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].