This article, written by Todd Preston, President of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the April 1, 2010 issue of THE SALYERSVILLE INDEPENDENT newspaper.

The Salyersville Independent , a weekly newspaper.
P. O. Box 29, Salyersville, KY 41465. 
Telephone (606) 349-2915. 
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            I took a drive up to South Magoffin Saturday to pile a bunch of brush that had been cut earlier to clear out a thicket that will probably be used for the reenactment.  After a couple of hours I got tired plus I had an appointment to go with Charles Watkins to a cemetery I had never been to before.

            Charles was ready when I got back home so I called my grandson Cory Dotson and invited him to take his four-wheeler. We got to the mouth of the hollow and the great ice storm had actually blocked the road so badly that we left the four-wheeler. We set out walking and I took my chain saw – big mistake!  It would have taken a week to open up the old sled road.

            We climbed over, under, and around those trees until we topped out on the ridge, exhausted. Cory rested a few minutes but Charles and I started on. Cory soon caught up and we began to see a woodland we had seen before when we were hunting the Chestnut Grove cemetery a few years ago.  Charlie hollered down that he was at the cemetery so we went up that steep knob to the place Charlie called the Chestnut Cemetery. There are about a dozen graves, only one had had markings too faint to read. Charles Watkins’ grandparents are buried here.  Sure enough, it was the location where I had visited a couple of times before and where Roy Collins had told me years ago there were “witches” buried outside the fence and told me never to step on those graves.

            I had made two unsuccessful hunts for the cemetery until one time my dog treed a squirrel close to it and to get the dog, I accidentally found a cemetery. We had no pencil or paper at that time so my son Toddie picked up a thin rock, took another rock and inscribed the names we found, Dick Cole, Riley Perkins, John Watkins, Dolly W., Ida W., etc. The amazing thing is that these two cemeteries are about fifty to sixty yards apart.

            As we started back down, Charles pointed out where his grandparents had lived, where they had tended corn, where a couple of houses were located, the chimney stones still visible on the ridge known as “the great Indian trail.”

            There is a lot of history already lost about the tribe of “Saponi” Indians who migrated from the Carolina’s to the “Greasy Rocks” and on to what became a boundary between Floyd and Magoffin counties, more specifically the Cole Branch of Floyd and Bear Branch of Magoffin.

            I’ve asked Charles to write down the folklore he remembers and I’d like for others to do so.  We passed a rock cliff where Charles said an Indian family once lived under. He had played there as a youngster. Folks, we can’t just let this folklore fade away.

            Dr. Richard Carlson, a descendant, wrote a book of over 700 pages on the genealogy of the people he called Saponi Indians.  Surely we can write a few pages…

            Now to finish the story, when we started back down the hollow, I sat down and scooted the steepest part until I was stopped by a tall poplar tree, so large I couldn’t reach around it so that ended getting down the hill the easy way.  We then started climbing over, under and around the downed trees back to the four-wheeler and our autos. Cory sped away after getting an emergency call on his rescue squad monitor so we parted about 6:30, having been on the trail about four hours and I paid for it by having leg cramps after bedtime.

            If anyone would have any knowledge of who may be buried in the cemetery we visited we would like to find out, otherwise it may remain a mystery forever.

            I want to thank the “Friends of Middle Creek” re-enactors for taking time out of their busy schedules to come to our Magoffin County grade and middle schools to put on a living history show. They dressed in Civil War era clothing and were helped out by a few locals, Randal Risner, Brenda Howard, Jack and Lori Sizemore, A. B. Conley, Jimmie Allen and Ol’ Todd.  Some of the students themselves joined Ms. Lori in her hoedown dance.

            I was once a member of the board of education at a time when we went from the one-room schools to the consolidated schools. Now we have consolidated our schools again with as many as 600 students in a grade school and about the same number in the middle school.  What a difference to picture our Mashfork School when I was a youngster as one of about sixteen students at the school, only about half of us still living. It is a great contrast to think of as we sit in front of these huge numbers of grade school children.  I asked them to encourage their parents and grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. to write stories and submit pictures for the sesquicentennial book.  We are still in need of much material so please take a bit of time and write down the history of your family, your church, your business, your community, etc.  Let’s all get into the act and make this the best book ever!

            By the time you read this it will be only a few days before the Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Puncheon Creek/Half Mountain takes place.  This will be a first for our county as we have only had a few small scale reenactments prior. We do have a small contingent of the Licking Station Camp No. 1793 in our county, perhaps we can revive and enlarge the group, contact Dr. Randall Mann or myself for more information.

            We would like to mention that the re-enactors for this event will be coming from here in Kentucky as well as Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio and other places, we know not where. We have no idea at this time how many but this is the time to show our southern hospitality. We hope to feed them several meals with the help of the Muzzleloaders and a few other people involved with the re-enactment. 

            We hope to have some horse drawn carriages but no other horses, please, except for the horses the re-enactors bring.  We hope the people traveling in and out of Big Half Mountain will bear with us; with dry weather we should have ample parking.  Overall, we expect the best show on earth!