This article, written by Todd Preston, President of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the May 23, 2013 issue of THE SALYERSVILLE INDEPENDENT newspaper.

            Those of you who read this column know that the Magoffin County Historical Society is researching the genealogy of the RUDD family this year for the 35^th Magoffin County Founders Day celebration.

            This family just gets more and more interesting as we delve into it.  This week Dorothy was looking in the Tazewell County, Virginia records and found reference to a Joseph Rudd and Martha Rudd who were married there on January the 12^th in 1841.  We haven’t figured out where this family fits into the outline of the family that we are working on but hope that someone out there can give us more information.

            Then in the 1850 Tazewell Co. VA we found some familiar names, among them was Catherine Dolesberry Reed who was age 59 that year. She had a son Thomas age 20 in her household along with 105 year-old Silas Dolsberry. The person who transcribed this census made note that “Silas” died on August 2, 1850.  We believe this is “Lyles” Dolsberry who was born 1760 in NY and died in 1850 VA. 

            Catherine Dolsbury (Dolesberry) was born in 1793 VA died in 1859 Morgan Co. KY.  Her husband William George Reid was born in 1790 Maine and died in early 1850 in Tazewell Co. VA. 

Next door to Catherine in this census record was another of her sons, James M. Reed age 27 and his wife Sally Rudd age 24.  James M. and Sarah were married Nov 4, 1841 also in Tazewell Co. VA.  They had 5 children in their household (1) John D. Reed age 7, (2) Aronton Reed age 6, (3) Catherine A. Reed age 4, (4) Hiram H. Reed age 3 and William T. Reed age 1.

This started a follow-up search for this family and we found that by 1860 the James Monroe Reed family was residents of Magoffin County.  The first son (1) John D. Reed was not listed in that census so perhaps had died in the previous 10 years.  The other children were Arnton Reed age 15, Catherine Reed age 14, H. H. Reed age 13, Wm. T. Reed age 11, Thomas S. Reed age 9, Reese B. Reed age 8, James N. Reed age 7, Nancy Reed age 5 and Sarah Reed age 2.  This census year all members of the family were listed as having been born in Virginia. The census taker of the 1870 Magoffin census gave Nancy, Sarah, and the two youngest Mary and Rosabell as having been born in KY. 

We found some additional material in our Reed family book and also in our set of books on area Civil War soldiers.  James and Sarah (Rudd) Reed had three sons who were Civil War soldiers, Hiram H. Reed, Aronton Reed and William Reed.

A brief description of the rest of the family of James and Sarah Reed is as follows.

(2) Aronton L. Reed was married to Mary “Polly” Whitt.  He died in 1881 Lewis Co. KY and his widow was listed in the 1900 Magoffin Co. KY census with a daughter Lottie and grandson Arna. 

(3) Catherine Reed b. ca. 1846 – we have no other info. 

(4) Hiram Hendricks “Hen” Reed b. 1847 m. 1^st to Jane Harper who died in 1897 then he married 2^nd to Gilly Ann Gullett who died in 1914.  A third marriage to Margaret Thacker Singleton ended in divorce.

(5) William T. “W. T.” or “Bill” Reed b. 1849 m. 1^st to Mary Patrick.

We are still working on finding the families of (6) Thomas S. Reed b. 1851; (7) Reese B. Reed b. 1852, (8) James M. Reed b. 1854, (9) Nancy Jane Reed b. 1855, (10) Sarah Reed b. 1858, (11) Mary Reed b. 1861 and (12) Rosabell Reed b. 1863. 

We have been trying to add the information that comes in to us on the Rudd family to the Rudd manuscript so if you have not already mailed or brought in your family then we invite you to do so by writing Magoffin County Historical Society, PO Box 222, Salyersville, KY 41465 (email: [email protected]) or come in to our library at 191 South Church Street located between WRLV Radio building and the Lloyd M. Hall Community Center in Salyersville.

Jimmie Allen was in this week researching the Cisco family.  One Allan Newton Cisco b. 1866 Morgan Co. KY (a lawyer-judge of Morgan Co. KY) was born to Hiram Francisco/Cisco and Sarah Ann Nickell.  Allan Newton’s wife was Sarah C. Bays.  Two of the old friends of our historical society, Jim and Garnet (Cisco) Brammer of Greenfield, OH had given us a notebook on the Francisco/Cisco family a few years ago and it has been a valuable source of research material for us. 

We want to send our sympathy to the family of Darlena “Dollie” Conley Bailey (widow of Oscar Bailey).  Darlena Bailey is the mother of Vivian Bailey Rudd (wife of Billy Don Rudd).  This family has helped us with several projects that we have worked on down through the years.