This article, written by Todd Preston, President of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the July 7, 2011 issue of THE SALYERSVILLE INDEPENDENT newspaper.

            Saturday, June 25 was a busy day as I had about two dozen visitors at the historical society, all members of the Samuel Helton family.  Along with their exchanging a lot of family history information and pictures among themselves, they took a tour of the Pioneer Village which they seemed to enjoy.

            I gave them the GPS reading for the Samuel Helton Cemetery on Raccoon Creek here in Magoffin County.  I hope they were able to find the cemetery.

            Some of those visiting were Linda L. Allen of Charleston, IN, Rhonda Helton Justice along with Todd and Rachel of Mooresville, IN.  Rhonda is the daughter of Earl Edgar Helton and granddaughter of German Helton and Mandy Montgomery.   

            If I had been a little better prepared for this visit I would have invited some local cousins to be here to meet and chaperone them to the cemeteries.  If these folks did make the visit to the cemetery, it may not have been cleaned up as most of these old burial sites sometimes fail to get much attention as they did in yesteryear. 

            My age and the high cost of gasoline is curtailing my getting to accompany folks to these old burial sites.

            I did get to make one such trip when my buddy Sarge Rowe dropped in on me last Tuesday morning.  We did some genealogy talking then I hit him up to guide me to the cemetery where the soldier Kent McDaniel is buried as I had received a query about him.

            Now, I had envisioned in my mind that it would be about a half-mile walk to the cemetery amongst downed trees from the big ice storm of a couple of years ago.  I try to stay fit and keep up with my neighbor A. B. Conley by walking every morning in our local park so I thought I could keep up with Sarge Rowe. 

            I met up with Sarge at the mouth of Lick Branch. He drove his little four-wheel drive vehicle.  Now, when you accompany Sarge, you do a lot of listening (smile).  Sarge would stop at every cemetery, old home site, etc. and explain who was buried in the cemeteries or who had lived in the houses as well as who they were kin to.

            We stopped at his twin brother’s house for a chat and there he showed me where his younger brother had gotten killed in a tragic farm tractor accident years ago.

            We then started on up Lick Branch with Sarge telling me all the history of every family that lived up through there.  We came to a gate which was locked so we had to come back downstream to another entrance.  We managed to get through and we started on up then we got stuck!  Sarge didn’t get excited like I did so we just got out and went on up to the cemetery.  We found it was very clean and beautifully decorated.  A large oak stood sentinel at the entrance of the cemetery. 

            When we came back down we asked a neighbor to help pull the vehicle out of the mud. Luckily the neighbor had a farm tractor and had no trouble pulling Sarge’s vehicle out.  We then went to the Joseph Dyer Cemetery and would have gone to several others but I wanted to get back to the Pioneer Village before closing time.  When I got everything taken care of for the day, I opened my camera to get the film out to be developed and found I had neglected to load it in the first place!

            Oh, well, there is always another day…and Sarge did want to show me the rest of the cemeteries on Lick Branch so I will ask for a return visit.

            On the following morning I took some cousins to the Smith Adams Cemetery near Falcon to visit the burial site of Jesse and Chrystal Lemaster, along with their sons Challis Conley and John Henry Conley.  Chrystal’s brother Mitchell and his wife are buried there also. These cousins were Mary Lou Conley, the widow of Ray Conley, their daughter Pam Krafczinski along with Mike Nichols of Lorain, OH.

            We have all really enjoyed the Veteran’s section of last week’s Salyersville Independent newspaper.  This is a fine tribute to all our veterans and a good keepsake for us.