This article, written by Todd Preston, President of the Magoffin County Historical Society, was taken from the JUNE 26, 2014 issue of THE SALYERSVILLE INDEPENDENT newspaper.

            Surprisingly, our calendar shows that the year 2014 is half-way over!  Time is moving way too swiftly these days (smile).

            Usually by this time of the year the Magoffin County Historical Society would be “knee-deep” in plans for the Labor Day weekend event “Founders Days”.  It is not so this year as a few of you have noted. 

            We wanted to extend some words of explanation to those of you who keep up with our historical society and its activities. 

            We had our first Founders Days (honoring the Adams family) back in 1979.  After we organized in April of 1978 we began looking for projects we could do to further our stated goal of “Preserving the Past for the Future”.  A chance meeting on the sidewalks of Salyersville with then-editor of the Salyersville Independent Tim Bostic resulted in a plan that evolved into the Magoffin County Historical Society sponsoring an annual event honoring our early settlers.  At the time we were also working on trying to find a way to bring to completion the goal of another former editor of the local newspaper, Albert K. Moore, who had wanted some type of permanent marker for town founder William “Uncle Billy” Adams.  A big boost in that direction was brought on by visitors from Oklahoma, Joe and Yvona Mason.  Yvona was a descendant of Uncle Billy and was here looking for genealogical information and was directed to our fledgling organization for help.  The short form of the story is that a large group of local people banded together to see that that project was accomplished.  The large black granite pyramid-shaped marker dedicated to Magoffin’s early settlers that is now located on the lawn of the Lloyd M. Hall Community Center was the first effort of our historical society. We knew that Uncle Billy was buried in the cemetery by the Christian Church but his grave was not marked.  Candace Conley took on that project and a nice marker was placed for Uncle Billy.

            Our pyramid-shaped marker had spaces for two more founding families so we planned a celebration for the Prater family.  This family did much to establish a settlement in the very early days of the area before it was Magoffin County.  Then came a Founder’s Day for the Salyer family that boasts a family member for whom the seat of our county was named, State Legislator Samuel Salyer.

And so our tradition continued to include many other families whose efforts built and shaped our county, Patrick, Arnett, Conley, Howard, Bailey, Wireman, Montgomery, Allen, Reed, Minix, May, Risner, Lykins, Williams, Helton, Jenkins, Shepherd, Vanderpool, Miller, Gullett, Whitaker, Hammond, Carpenter, Fletcher, Manns, Joseph, Marshall, and Rudd.  We also spent three of our years with special tributes.  The year 2006 when we saluted our military men and women; the year 2000 was a Magoffin County Homecoming which celebrated all our area surnames; then a celebration of Magoffin County’s 150^th birthday in 2010.

            As our plans escalated in the succeeding years from 1981, we added another Early Founder’s Marker which is now located on the lawn of the Pioneer Village to hold those additional family names.  We were pleased to add two large panels to this marker last year. We added memorial listings for our first three Founders Days honorees, Adams, Prater and Salyer to these panels as well as the 2013 surname, Rudd.  There is also space for other names for coming years. 

            We are proud of what we have been able to accomplish down through the time of our existence but always on our minds are those projects that either didn’t get finished or are still on the “back burner” for us to work on.  Among these is one that dates back to our beginnings and that is a marker for Stephen Adams, the father of Uncle Billy, who is also buried by the Christian Church.  Add to that, markers for many other of our early founding fathers and the books of genealogy that we have started but have not been able to finish, the 2010 Sesquicentennial, the year 2000 Surname Book, Hammond, Fletcher, Carpenter, Marshall, Joseph, Manns, Rudd, not to mention the many, many Magoffin family surnames that we had planned to honor in the future.

            Due to a number of complicating incidents within our small group of year-around volunteers, we had to take the step of curtailing some of our usual activities.  It was an agonizing decision for those here at the “home-twenty” as we had grown accustomed to going right into another project even before completing the current one at hand.  From the time of our first Founders Days we would be ready to announce a family surname for the coming year but this year we recognized that it would be unfair to add another surname to the unfinished printing projects that we have started. Many people who had contributed information for these earlier projects are disappointed that we are not finishing up these former books.  We are now trying to catch up on those projects and at the same time looking forward to the time when we can resume our regular activities. First and foremost, we intend to keep our genealogy library and Pioneer Village open for research and as a “home” for local and out of area visitors.

            As the old time radio programs used to end, “Stay tuned for the next episode” of the continuing story of the Magoffin County Historical Society.