Archive for the ‘SNGF’ Category

by Sherry Stocking Kline
16 October 2011

I love to check out the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges that Randy Seaver sends out way each Saturday Night, and this one looks like a great way to quanitfy what research I need to do next!  So tune up the “Mission Impossible” music, check out the challenge, and play along!

Hello, genea-world! 
It’s Saturday Night (in the USA!) — time for some worldwide 
Genealogy Fun! 

Your mission, should you decide to accept it is to: 
1)  Participate in the Ancestors GeneaMeme created by Jill Ball on the Geniaus blog. 
Thank you to Jill for the SNGF idea!  Jill is collecting Ancestors MeGeneaMeme entries too.The rules, and the Meme list, is given below in my response. 
Here’s mine:  The Rules:  

2)  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook Status post or note, or in a Google+ Stream item. 

 The list should be annotated in the following manner:

Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
You are encouraged to add extra comments in brackets after each item

The Meme:

Which of these apply to you? 

 

3.  Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents.  (I do have photos of all of them, thanks to my mom, and my generous aunts and uncles who have shared their holdings so that I might scan and digitize them.)

4.  Have an ancestor who was married more than three times. (I have some who were married three times, but haven’t located any that I know of that were married more than three.)

5.  Have an ancestor who was a bigamist.  (Not that I know of… Would  make the family tree more interesting though, wouldn’t it?)

6.  Met all four of my grandparents. (I Couldn’t.  Both grandfathers passed away before I was born. I did meet and know both of my grandmothers.)

7.  Met one or more of my great-grandparents.  (I remember my great-grandfather even though I was about 2 1/2 years old when he passed away.)

8.  Named a child after an ancestor. (We did, though not intentionally. My husband’s great-grandfather was named James Kline, and we gave that name as a middle name to our son without knowing that there was an ancestor bearing that as a name.)

9.  Bear an ancestor’s given name/s.  (Not only do I not bear an ancestor’s name, my grandmother was unhappy with my mom, her daughter, for giving me the name of an alcholic beverage.  Unhappy enough that for a time, when I was very, very small, I wondered if the “Carrie” that took an axe to the bars and saloons in Kansas was my grandmother…)

10.  Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland. (I have an ancestor from Great Britain, and I probably do from Ireland as well, but have yet to find that link or proof of it.  Very difficult with the name Jones!)

11.  Have an ancestor from Asia (No.)

12.  Have an ancestor from Continental Europe. (Probably. My geography isn’t what it should be….)

13.  Have an ancestor from Africa. (No, but my granddaughters do.)

14.  Have an ancestor who was an agricultural labourer (in the US and UK) (Yes, most of my ancestors were involved in farming, right up to my own father, and the same on my mother’s side.)

15.  Have an ancestor who had large land holdings (what’s large?  Larger than 40 acres?  Yep.  Larger than 640 acres?  Probably.) (Yes, by yesterday’s standards my ancestors had large land holdings.)

16.  Have an ancestor who was a holy man – minister, priest, rabbi (Jonathan Oatley in Killingly CT in 19th century, several more in 17th century) (We have ministers in my family, and one of my ancestors was “Deacon Samuel Stocking, son of George Stocking.  George was born in circa 1582 in Suffolk, England.  Deacon Samuel was born in England also and immigrated to America in 1633.  They became part of Thomas Hooker’s party, and George was one of Hartford, CT’s founding fathers.)

17.  Have an ancestor who was a midwife (unsure) (Not that I know of.)

18.  Have an ancestor who was an author (unsure) (Not that I know of.)

19.  Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones (many Smiths, no Murphys, only one Jones line) One large Smith line, one Jones line that quickly turns into a huge brick wall.

20.  Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng.  (No.  Not that I know of.)

21.  Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X.  (Not that I know of.)

22.  Have an ancestor with a forename beginnining with Z (three generations of Zachariah Hildreths, and a Zechariah Barber)  (Not that I know of.)

23.  Have an ancestor born on 25th December.  (Yes, my great-grandfather, Roderick Remine Stocking was born 25 December 1853.)

24.  Have an ancestor born on New Year’s Day.  (Not that I know of.)

25.  Have blue blood in your family lines (supposedly if Royal Descendants book is right) (No.  Not that I know of.)

26.  Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth.  (No.)

27.  Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth (nope, one great-grandparent born in Canada is the last one born in another country) (No. Two lines came to America in the 1600’s. Need to get other lines back that far.)

28.  Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century (all but 3 or 4 of my 32 3rd great-grandparents.  (Have several lines back to the 18th century.)

29.  Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier (quite a few) (some, not as many as to the 18th century.)

30.  Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents (Austin Carringer, Della smith, Georgia Kemp, Frank Seaver, Thomas Richmond) (Just Roderick Remine Stocking, thus far.)

31.  Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X (not that I know of) (My earliest Stocking ancestor, George Stocking, Hartford, CT founder, signed his will with an X.  He was, besides being a farmer, a surveyor, so I wonder if he was just no longer able to sign his name due to advanced age, rather than not being literate.)

32.  Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university (not that I know of) (Yes, both my grandparents on my father’s side, Elmer and Maud (McGinnis) Stocking attended college, though I believe neither graduated with a four year degree. My grandmother received a teaching certificate and taught for a year or two, perhaps a bit longer.)

33. Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offence (several are in Sex in Middlesex book)  (Not that I have found yet.)

34.  Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime (logic says someone in 12 generations must have been, not sure about this one) (Probably, but I have not found it yet.)

35.  Have shared an ancestor’s story online or in a magazine (probably in Genea-Musings…) (I have shared several ancestor’s short stories online on my blog here, and in the small town history book that I co-authored, “Mayfield: Then & Now.)

36.  Have published a family history online or in print (two books self=published and shared with family) (I haven’t published a book, just a notebook that I take to family reunions.)

37.  Have visited an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries (several in New England, and the Ranslow Smith Inn in Wisconsin) (Yes, several here in Kansas, and one ancestor’s home in Kentucky.)

38.  Still have an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family (not in the family…the Ranslow smith Inn in Wisconsin would qualify if I’d bought it) (My grandfather’s farm was bought by my parent’s and is still owned by my mother.  It has been in the family now since 1903.  The house burned down several years ago, however.)

39.  Have a family bible from the 19th Century (have Bible pages for births, marriages, deaths, but not the Bible) (The only family Bible that I know of is owned by my Uncle and his family.)

40.  Have a pre-19th century family bible  (No.)



by Sherry Stocking Kline
06 June 2011

It’s a couple of days past Randy Seaver’s June 4th Saturday night challenge, but this challenge really resonated with me!  If only I could turn back the clock or jump into a time machine and re-do a few things!

Greetings, genea-philes. it’s SATURDAY NIGHT – time for more GENEALOGY FUN!

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

1)  On GeneaBloggers Radio last night (www.blogtalkradio.com/geneabloggers/) the discussion turned to regrets that we all have about our genealogy and family history experiences.  Someone said “If I knew then, what I know now, I would have…” I thought that it would make a good SNGF topic, and it may be a general topic on a future GeneaBloggers Radio show.

2)  Tell us about your “If I knew then what I know now, I would have…” regret in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status or note.

High on my list of wish I could re-do is the opportunity to document my sources better from the very beginning, so if you are in the same boat, check out Randy Seaver’s June 4th Saturday Night Genealogy Challenge at www.geneamusings.com!  When I first started, I had so few family ‘lines’ going, and I really, truly believed I would remember where each piece of information came from.  And, frankly, I just wasn’t thinking.

But it isn’t the citations and sources I most wish I could re-do.  It’s the missed opportunities to ask the people who would (or might) actually KNOW the answers to questions that I now want to ask them.  Oh, if only.

1.  I wasn’t into genealogy when I was eight years old (that’s how old I was when my Grandmother Jones died), but if I could ask her now, I would ask her what she knew about her father-in-law’s father (he’s a huge Jones brick wall!).  Did she know his name?  Did he even know his own father’s name?  What was herding cattle all day on horseback in Nebraska like when you were barely old enough to attend school?  How scared were you when the Indians stopped by your home to get food?  Did they ever come back?  Which one of the two young ladies in the neat photo you left behind is your niece, and which is her friend?

2.  And oh, if only I could hear my Grandmother Stocking re-tell her stories of my father’s childhood?  Why didn’t I write them down?  I was only ten, eleven, or maybe twelve, but how I wish I had taken the time to write them down.  Now, it is only bits and pieces that I remember.  I know the horses spooked, and my dad got hurt.  His teeth poked a pretty good hole in his lip.  But what spooked the horses?  I don’t remember.  And if only I could ask her where the farm was where she grew up in Illinois?  What was it like? What schools did she attend?  Now, I will spend hours, and days, and still never have all the answers.  And the one question I really wanted to know when I was in grade school, who was our Native American ancestor?  What was his/her name?  Were they actually Cherokee?  Where did they live/come from?

3.  And why didn’t I think to ask my Great-Aunt Dr. M. Ethel McGinnis more questions about her fascinating life as a teacher, professor, and gifted student?  And her life with my grandmother Stocking when they were children? 

I have many more ‘if only’s’  but they all involve asking my much older relatives questions that I wasn’t interested in knowing the answers to for many, many more years.   

If.  Only.

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
March 19, 2011

Hi everyone!

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings says: “It’s Saturday Night –  time for more Genealogy Fun!!!”

So, it’s time for you to read Randy’s post here: Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Contribute to the Genealogisms Dictionary.

Have you ever experienced Genea-Dipity?

You know, one of those serendipitous moments, when you have spent hours and hours in your genea-cave searching through page after web page of on-line genea-crapola, and then there it is!

One of those unexpected rare pieces of good luck, a Genea-Dipity!  A Serendipity!

You’ve done it!  You’ve found the one thing you thought you’d never find, the one fact, the one photo, the one really cool piece of information that makes you do a ‘happy dance,’ gives you a “genea-gasm,” and keeps you piecing together family puzzles and filling out the blanks in your family tree!

What was your “genea-dipity” this week?

And what new word can you add to the “Genealogism’s Dictionary.”

Sherry Stocking Kline
October 30, 2010

Hi Genea-Zombie Friends!  As Randy Seaver says, it’s Saturday Night, and time for more fun!

Hey Genea-Zombies, it’s Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun!

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

1)  Go take the Hallowe’en Personality quiz at http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyourhalloweenpersonalityquiz/

2)  Post it on your own blog, as a comment on this blog, or on your Facebook page.

3)  Tell us if this is “right on” or note.  Have fun with it!

So, here is mine!  Go take your Halloween Personality quiz at:  http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyourhalloweenpersonalityquiz/ .

You See Halloween as Scary

You’re a friendly person, but not the life of the party. You like making someone else’s day – and you’ll dress up if you think of a really fun costume. (Ok, so far, so good.  this really does sound like me.  I haven’t dressed up in some time, but plan to again in the future.  I am a friendly person, but really, really don’t want to be the life of a party, and actually prefer small gatherings to large parties.)

No one quite understands you, but everyone also sort of worships you. And that’s exactly how you like it.  (Nope, none of this. )

Your inner child is open minded, playful, and adventurous.  (My inner child does enjoy watching the granddaughters dress up and enjoy Halloween, but am mostly a traditional person.)

You truly fear the dark side of humanity. You are a true misanthrope.You’re prone to be quite emotional and over dramatic. Deep down, you enjoy being scared out of your mind… even if you don’t admit it.  (This does not fit me.  I do not enjoy being scared ‘out of my mind,’ and am not a ‘drama queen.’

You are a traditionalist with most aspects of your life. You like your Halloween costume to be basic, well made, and conventional enough to wear another year.  (I would like my costume well made (I can sew) and would like to come up with something that I’d be willing to wear for more than one year.  I think, given the family history interest that I have, that it would be fun to come up with a famous or semi-famous local person, and portray them.

However, all the famous, or infamous people that we hear about from here were associated with Caldwell, Kansas, the cowtown south and west of here, and I would have to be a cowboy, dance hall girl, or ‘lady of the evening.  Maybe a cowgirl,  I can twirl a rope, and still have my boots from my riding days…

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.

Sherry Stocking Kline
28 Aug 2010

It’s Saturday night, and due to sniffly little girl noses, our family plans to get together fell through.  With a couple of hours free, I decided to check on Randy Seaver’s Geneamusing’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Challenge! It was fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (and I hope that you do… this one is really cool!) is to cue up the mission impossible music now, and go have some fun!

1) Go to the www.ImageChef.com website and explore their FREE offerings. Click on the “Create” button, or choose to make a slideshow or posters from their main page (there are more than one screen of poster backgrounds).

2) Make one or more posters or other creation – perhaps they relate to genealogy or your own family history. Save them to your computer (right click, Save as Picture for Windows users).

3) Show your creations to us… in your own blog post, on a Facebook post, etc. If you make a really neat one and want to show it to the world but don’t have a way to do it, send it to me (rjseaver@cox.net) and I’ll show it off for you in a blog post.

I’ve always wondered what my face would look like on a Wanted poster, so here goes!

I guess I put too much text on it, ‘cuz you can hardly read that it says:

“Caught red-handed in libraries, haunting cemeteries, and guilty of pestering family for info.”

Next,  I did this one of my two youngsters, when they were just about two and a half, and 3 months:

Awe, it makes me wish I did have a big locket just like that with their photograph in it/on it.  I’m going to be keeping an eye out for something like that.

So then I used the sidewalk chalk template with a photograph of my oldest granddaughter kissing a baby lamb when she was just a wee little thing herself:

And my brother’s flight in a vintage airplane lent itself well to the “Breaking News” template:

But I’m kind of partial to that Wanted Poster Image, so I did another Wanted poster that I think will look really cool on next year’s Family Reunion invitations that I’m getting ready to send out!

I’m still trying to decide whether to use this family photograph of them all, or just use one that has just Roderick and Fanny in it, but I’m beginning to lean towards using this one. (Wouldn’t it just look cool on a t-shirt, too?)

I spent a little more time doing some fun and funny stuff with the granddaughter’s photographs, and will probably pay the $10 to be able to size and re-size, and get rid of the watermark and use them in some fun scrapbook collages down the road!

Thanks, Randy!

Now, go have some fun and make your own wanted poster at http://www.imagechef.com!

by Sherry Stocking Kline
10 April 2010

Here is this week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Challenge from Randy Seaver!

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

1) Tell us: Which ancestor or relative do you readily identify with? Which one do you admire? Which one are you most like, or wish that you were most like? Which one would you really like to sit down and have a heart-to-heart conversation with?

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

Oh my, which ancestor or relative do I most identify with?  I think my ancestors, especially the women, were brave and courageous, so in some ways I wish I were more like them.  My great-grandmother Frances Hitchcock Stocking picked up her life, packed up their belongings, and followed the man she loved, Roderick Remine Stocking, here to Kansas, a flat prairie with tall grass and no trees for firewood (read they used buffalo chips to heat their homestead with) or they drove their wagon about 15 miles south into Oklahoma’s Indian Territory (which was illegal, mind you) to pick up firewood.  They also lived within a few miles of the Chisholm Trail, and those who still traveled up and down it, even after the cattle drives ended.

And then there is my other great-grandmother on my mother’s side, Salinda Rose Breneman, who lived out on the prairie in Nebraska, where Indians might (and did) poke their heads in the window wanting food.  And Indians wouldn’t have been their only danger.  They would have lived in fear of prairie fires as well as rattle snakes, and her children, even at a young age, were sent out on horseback, sometimes with their lunch in a pail to herd the cattle, often being out of site of the homestead for the whole day.

Could I do what they did?  I don’t think so.

Who would I most want to sit down with?  My great-great grandmother, Elizabeth Laird Jones Crabb!

I would ask her what her first husband’s name was and thereby break down that brick wall!  I would learn first-hand from her what her husband died from (or if they were divorced!) and I would ask her what brought them here to Kansas, and did they miss their home state of Kentucky and their daughter who stayed there?

And maybe I would just ask them how they ‘managed?’  How did they cope with the hardships, water that came from a well and wasn’t the clear liquid that we’re used to today, growing and canning and preserving much of their food, and sewing many of their clothes?

And particularly, where did they find the courage to go on when they had to bury their young children because their lives were cut short from disease and farm accidents?

So many questions that I would ask these courageous women!

Sherry Stocking Kline
February 20, 2010

It’s Saturday night!   Time for some more Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver!  He wants us to tell him about our genealogy “Happy Dances!”

Sounds like Happy Dance Party fun to me!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Happy Dance, Ah-ha Moments or Genea-gasms!

Hey, it’s Saturday Night (again), time for some Genealogy Fun! Your mission, if you decide to accept it, is to: 1) Think of any number of genealogy events or moments that make you have a genealogy happy dance, an ah-ha moment, or a genea-gasm. 2) Tell us about them in a blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment on Facebook.

I didn’t even know there was a Corson book!

Here we go! I just did  a Happy Dance this past week.  When I was doing a few minutes research on my own father, I found he was listed in the  Corson Family Book!

I didn’t even know there was a Corson book!  I love family history books, especially the kind that adds in some tidbits about the people, like what their occupation was, and if they served in the Civil, Revolutionary, War of 1812, Spanish-American War, etc, etc..

I love a ‘peek through the window’ of their lives…

And while I just love filling in the blanks on ancestral charts, I love it even more when I find a newspaper clipping, story, or a family history that gives me a peek ‘though the window’ into their lives.

Corson was the maiden name of my Dad’s grandmother, Margaret “Maggie” Corson McGinnis. And this is a line I’ve just simply not researched much at all, so this may be a fantastic springboard for further research.

Most of my “Happy Dances” haven’t been posted about yet, but that sounds like a fun course of future action!

More Happy Dances…

The Day the Genealogy Serendipity Angels Smiled… is one of those moments when you really believe in Genealogy Angels.  The day I called the South Central Kentucky Cultural Center, hoping to learn a bit about our family history, and connected with a real, live, living cousin.  It just doesn’t get any better than that!