Archive for May, 2011

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.