About Me

I was born, Shirley Conklin, July 25, 1937 on a farm between Brownville and Sackets Harbor in the northern New York county of Jefferson, the fourth of five children and the middle girl. My schooling was acquired at Sackets Harbor, N. Y., not a place to which I was ever endeared -- school days were not happy days for me because I was painfully shy. Having attended business school for a short time, I became employed as a secretary in Watertown and met my husband of 48 years at the office in which we both worked. We were married in April of 1959 in Watertown's St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Our two daughters were born while we lived on the farm owned by my parents there in Jefferson County, N. Y. Toward the middle 60's we moved to Syracuse, and just before the 1970's we moved to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, where we lived for 17 years. After working for several years as a secretary, my husband built me my own business -- a submarine sandwich shop -- long before subs were "cool."  We developed it into a mini-restaurant before long and this experience became quite interesting for me, doing all the things I like to do: working with people, cooking, being creative with marketing, cleaning, doing menus, bookkeeping, analysis work, working till I drop -- all that good stuff. I suppose my husband realized all along that I was a person who doesn't like to take orders, so being my own boss worked out just fine. I have to say that this was much more fun than being a secretary, but also a lot more work.

We now live in Ashland, Ohio, and the two of us have been retired for the most of ten years. In 1991, I took a part-time job with Family Dollar and soon learned how fascinating retailing can be. Boy, did I miss the boat when picking out my career! Our three grandchildren live out of state, so lots of time is available for our hobbies. Genealogy and history have always been of interest to me; and so when the Internet came on the scene, my husband took it upon himself to teach me a little about computers, enough to get by. My only encounter with word-processing didn't come until we pulled from the closet the old Commodore 64 bought for our daughter in the early 80's. By the middle of the 90's, I welcomed the ease of the new machines -- and the rest of the story can be seen on this website. Genealogy became an all-consuming interest, with the exception of time out for travelling all 48 contiguous states.

If you've been a reader of my pages since their creation in March of 2000, then you know I have deviated from my original format. Sometimes I feel I'm going in too many directions; but then I tell myself, my website is just a storage bin for my favorite topics (and memories). Of late, I've felt the need to portray to the readers what life was like in Jefferson County, N. Y. It has been interesting to learn the numbers of people who can trace their ancestry back to my home county. None of this would have been possible were it not for my husband's patience (and sometimes impatience - grin). I don't learn easily, so, I guess I can forgive him for those wild moments, as well as be very grateful to him for learning about the computer and then teaching me.

My goal for these pages is to incorporate a little more of my own family genealogy; and of course, it is always my intention to provide helpful information my readers won't find on other sites.

Thank you for clicking in to read about me (and us).

Shirley
July 15, 2007

Our home - 1998:
Springtime At The Farone Home

Meeting my Genealogy Contacts:
Meeting Judy Pierce in October, 2001. Judy and I have become good E-Mail buddies -- Judy has provided lots of great scrapbook information.