Home Up Family Photo Albums Family Reunions Founders Days Links Membership News Our Beginnings Pioneer Village Publications Talk to Todd

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

(Click here to) Join Us On Facebook!

Back to Archives

 

This article, written by Todd Preston, President of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the March 20, 2014 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.

            Greetings to all of you who have survived this winter!  It has been a struggle for us all with many more wintry spells than usual of snow and ice.  Perhaps the worst aspect was the many nights of frigidly cold weather temps that dipped well below zero.  Yes, I’ve survived this blast of snow and ice storms.  I know that people up north of us have been hit harder than we have.  The weather reporters said we had worse weather than Alaska.  Now I remember the weather in Alaska because I spent two years there while in the Army.  I was only eighteen years old then and ice skating was my hobby (smile).  Now, I’m nearing age ninety and I keep my four-footed cane handy (smile).

            When I was in my teens, I remember how we Preston boys, sons of Curt and Mollie (Conley) Preston, looked forward to the time when sugar maple trees could be tapped.  We would take our clean syrup buckets to the woods and find a suitable tree.  We would cut a V-shaped notch into the bark of the tree so as to make room for a spout to be inserted.  This spout would catch the sap from the tree and channel it into our buckets.  Mom would add a little sugar to this sap to make a sweet tea and sometimes she would boil it down and make it into candy.

            Sugar Camp, a community here in our town, was named for having an abundance of sugar maple trees.  We still call that part of Salyersville by the name of “Sugar Camp”.

            Another important tree on our forty-acre tract of land on the Burton Fork of Mash Fork was the slippery elm.  You could chew on a piece of the bark all day without it getting tasteless and unchewable.  We boys enjoyed that.  My father cautioned us not to tell of the existence of the slippery elm tree on our property but it finally became known and someone stripped it of its bark as there was a market for it. The tree became extinct on our farm as well as in many other places in our county. 

            Another feature I have mentioned before on our farm is the Indian Grave on the ridge above the log home where we were raised.  My mother considered it just as sacred as any other burial site.  We tended corn to just out below the Indian Grave site.  As I would follow the plow boy along, I would pick up pieces of glass-like material and carry them out of the way to prevent them from cutting the mule’s legs.  Mother told me she had done the same thing in her life time.

            We would throw those glass-like pieces down a deep ravine.  I often wondered why there was never any investigation of these being there as oil wells were drilled close by.

            I have visited other sites in our county that are called Indian Graves.  One of these was on my Aunt Eliza Powers’ farm on Mash Fork and there are other such sites located along the Licking River.

            All of this has brought another oddity to my mind and that is the puff adder snake that seemed to be found in the pasture fields where I used to play.  I most often carried a walking stick with me in my treks through the woods and fields.  When I would come upon one of these snakes it would make a puffing sound and strike at me then play dead.  It would then recover, coil up and make another strike.  I never killed this kind of snake as my mother considered them harmless.

            I have traveled over these hills round and about in Magoffin County about as much as anyone I know and have never seen another viper in my adult years.

            We have had some mail this week and I will go into one inquiry from Nancy A. Cool of Waverly, OH as she had a question that several other people have forwarded our way.

Nancy is a descendant of George “Old George” Fletcher and Dicey Johnson through their first child Alexander Fletcher and his wife Ludemy Castle.  She has her line listed from her mother Mary Sue Jordan back to “Old George” and it is correct as near as we can determine. 

            Her question was if her line of Fletchers would be in the Fletcher family book that we have been compiling and we would like to tell her that it certainly is.  She also wanted to know when the book would be available for purchase.  We would like to obtain more Fletcher family information before we try to answer this.  2008 was the year that a wonderful memorial monument in honor of the progenitor of the Fletcher family, George Fletcher, was set on Gun Creek.  Morris Fletcher of Michigan was the chairperson of this marker project and it has made a place here in Magoffin County for descendants to visit and remember their ancestor.  There were several people who shared their family info with us during 2007 and on into 2008 when we celebrated Founders Days in honor of the Fletcher family but there was not enough material for us to make a “book”. 

            For instance, with Nancy’s line we come down to her great-great grandparents, Garfield “Brake-Stick” Fletcher b. 1863 d. 1957) and wife Emeline Cole.

Emeline or Eveline was Garfield’s 2nd wife.  The name of his first wife is presently not known.  His 3rd wife was Sola McCarty who was first married to Mark Poe and second to Charlie Cole.

Nancy’s line is through a son of Garfield and Emeline Fletcher: Winston “Wince” Fletcher who was married to Catherine “Kate” Nickels.  However our information is very sketchy on the descendants of Garfield.  We can glean some info from census records.

We invite Nancy and other descendants to help us with their family information.  You may write to Magoffin County Historical Society, PO Box 222, Salyersville, KY 41465 (email [email protected]).

Back to Archives

Home Up Family Photo Albums Family Reunions Founders Days Links Membership News Our Beginnings Pioneer Village Publications Talk to Todd

Send email to MCHS with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified:      Friday, March 21, 2014