This article, written by Todd Preston, President of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the October 31, 2013 issue of THE SALYERSVILLE INDEPENDENT newspaper.

            Looks like Halloween played a little trick on us with the weather!  We’ve had colder weather than usual plus rain, ice and snow!  We’ve had to move indoors with our work activity.  It was good to get some painting and fixing up done around the Pioneer Village before the cold spell set in.

            I found that Dorothy has been really busy here as we have had a larger than usual number of visitors in the last few weeks PLUS she has printed and bound copies of the WHITAKER INDEX and they are now for sale.  We celebrated the heritage of the Whitaker family back in 2004 and had a wonderful time.  Many people shared their genealogy information and family pictures that year.  With all that information we compiled a set of books containing 1,840 pages.  Before we got the book finished, Kay Bentley volunteered to index it for us.  When Kay got the first volume finished she came in for Volume II but we were out of volumes 2 and 3 at the time so Connie gave her Volume 4 to index.  Kay finished that one but before she could bring it in the Tornado of 2012 happened.  Kay and Dallas’ home was one of the many in our county that was destroyed and it took us a good bit of time to recover from all that happened here and in our area.

            By the time we got around to working on our publications again Bob and Betty Whittaker volunteered to take on getting the Whitaker book index into print so we packed our files and sent them off to South Carolina.  Bob wrote back and asked where the index for Volumes 2 and 3 were.  We finally figured out that they hadn’t been done.  That didn’t daunt Kay one bit.  She went right back to work and soon we had a complete index. 

            Bob has added quite a bit of extra material to this index so that it actually serves as a Volume 5 to the set.  He has included Whitaker genealogy from the 1500’s down to the various Whitaker memorial markers that have been set in recent years.  We think anyone interested in the Whitaker family history will want this volume.  An index is of much value and to have all this additional material is a real plus for the researcher as well as everyone who wishes to keep a record of the family genealogy.

            Work has also continued on the Rudd family genealogy.  Garnette Rudd Spencer, her brothers Orbin, Jr. and Jimmy, children of Orbin Rudd and Christine Taulbee came to visit with their families. Garnette brought in her notebook of family history and it has added some much needed material. 

We mentioned last week that Katherine Bailey and her daughters had brought Blanche Lindon in to visit us and they had shared their Rudd research.  Blanche is a Rudd descendant through Oscar Rudd, the son of Archibald and Mary Jane Lawson Rudd.  Katherine is not a Rudd descendant but she collects genealogy info on many area families.  Her material included some war service records, obituaries and other source material that is important to the study of a family genealogy.

            Katherine and her daughters Amanda and Lynn had previously contributed their compilations of area obituaries to us and we have assembled these into a set of five books, each containing about 225 pages.  These books contain copies of the obituaries as they appeared in the newspaper.  We are compiling an index of this material which will cover all the volumes when it is finished.  In addition, there is an index at the end of each volume as to the material contained in that book. 

            We have several people who have sent us obituaries down through the years. Bobby Davis has sent a great many of those and we have used them many times.  Madge Davis saves the Floyd County Times obituaries for us.  Some such as Wayne Leffingwell send obituaries of people from eastern Kentucky to us via email.  We also have a good friend in Ohio who is unknown to us but who sends an envelope of obituaries to us from time to time.  We appreciate them all.  We save them all and go through them to extract those that fit into the publications that we are working on.  A good bit of material has been added to the Mann family book from these obits.

            At our regular October meeting of the Magoffin County Historical Society we continued our discussion of the projects we have underway.  Bill and Vivian Rudd brought in pictures and family genealogy for the Rudd book as well as for the cookbook that we are finishing up.  This will be the last cookbook in a very successful series that we have done.

            We also talked about various other projects that the historical society has undertaken and are in various stages of completion.  That last volume of the Veteran’s book needs to be finished and we are all awaiting the Sesquicentennial volumes.  Carlotta Howard and Dorothy came up with some good material to add to that book last week.

            We are appreciative of the patience those interested in our printed materials have shown for the last few years as we work towards finishing up the jobs we have “in the works”. 

            We are very grateful to Jesse Buckwalter of Maryland who wrote to us to alert us of an error that appeared in the October 17^th issue of our Comments column.  We had listed Rhodes Prater as a son of Civil War soldier Newman Prater and Martha Daniel.  With the help of Jesse we have now placed him in the family of Ezekiel and Polly (Reffitt) Prater of Pike Co. KY.  We have corrected and added to our Prater manuscript and, as usual, it has brought on more questions.  We have the names of Daniel, William, Alafare, Mary, Martha, Rebecca, John, Ezekiel, Rhodes, Marion and Polly Prater as the children of Ezekiel but have very little on their descendants so would appreciate any additional help anyone might be able to give.  This Ezekiel Prater was a son of William Prater and Mary “Polly” Thurman.