This article, written by Todd Preston, President of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the September 18, 2008 issue of THE SALYERSVILLE INDEPENDENT newspaper.

            Founders Days 2008 are still in our minds as we go about the everyday chores around the Pioneer Village.  I’ve about got everything stashed away in winter quarters and have mowed the grass. Our little stray kittens are doing fine and, yep, I’ve been buying kitty food.  I’ve left the wire fence barriers at the cabin doors so visitors can read and see the displays in every cabin room.  Many people come through the Pioneer Village and only see the outside of the log homes. Sometimes they do not come into our library to request a tour. 

            We had our monthly meeting to which I was a little late. When I came in, our board members were discussing all the great things that took place during this year’s celebration with Morris Fletcher’s dedication of the “Old” George Fletcher memorial marker and the arrival of former Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher and his family in Magoffin County topping the list.  Everyone was very pleased that Gov. Fletcher, his wife Glenna, and parents Harold and Marie Fletcher spent some extra time at Saturday’s unveiling of the Fletcher marker in our Pioneer Village and in our genealogy library. 

We had larger crowds than usual during this celebration.  The Reunion Dinner on Sunday was a great success; so much so that Myrtle Cole’s famous dumplings were “history” by the time Doc Hardin and I got to them!  There was still a plentiful and delicious supply of foods to choose from and I sampled most of them!

This last Friday I volunteered to go and locate the gravesite of Mary Patrick Minix that is in the Berry (or Bud) Patrick Cemetery in lower Middle Fork.  Talk about a wild goose chase, Randall Risner and I took it…and it was all because of my lack of a good memory.  I thought I knew where the cemetery was and that we could run over to the late Hager Patrick’s farm, copy it and be back in half an hour.  Well, we parked and started up the hill, huffing and puffing to the top of the hill and we found an old grown-up cemetery where a newer barbed wire fence had been strung as the original wire fence had fallen down. (N-37 43.880  S-083 08.028, elevation 960.)

We started hunting and copying graves and it came to me that we were in the Claiborne White Patrick Cemetery instead of the cemetery where his brother John Patrick was buried.  The cemetery was in need of a clearing, not just a cleaning, but as Randall observed, it would be fruitless to give it a one-shot cleaning if it wasn’t kept up.

I had copied this cemetery in 1981 when I found graves of Claiborne White and Anna Eliza (Flint) Patrick along with 10 more markers with 8 unmarked graves.

We came back down to the house where Hager used to live but no one was home so we went back downstream, passing the cemetery we were looking for during the first mile.  We went to a couple more cemeteries then finally went back to the Lark Arnett hill where we found Hager Patrick’s daughter at home. We questioned her and was told we had passed the cemetery. She gave us a big glass of ice water and off we went back down 3337. When we got to the hill where the cemetery was and started up the hill, I was lagging behind, worn out.  I told Randall I didn’t think this was the cemetery as I had been there this spring plus several other times with John Britton looking for his great grandparents, John Harvey and Catherine Risner. Randall went on ahead and hollered back that it was the right cemetery.  We were searching for the small metal marker that Sharroll Minix and her sister Clarice had placed at the gravesite of their ancestor Mary Patrick Minix many years ago.  Sharroll and Clarice have recently helped purchase a marker for her which we hope to install next week.  Mary was the wife of Noah Minix and was a dau of John Patrick and Charlotte Patrick (dau of William Patrick).  John was a son of Reubin Patrick and Charlotte (Wilson) Patrick.

Even though we didn’t find the right cemetery the first time I am glad we visited the White Patrick Cemetery again as some of the stones are now hard to read.

One letter we got this week came from Barbara Singleton Seals ([email protected]) who writes that her family is from Magoffin. Her gr/gr/grandfather was Dr. George Washington Wheeler buried on Burning Fork.  Dr. Wheeler was from Grayson Co. VA and attended medical school in Lexington, KY.  He married Nancy Emily Williams (dau of Elijah Williams and Elizabeth Prater) and settled in Salyersville.  He is buried in an abandoned cemetery in the city limits behind the Salyersville Church of Christ. 

There are only two monuments visible in this cemetery, G. W. Wheeler b. 7 Jun 1815 d. 16 Feb 1894 and Bert Whitaker b. 13 Mar 1890 d. 10 Feb 1892.

Dr. Wheeler’s children were Mary Elizabeth Wheeler b. 1854, Georgia A. Wheeler b. 1857 (m. Benjamin Whitaker), Thomas Wheeler b. 1863, Sarah Wheeler b. 1865, Anthony Clay Wheeler b. 1869, Charles Wheeler b. 1871, Florence Wheeler b. 1872 and Edgar Wheeler.