2nd Vice President: Audrey Massingill

Recording Secretary: Pat Kunkel

Corresponding Secretary: Eddie Kunkel

Treasurer: Bob McGinnis

Historian: Leota Robinson

Parlimentarian: Mary Kay Snell

"The Internet is a wonderful tool, but you can find a lot of information and you can find a lot of junk," said AGS member Aric Brown as he began his presentation to a large group of members and guests. His program was based on five powerful tools you can use on the internet to research your family history.

Using these web sites, Aric showed how, in less than thirty minutes, he traced the life of a man whose tombstone he had found in a tiny country cemetery.

Aric cautioned us that although we can find a world of information on the internet, we must be careful. He gave us a good rule to follow when dealing with posted family trees, "If it is not sourced, it is not true." However, we can use the information in these family trees as clues when we start researching a new family.

The last part of Aric’s program dealt with back ups. He stressed the importance of storing your backup, not only at home on an external disk such as a CD, but away from home in case of a fire or other disaster that destroys your house. He recommended Mozy. This site gives you 3.2GB free disk space and you only pay if you need more than that. You can go to http://mozy.com to get the details, but if you decide to use their services, please go to https://mozy.com?code=SDYNS3 to sign up. This will give Aric credit for recommending this site to you.

In closing, Aric said that although the internet is a useful tool, not everything is online and it is sometimes necessary for us to go to the library. Which is a good opening for a new feature of our newsletter, HERE’S WHAT APL HAS FOR YOU!

Aric has posted his entire "Using the Internet for Genealogical Research" program on our web site at: amags.org.

The Genealogy Department at the Amarillo Public Library has always been known to have the best collection between Dallas and Denver (or so we’ve been told).

To encourage you to visit and make more use of our books and other materials, the staff is beginning a section in the newsletter listing "Just a Few" of the books available on certain topics or states. We will point out some very useful, but not so familiar resources that can be found in the department.

We also have a fourteen page bibliography in the Genealogy Department that lists additional material on Passenger Ship Lists, Immigration and other records.

All of the books listed are located in the Genealogy Department, but you probably won’t find them on Ancestry.com.

We will not meet again until September 8, 2008.

Aric Brown, Donna Otto, and Mary Jarvis have been hunting old cemeteries in Potter and Randall County. So far, Aric has found two – one in the middle of a field and the other under a house.

If you know of a small cemetery, obscure cemetery please let them know about it. These cemeteries are in danger of being lost and it is our goal to record them before this happens.

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In line with our cemetery theme, Myrtle Jones has submitted the following:

My cousin, Albert Williams, and I knew of two small, unmarked graves on our family’s homestead in Saline Township, Harper County, Oklahoma. We were probably the only two people alive who even knew these graves existed. The house and barn are gone and there isn’t even a road to the place anymore. Albert, who had lived on the place as a child, contacted the Oklahoma Wildlife Division and took them to the graves. Oklahoma will put a fence around the two graves and I have ordered a small stone, "Babies of Clarence and Nannie Storey."

I put this story together using old letters which are in my possession, and the book that is in Buffalo written by the Clark girl. I did research in the Harper County Courthouse, and had much help from Albert Williams.

by Myrtle Jones

Several families came to Harper County, or Oklahoma territory, in 1902. The William Gaddie and Clarence Storey families came from Sharon, Barber County, Kansas, along with the Fred Stone and John Singer families. The Singer family stopped at Waynoka. John Singer, whose wife, Bertha, was Clarence Storey’s sister, was a boot maker in Medicine Lodge, Kansas. The Gaddie and Storey families came with four wagons and drove their cattle. Sometime later, Ernest Dorman, Nannie Storey’s brother, came in from Hickory County Missouri.

Clarence, Nannie and my father, Claud, who was three years old, settled on the land where the graves are now located. After they built their house, Clarence went to work for a big rancher in Harper County. One of his tasks was not only loathsome, but dangerous. That late fall he was to ride the range and if he spotted a cow that about to give birth or had given birth, he was to knock the calf in the head with a sledge hammer and escape before the cow charged him and horse. There was reason for this madness—if the calf was dead, the cow would survive the winter, otherwise they both were likely to die

In December of 1902 a letter arrived at the Charleston Post Office. This is a little town that dried up and vanished, I think it became Selman. It held the sad news of the death of Ernest’s and Nannie’s fathers. What a way to receive this news. I have the letter.

In 1907 twin girls were born to the Storey family, but, sadly, they died at birth.

TO BE CONTINUED