From all indications that groundhog saw his shadow on Groundhog Day so looks like we are in for six more weeks of winter. There is a cartoon going around on the Internet that says, "The groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter so I ate him!" I think we may need to get some recipes from the Magoffin County Muzzleloaders and try that! (Smile)

The weather and machine problems delayed a few days our mailing of the last 2014 issue of the Journal of the Magoffin County Historical Society but that is now in the mail. We are getting some nice reports from readers who have received their copies. We have already finished over 20 pages of the first of the 2015 Journals and we are very pleased with the material it will contain and believe our readers will be also. Our quarterly Journals are mailed out to interested readers for a fee of $15 a year.

One article in the first Journal of 2015 is from Seldon Rowe who grew up in the Tip Top area of Magoffin County back in the 1940s. We enjoyed his reminisces of family life in a day and time when people would visit their neighbors to sit on the porch to talk and/or play music together. We hope others will follow Seldon’s example and write about their life experiences. We want to thank Adam Manns for helping us get Seldon’s story for this Journal. One of the regrets we have as a historical society is that we have missed a lot of history and genealogy by not having the time to do oral interviews and record people’s memories of earlier times. As we lose our older generations we are also losing their knowledge of our past history.

The mail brought in a nice packet of material from Lorrene Waddle last week. She has written a story of her and husband Ron’s association with C. E. Shepard of Dayton, Ohio who took an interest in his eastern Kentucky relatives back in the late 1960s and recorded his accumulation of genealogy material into several very well done books, among them, Kentucky Kinfolk, A Small Twig from the Baldridge Tree in 1984, Head O’ Lickin’ and Thereabouts in 1998 and Descendants of the Elliott’s of Elliott’s Risque in 2005. At a time when no census records were available to those who were interested in research without making long trips to large libraries where microfilm and machines were available, Mr. Shepard copied all the census and Vital Statistic material for Magoffin and surrounding counties which greatly enriched our knowledge of our ancestors.

His research work was started when there was very little material in print on eastern Kentucky. Magoffin County only had the booklet compiled in 1960 by Albert K. Moore entitled Magoffin’s First Century in print.

Mr. Shepard gleaned family information by visiting and writing people in his genealogy search. He printed some of his findings in our local newspaper, The Salyersville Independent in the early 1970s. Many people reading his newspaper articles then contacted him when they read of connections to their own family. One of these who wrote to him was Connie Arnett Wireman who is one of the co-founders of the Magoffin County Historical Society, the others being Todd Preston and the late Stanley Gardner.

When Mr. Shepard learned that a fledgling Magoffin County Historical Society had been formed and was taking on the project of copying Magoffin County cemeteries for the Kentucky Historical Society he made trips to Magoffin to help with that project, always encouraging us to be as thorough as we could with the project. We sent our results to the Kentucky Historical Society and printed a series of cemetery books as well for our society.

C. E. also advised us that one of our first projects should be copying the Magoffin County marriages and putting them into printed form. Connie and Stanley took on that task and a three volume set of books of marriage records from 1860 through 1910 was a result of their efforts. This set of books has been very valuable in helping many people learn more about their ancestry.

Our printed books and materials are our means of keeping the Magoffin County Historical Society and Pioneer Village in operation. From our beginnings in the late 1970s until today, we are always gratified and impressed by the many, many people who write to us or who visit us in search of their ancestors. A large number of them have shown their appreciation for our help by contributing their compiled genealogy material to our library and also by sharing a bit of their family history by giving us items to furnish the Pioneer Village log homes.

We are also grateful that a number of people have given and are giving of their time and efforts to assure that our work continues and grows.

We are now entering our 37^th year of printing genealogy material. One would think that we have covered our history well by this time but daily we become intrigued by another bit of history or genealogy puzzle that needs to be explored and put into print.

We hope we have encouraged you to write and share your own family history and memories with us. If so, please write to us at Magoffin County Historical Society, PO Box 222, Salyersville, KY 41465 or email [email protected]. We are located at 191 South Church Street in Salyersville in case you can visit our facility.