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  Magoffin County Historical Society 
"Preserving Our Past for the Future"

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This article, written by Todd Preston, the president of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the March 29 2007 issue of THE SALYERSVILLE INDEPENDENT newspaper.


 The Salyersville Independent is a weekly newspaper published and edited every Thursday. For inquires or comments, please write to P. O. Box 29, Salyersville, KY 41465. Yearly subscription rates are $22.00 in Kentucky and $26.00 per year out of state.

 

The daffodils and Easter lillies have seen a few frosty mornings but still seem to survive. That could be a good lesson for those of us who have seen many frosty mornings, we need to “keep on keeping on”, even though there may have been more than a few obstacles along the way.

The first Journal for the year 2007 of the Magoffin County Historical Society will be in our member’s mailboxes by the time you read this. If you aren’t a member and would like to become one, contact us for information.  This Journal announces our plans for this year’s Founder’s Days celebration. We were late in getting the news out about our Labor Day Magoffin County reunion. I am going to be truthful about the reason; last year we had some unwelcome visitors who tore up our stage and anything else they could cut or tear up. This took the “wind out of my sails”, not to mention the rain that fell almost continually and caused our grounds to be turned into a mess that is not even yet totally repaired. Then, of course, we have only a very small group to help with the Founder’s Days preparation. If you would like to get involved, come to our meetings (the next will be April 15th at 2 p.m. in our archives library). 

We urge everyone who has CARPENTER family information to get it in as soon as possible.  We are also encouraging every family or group that may wish to do so to plan a reunion here in Magoffin County during Labor Day.  Our intentions for having Founder’s Days have always been to welcome our people back home, no matter how many years or generations they may be removed from our county. 

We have intentions of creating a Carpenter family book.  Remember that our small staff (Connie and Dorothy) needs much time to put information into book form. They already work overtime to take care of the daily routine which is extremely rigorous.

Bob and Betty Whittaker of SC will be here by the time you read this and they have a very full schedule of things to do, including setting well over a dozen monuments for various early ancestors. We need help!  I told Tom Marshall yesterday to get his work clothes on and keep them on! (Smile)

Another late announcement is that my sister Luva Connelley and Katie Prater want to have a class reunion of 1945 high school graduates on Memorial Day weekend so mark that on your calendars.

Will your grade school be featured in the Salyersville Independent’s proposed “parade” of Magoffin’s grade schools of yesteryear?  In talking to their staff I learned they haven’t received enough material to start this project so I turned in one of the Bear Tree of Rockhouse schools sent to us by Mr. Calvin Whitt but they need several more before they start publishing this series so all of you who are proud of your young school days, get busy and participate in this worthy project.

Our regular monthly meeting had the following attendees: James C. Montgomery, Charlotte Gillum, Leola Cole, Delaney Wireman, Connie A. Wireman, Vanessa Kerbusch, Belsey Connelley and Todd Preston.  We were happy to welcome Vanessa, an exchange student from Germany, to our county.  We covered many subjects. Charlotte related to us the progress in all the tourism related meetings she has been attending. Leola told more of the Whittaker’s plans, including setting the Henry C. Bailey Confederate marker near the Wiley Salyer grave near the mouth of Bullmire and building a fence around it. Many more markers and tombstones are being set so we welcome any help. 

Belsey spoke of the progress of plans the city is working on and Connie told of the historical society’s plans for our 29th Founder’s Days.  We also discussed following up on Raleigh Shepherd’s intentions for setting monuments he had already obtained that are to be set in the Vanderpool Cemetery at the head of Licking and at the Hoskins cemetery at the mouth of Bull Branch plus several other projects he had planned.  It is our desire to see that the work he began be completed.

The sunken grave of James P. Honaker at the Adams Cemetery which I mentioned filling in with the excess dirt from my sister Ann Kelley’s grave in an earlier column has evolved into plans to set a marker for him.  We have a birthday of Nov 1862 and death date of 26 Jul 1937 from Bernice Moore’s notes but we are still not clear as to who his father was. He is listed as the 7-year-old grandson of Alfred Bailey and Margaret Adams in the 1870 census.  Apparently their daughter Rebecca married Martin Honaker and we thought them to be his parents but we would like confirmation on this.

James Honaker isn’t in the 1910 Magoffin census but appears in the 1920 census and is married to Perlina Lemaster, then fails to show in the 1930 census. Any comments on James P. Honaker would be appreciated before a marker is obtained.

I talked to Olive Marshall and she supported putting a marker at little Nora Patrick’s abandoned gravesite. She told me Nora had a brother Robert Patrick buried there also.  I told her that I wanted to permanently mark Nora’s grave that the late Boone Howard told me about several years ago. Olive has the same intention and sent a donation toward this venture. Ray Collinsworth took me to the site a few week’s ago and said he remembered the little white picket fence that Rousseau Patrick had build around his daughter’s grave.

How about a whole “bunch” of Rousseau’s grandchildren joining Olive and pitch in a few dollars to mark this little final resting place? Any logging or other such operation would probably destroy the present grave sites.

Now another small cemetery Boone told me about was on the Coin Salyer farm and I have it recorded in our cemetery books as an abandoned Collins Cemetery.  Ray Collinsworth took me almost directly to the site but we couldn’t find any indication of graves and looked all over that hillside and found nothing. Ray talked to one of Coin Salyer’s sons and he verified the cemetery was under the great oak tree where Ray and I first visited. This is almost directly behind the building that I remember once housed a child care facility.

You might wonder at why I worry about abandoned cemeteries. Well, I think it is a disgrace to let cemeteries get lost or get shoved over the hill by a dozer blade. It is encouraging to learn of others who are working to see that unmarked gravesites get appropriate markers and we hope it is a trend that will continue.

We are located at 191 South Church Street in Salyersville, write us at Box 222, Salyersville, KY 41465 ([email protected] ) or telephone 606-349-1607.

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