This article, written by Todd Preston, President of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the July 14, 2011 issue of THE SALYERSVILLE INDEPENDENT newspaper.

            I’m back at my cluttered “desk” (table) again today after taking a day off to be with my son Toddie who had heart catherization surgery at King’s Daughter’s Hospital in Ashland Tuesday.  He got through it all OK and is expecting to be released today. I’ve just taken my morning walk in Ramey Park with my neighbor A. B. Conley who recently had open heart surgery.

            I was in the historical society library on Saturday July 2^nd but didn’t get to meet and greet all the folks who visited our facility as I was really busy. I took time this morning to look through our visitor registration book and among the host of names listed there I found that a visitor from Ohio who wrote she had come to Magoffin County for the Amyx Reunion and saw our Pioneer Village from the park and was amazed at all the information we have in our library.

            There are a lot more of this type of messages in our visitor’s book.  Now, it takes a lot of man (and woman) power to keep everything shipshape with only a couple of volunteers trying to keep it up and running and one of them isn’t a teenager!

            We are pleased to announce that we have the Joseph family souvenirs in and everything is going great.  We have the knives, tee-shirts, caps, mugs, wooden nickels, etc.  The Joseph clan and their kinsmen are making every effort to make this Founders Days the best event ever and all of you are invited to join in.

            The 4^th of July holiday has come and gone and it was a humdinger!  The fireworks display was second to none and the parade was super!

            The Firecracker Pageants drew quite a crowd, equal to our Founders Day pageants and with a like amount of spectators. 

            The Josephs turned out in big numbers for the parade, all dressed in their souvenir caps and shirts.  We appreciate all they did to let the public know about our 33^rd Annual Magoffin County Founders Days Festival beginning on August 30^th and continuing through September 5^th, 2011.  We are now working up a program of events and we would like to have your help.  We invite anyone with Joseph family information and/or pictures to share them with us.

            Some of the highlights of the parade were the Middle Creek Battlefield re-enactors along with the “Dayton Bunch”. Everyone enjoyed Wendell Hoskins and his horse acrobatics!

            The Renaissance Center honored William Elsey “Belsey” Connelley with a lifetime achievement award for his many years of service to our county and city. 

            The dance in the Salyersville Bank parking lot drew quite a nice crowd.  Lots of people mentioned being glad to be able to hear the festivities via our local radio station, WRLV.  There are many out there who cannot come out personally to enjoy celebrations such as this and being able to hear it on the radio and read about it in the newspaper means a lot to them.

            We have had the pleasure of having young Caleb Sexton as a volunteer for the last few weeks at our historical society.  He is a student at Highlands Elementary and wants to learn more about eastern Kentucky’s involvement in the Civil War.  He has done a lot of reading in our library.  It has been a pleasure to have him accompany and help me with tours of the Pioneer Village and we will miss him.  We thank Caleb and his family for this summer term of volunteering.