prayer was his key for the morning and his lock for the night”.