Feb 7, 2013

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

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This article, written by Todd Preston, President of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the February 7, 2013 issue of THE SALYERSVILLE INDEPENDENT newspaper.

The Salyersville Independent 
P. O. Box 29, Salyersville, KY 41465. Telephone (606) 349-2915.  Yearly subscription rates are $24.00 in Kentucky and $32.00 per year out of state.

            Here we see that a month of the brand new year 2013 is already gone!  Time does go quickly. It brings foremost to mind that we need to organize our time and efforts in order to see our goals to completion.  

            We have been getting inquiries about the Winter quarterly Journal and we are happy to report that it will be ready for mailing soon.  It takes quite a lot of work to get this ready for printing as we try to cover our Founders Days events with this issue. 

Information about the Journal of the Magoffin County Historical Society is quite often unknown to people who are interested in Magoffin County genealogy.  We get inquiries from time to time asking if we have a publication for members and the answer is “Yes, we do!”  In fact we are getting ready to begin our 35th year of publication with the spring 2013 issue.  This Journal is mailed out to members quarterly and contains at least 40 pages each of history and genealogy material connected with our area.  Most of the time it is closer to 50 and more pages each.  We put in quite a variety of material and get a good response from our readers.  This publication is available for $15 per year which covers the cost of mailing and materials used to print it.  We are now taking memberships for the year 2013 and our address is Magoffin County Historical Society, Box 222, Salyersville, KY 41465.  Our membership is by the calendar year so please mention that it is for the year 2013.  

We have a few members who have been with us since the beginning of our organization.  That small group of people who began meeting together back in 1978 little knew what their efforts would produce.  The Journal was our first printing venture.  As our local post office and court house employees learned of our fledgling historical society they started giving us letters of inquiry that had been mailed to them.  At the beginning we would read those letters at our meetings and then give them to the person who volunteered to handwrite an answer.  We soon saw that we were writing the same information to many different people and decided that we could better use our time to print information in a newsletter that would be made available to those interested in genealogy.  Our first little newsletter in the spring of 1979 was 20 pages long.  The cover picture was a drawing of the Preston family’s Burton Fork home by my wife Phyllis.  The material was typed on wax stencils with a portable typewriter and we printed this on a borrowed mimeograph machine. The pages were collated by a group of us walking around a table picking up pages and then the Journal was stapled by hand. Technology, as well as family history knowledge, has come a long way since that time.  We are thankful for the group of people who formed the nucleus of our historical society back in those early years.  We are especially appreciative of their enthusiasm and energy spent toward learning new ways of expanding our knowledge about Magoffin County and our surrounding counties.

Now, 35 years later, we still have a goodly number of people who share their genealogy and pictures with us.  Seems like the last few years we have seen this number dwindling so it may be that we will need to reassess the work we are trying to do.  We do want to complete the projects that we have in various stages of progress but we ask that those who are interested in seeing the completed books please be patient as compiling and printing a book takes quite a lot of time.

We also appreciate the people who take the time and effort to write to us to correct or add to information that we have put into print and that includes these Comments columns.  Genealogy and history needs to be recorded in as nearly correct form as possible so we want to make everyone aware that their help is important to us.

We thank Janice Shepherd Cooley for referring Ruby Jean Bradley of Silver Lake, IN to us.  We had a very nice long letter from Ruby Jean this week.  She is the daughter of John “Long John” Shepherd and Aulda Wireman Shepherd who lived in the David area of Floyd County, KY.  Aulda was a daughter of John “Fiddler” Wireman and Rinda Mack or Pruitt.

Her question concerns her grandmother on her father’s side of the family, Evaline Allen.  Evaline was born about 1877 and died 4 June 1923.  She married Dave Shepherd, the son of Brice “Flitterfoot” Shepherd and LouEaster Salyer.  From information we have in our Allen family book and the Shepherd family book, we find that Evaline was the daughter of James William “J. M.” Allen and Sallie Hicks.  James William was a son of David W. Allen and Jennie Martin.  Sallie was a daughter of Hiram Hicks and Fanny Brown. 

Ruby Jean is especially interested in locating a picture of her grandmother Evaline Allen Shepherd who died when her son “Long” John Shepherd was only 5 or 6 years old. 

Evaline and David Shepherd were the parents of 10 children: (1) Easter Shepherd, (2) Bessie Shepherd m. Adam Watson, (3) Sarah Shepherd m. Earnest Slone, (4) Mary Ann Shepherd m. Wiley Howard, (5) Jim Shepherd m. Lola Howard, (6) Brice Shepherd m. Susan Johnson, (7) John Shepherd m. Aulda Wireman – these are Ruby Jean’s parents, (8) Henry Shepherd, (9) Olive Shepherd m. Thomas Spradlin and (10) Maudie Shepherd m. Norman Greer.

Ruby’s brother Owen visited us during our Shepherd year and sister Mentha was a visitor not too long ago.  Her other siblings are Mentha Prater, Roger Lee Shepherd, Quillen Shepherd, Edgar Shepherd, Elma Kay Caudill, Adgie Hall and Jerlene Prater.  She has three deceased siblings, Elzie Joe, Glen and Earlene.

If anyone can help Ruby find pictures of her Allen family, please let us know. Write to us at the above address or email [email protected].

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