Archive for January, 2010

by Sherry Stocking Kline
January 12, 2010

It’s award Season again, and I’m grateful to each of you who awarded me the Happy 101 Award!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!  It is an honor to be on your Award list!

My Thanks go to:

1. Missy Corley of Bayside Blog
2. Thomas MacEntee of Destination Austin Family blog
3. Joan of Roots N’ Leaves
4. Jenna of Desperately Seeking Surnames
5. Luckie of Our Georgia Roots

One of the duties when you accept this award is to list TEN things that make you happy.

Only Ten?  What happens if you cheat?

1. My family: my husband,  my children, my mom & dad, my brothers and their wives. Some of them are gone now, but I have the memories.

2. My two granddaughters.  They always brighten my day!

3. Searching for ancestor clues!  What could be more fun?  Unless of course it’s finding ancestor clues…

4. Finding a missing puzzle piece in the family tree. One that fills in an important blank spot! This is major happy dance thing for days, but then it’s on to finding the next blank spot.

5. Going through photographs & remembering…

6. The sweet, fresh, clean smell of rain.

7. Out-bowling my son on his Wii (or out-racing him in Mario Kart on his Wii!)  Don’t tell him I said this!

8. Reading a good ‘who-dun-it’, one that you can’t guess ‘who dun it’. (but I’m not into gory books, either!)

9. Figuring out how to do something I didn’t know how to do yesterday.  This is usually associated with computers and the Internet, but it can be just anything!

10. Knowing that I’ve helped someone.

Another wonderful, difficult duty is to pass on the award to TEN other bloggers…

But I’m trying not to cheat, so here it goes:

1.   Thomas MacEntee of Destination Austin Family blog and Geneabloggers. Thomas, I know that you will probably receive a dozen of these Happy 101 Awards, but you have been so very encouraging and very helpful to this newbie blogger that I just want to say “Thanks once again!”

2. Missy Corley of Bayside Blog.  Missy, you are a great, encouraging Twitter friend (@baysideresearch) as well as a great blog-buddy friend!  Bless you!

3. Joan of Roots N’ Leaves.   Joan, you have been a great source of encouragement, and your posts touch my heart.

4.   Luckie of Our Georgia Roots.  Luckie, your writing touches a kindred chord in my heart, and when you wrote about the ancestors ‘talking’ to you, well, I know what you are talking about.  It’s like they beckon me to look, and guide me to find.  I’ve had the most serendipitous finds, though I’m still Hunting…

4. Jenna of Desperately Seeking Surnames.  I enjoy reading your blog, and am honored to be one of your nominees!

5. Elyse’s Genealogy Blog I was just reading on Elyse’s Genealogy Blog some tips for getting your genealogy ‘stuff’ organized.  I NEED that!

6. Louise Bernero of Our Twigs Blog Thanks, Louise, for your encouragement!

7.  Mavis of Georgia Black Crackers – Thanks Mavis, for all your encouragement and for being a great Twitter friend!

8.  http://www.twitter.com/A_CAIN Great Twitter friend and soon to be blogger!

9.  Low Country Africana – What an awesome resource for African American Research and History!

10. Cathy at DesperatelySeekingwp.com and StrawberriesareGlutenFree.com.  She keeps my blog happy!

by Sherry Stocking Kline
January 12, 2010

Burchfiel Church & Cemetery – Harper County, Kansas

Burchfiel Cemetery - 1884 - Harper County, Kansas

Burchfiel Cemetery - Spring Township

Burchfiel Cemetery - looking North into the cemetery

21 - Burchfiel Family Plot - Daisy Lee - 1901 to 1932 & J. A. Burchfiel - 1886 to 1972

In the early 1960’s, my brother pastored at the Burchfiel Church…

Once again, I’m posting information about a cemetery in which I have no family members, although there are family ties to this cemetery and the church near it.

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, my brother Harold F. “Fred” Stocking Jr. and his wife Nancy served the Burchfiel Methodist Church as pastor and family.  The Burchfiel church is located  just a little over six miles south of Anthony, Kansas in Harper County on Highway 179.

They lived in the same parsonage on the church grounds that you will see here in the photograph.  My brother was a student minister at the time, and attended Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas.

Burchfiel Church Parsonage

My brother and his wife had three boys and a baby daughter then, and I was just a couple of years older than their oldest boy.  Though they had a large yard, we were used to having a quarter section of ground (160 acres) to play on, so it was fairly common for us older children to run up the road that ran on the south side of the church to the old cemetery and play hide and seek among the stones.  (would children be safe doing such a thing today?)

While playing among the stones, I noticed many baby and child burials…

Life on the prairie for the early settlers was certainly hard, and from other research and reading that I’ve done since I would guess very few families escaped losing a child to diseases we now cure so easily, so the one thing I noticed while hiding among the tombstones was how many babies and children were buried there in the early days of the cemetery.

This past year, the Burchfiel Church celebrated its 125th anniversary and my brother enjoyed going back for the celebration, and according to information from the article “Rural Churches Provided a Cornerstone for this Area,” by Ruth Jean Anderson, Conway Springs Star, Thurs, Sept 10, 2009 their minister last year and for the previous nine years was Rev. Laurence Hastings and his wife Aletha.

Burchfiel Church south of Anthony, KS, Harper County

The facts and information following about the early days of the Burchfiel church were excerpted from “Rural Churches Provided a Cornerstone for this Area,” by Ruth Jean Anderson, Conway Springs Star, Thurs, Sept 10, 2009.

William H. and Sarah Denton Burchfiel traveled from Tennessee…

According to Anderson’s article, in 1878 William H. and Sarah Denton Burchfiel traveled from Dandridge, TN to their new home in Harper County, Kansas in a covered wagon and lived in a dugout home, located 9 and one half miles southeast of Anthony, and it was in their dugout home that the Burchfiel church had its beginning.

The Early Church Family met in a dugout…

According to Anderson’s article, Sarah Burchfiel swept out one of the rooms in their dugout home and invited the few neighbors to Sunday School. Later, in 1882, the Burchfield School was organized and Rev Wood, Anthony Methodist Church, held meetings in the school house.
Anderson’s article states that Bill Burchfiel wrote about his new home to his brother, the Rev. Joseph R. “Parson” Burchfiel who was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher in Tennessee, invited him to come to Kansas, and so in January of 1884 Parson Burchfield and forty members of his congregation came to Kansas, first on a flat boat up the French Broad River, then by railroad coach.
Parson Burchfield preached at the church until 1888, stated Anderson’s article, and several other Tennessee families joined them: Sharp, Croft, Frazier, Henderson, Moore, Bettis, Reneau, Willson, Walker, Denton.
“Only two families in the early days did not come from Tennessee. Both the William Geitgey family and the Fred and Steve Rife families came from Ohio. Sometimes the community was known as “Little Tennessee”.
On August 29, 1892 a charter for the Burchfiel Methodist Episcopal Church was obtained for the land and its present location six and one-half miles south of Anthony, and the first Burchfield church was in 1902 “after one of the best wheat crops ever.”
On the 10th day of April 1936 a heater at the church caught fire and the church burned to the ground.  The next week a meeting of the official board was held to decide what was to be done. William Geitgey said that he would give $500 right then and more later to rebuild the church.

All during the record hot summer the men gave their time and labor to help on the new brick building. And so it was on the sixth day of September 1936, without one penny of debt, Bishop Charles Meade dedicated the new church.

Today, the tiny church supports its young people with college scholarships, and also supports mission work here in the United States and in Africa.  The photographs are ones that I took while taking my mom for a ride in the country, and doing some reminiscing.

by Sherry Stocking Kline
January 9th, 2010

It’s Saturday Night Live at the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Playhouse, and Randy Seaver wants to know what our Genealogy Super Powers are.

Check out Randy’s Challenge below or at Geneamusings.

It’s Saturday Night – time for more Genealogy Fun!

Dean Richardson posted What’s Your Genealogical Superpower? on his Genlighten Blog – Genealogy Documented blog last week, along with a nifty picture of a young lady with a big S on her shirt flying (is that Dean’s wife?). I thought Dean’s question was a great one for SNGF – so your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to…

1) Answer the question: Do you have a genealogical “superpower”? (i.e., a unique research ability or technique that helps you track down records or assemble conclusions that others can’t?) If so, what is it?

2) Tell us about it in a blog post, a comment to this post, a comment to Dean’s post, or a comment to this post on Facebook or Twitter.

3) If you have a picture of yourself in superpower mode, please show it to us!

What are my super powers?  What is it they say in the movies?  I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you?  Seriously, I’m just not sure that I have any “super” powers.

I do seem to have some good networking and investigative skills, and I’ve managed to run people (dead and live ones) down by making phone call after phone call to one entity or another.

I found a distant elderly living cousin in Barren County, Kentucky by doing the following:

1. We were at the Glasgow City cemetery and there were flowers on the grave of my great-great aunt.  That told me that someone living, and probably someone from that the area, put them there. She was of an age to still have living children, and definitely could have living grandchildren.

2. So, my next step could have been to find her obituary and that would have been a good next step, but I was hoping for a little quicker solution, so I called the local funeral home(s) with her name and date of death.

3.  I hit gold on my second funeral home. They had handled her funeral arrangements.  Because I had visited with this director on several occasions and he knew the cousins I’d already connected with in his town, he gave me the woman’s name and I was able to call her.

My new-found (and very elderly) cousin was very kind, but she knew very little about her ancestry and was very apologetic about “having had to throw away all the old photos due to moving into a smaller apartment.”

My first thought was “You Did WHAT?!”

But I didn’t say that and while I was broken hearted knowing that photos of my ancestors may have gone into the dumpster, at least I was able to learn that that particular avenue was closed to me for more information, and I connected with a nice sounding distant relative.

I guess what I’ve learned is that you can pick up the phone and make a few phone calls that can help you connect with distant family members and further your research, though you may not always get positive results.

Cora Pauline Walters - buried Osborne Cemetery, Sumner County, Kansas, near Mayfield.

Cora Pauline’s Tombstone is the first non-family member’s tombstone that I’ve posted here.

She is buried at the Osborne Township Cemetery, Sumner County, Mayfield, Kansas, and she is buried very near some of my family members.

Cora Pauline Walters
Born: May 5th, 1915
Died: June 6th, 2000

I’ve found her tombstone unique, heartwarming, and fascinating, but have yet to look up her obituary, or try to learn who she was.

I hope to do more research on her this winter in local newspapers.

Sherry Stocking Kline
January 4, 2010

I had so much fun doing Christmas music video’s that when I found this duet Baby, It’s Cold Outside (Dean Martin with Martina McBride)on former Kansas girl, Martina McBride’s “White Christmas” album I just couldn’t resist posting it here.

Besides, here in Kansas, with barely double digit temps, and single digit wind chills, it’s pretty appropriate today, ‘cuz Baby it’s sure cold outside here!

When we were having cold weather (like this week) my dad, Harold ‘Jiggs’ Stocking, Sr., would always come in from feeding the cattle or working outside (we had a wheat and dairy farm then) and laughingly tell my mom”Baby it’s Cold Outside!” After listening to the song a few times, I know why he was laughing when he said it!

The song also reminds me to share a saying that my Mom’s mom, Carrie Breneman Jones always told her:

“When the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen”.

I’ve been paying attention ever since she shared that with me, and it’s often very true!  We were working outside in medium weight jackets here right before Christmas.

In just a couple of days, we’re going into minus wind chill temps here.  Brrrrr!

With a couple of inches of snow and minus wind chills, I won’t be doing any ‘cemetery stomping’ this week, for sure!

Fifty-four days till the first of March!  (but who’s counting!) Can’t wait!

Sherry Stocking Kline
January 2, 2010

Holy Cow!  I just realized that this is the first time I’ve written the date 2010!  I’ve stayed home, stayed in, and haven’t even written a check since Thursday.

The following challenge comes from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings!

Thank you, Randy!

Hey, it’s Saturday Night – time for some Genealogy Fun!! I know – you had a great time on New Year’s Eve, and are just recovering from the holidays, so we’ll keep this one pretty easy.

Here is your assignment, if you choose to accept it (frankly, I’ve noticed that SNGF participation has dropped off in the last month – why? Too much eggnog? Too much work? What?):

1) “What was your best Genealogy Moment during 2009?” This could be a research find, a fabulous trip, a found family treasure, etc. Your choice!

2) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, a comment to this blog post, or a comment to the Twitter or Facebook status line for this post.

I wish I could say that I had one glorious genealogy discovery, one brick wall that I could gloat on breaking down, one great connection with a new branch that I was elated to locate.  But I’ve been spending what little research time I have helping a couple of other folks and butting my head against a Smith and Jones brick wall in Kentucky.

Maybe it’s time to branch out, and spend a little more time on a little less common surnames??

If I have to choose my favorite genealogy moment, can I do it?

Would I choose the moment that I found a clue I’d missed in my Smith and Jones’ previous research?  One that adds a new county in Kentucky to my research possibilities and who knows, may be just the clue that I need to find the information I want. (What I wonder is how I looked at that and MISSED it the first time!)

Or would it be on August 8th, 2009 when I wrote my first blog post, and found out how little I knew about getting a blog up and going.

Would my favorite genealogy moment(s) be when the genealogy blogging community begin sending blogging tips by twitter, leaving me comments, and sending e-mails to help get me up and running and learn each new thing I needed to know.

And oh, my goodness, the kindness you all extended to me each time you did that!  I’d love to thank each one of you here again, but I don’t want to miss even one of you!  (I should have kept a list.)

The Kreativ Blogging Award – One of my favorite moments…

One of my very favorite moments was being chosen by three different genealogy blogging buddies for the Kreativ Blogging Award!

hank you!  That was an exciting moment for this newbie genealogy blogger!

Surviving Wichita Eagle’s Budget Cuts – again…

Another  moment was to continue to ‘make the cut’ with the Wichita Eagle as they downsized the magazine that I wrote for, then did away with the magazine I wrote for, then included my column along with some of my free-lance writing friends in their “Healthy Living” magazine. Whew!  I sure miss my former editor and mentor and the other  neat people I used to work with, though.

And would it be when I learned that my cousin’s husband was as addicted to genealogy as me?  We’re going to get out laptops together and share family info!

Advent Calendar Challenge brought back so many memories…

And I think the most recent genealogy favorite moments have to be the Geneablogger’s Christmas Advent Calendar Challenge!

Thanks to Thomas at GeneaBloggers, so many old memories came flooding back, making my Christmas season a very special one.  Now many of them are written down to be thumbed back through and added to when I have time.  Thank you, Thomas!

And now, I think I will take time to back up my data, (thanks again for the reminder, Thomas,) then set my New Year’s Research Goals (I don’t make resolutions, I usually break those) and pick a day to re-organize the info that I have (again) so that I know which direction to ride off in!

Happy New Year to you all, and Thank you to so Many!

While wandering around the Internet, looking for more fun and enjoyable Christmas music, I found this post at the “I Speak of Dreams” blog, link here: http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2003/12/merry_christmas.html.

The following is the excerpt from the blog, where another Internet ‘wanderer’  had found “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” sung in the Cherokee language!  Pretty neat!

Follow the link below (or above)  to the blog and to the Cherokee version of this wonderful Christmas song.

Merry Christmas from the Cherokee Nation

I was wandering around and found a blog with a link to The Cherokee Nation’s online Christmas card, with “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” sung in Cherokee.

I couldn’t resist posting it here.  I promise to stop posting Christmas music soon.  Honest…