by Sherry Stocking Kline
30 March 2010

This week’s Tombstone Tuesday is my husband’s great-uncle.

Walter C. Kline

The stone reads:

Walter C.
KLINE
1885 – 1959

I have to confess that besides being three days late to finish posting my Tombstone Tuesday, this is a family member that I’ve done little research on.

I know that he is buried near family in the Milan Cemetery, Milan, Kansas.  This nice little well-kept cemetery is located  about one mile west of Milan on the North side of the road, about 15 miles west of Wellington, Kansas on Highway 160.  (You can’t miss it unless you’re driving too fast, or looking for a much bigger cemetery.)

When I first began researching, my only focus was on our direct lines.  If they weren’t ancestors, I documented their names, and passed right on by them.

I know better now.  I know that researching our ancestors’ siblings may do all kinds of wonderful things.  In particular, it may help us connect the dots between our ancestors.  But we’ve also been fortunate enough to find photographs of our direct ancestors among their siblings’ lines, a treasure well worth searching for indeed!

I do know that Walter, or “Uncle Walt” as I heard him referred to (he had passed on before I was part of the family) was the son of James and Elizabeth Kline.  If I remember right I believe that he did not marry.

But there are many other things I don’t know about Uncle Walt.  Will he be on all the census in Kansas?  What did he do for a living?  Did he leave a will?  What does his obituary say about him?

So maybe it’s time I took a new look at our ancestor’s siblings, and maybe they can help shed some light on the direct line of our own family tree.

(And please, if you stumble across this site and you are ‘family’, stop, take a minute, and say ‘hello’.  We’d love to meet you, and I have much more info that just isn’t posted yet!)