It has been an enjoyable week here at the Magoffin County Historical Society with many visitors throughout the week. We had a special group come in on Friday to visit our library and tour the Pioneer Village cabins and grounds.

Carla Howard and Angie Gillum, teachers at the South Magoffin Elementary School brought in the sixth grade graduating class to visit with us.

The students attending this school trip were Cody Allen, Scott Auxier, Hunter Bailey, Julius Brown, Blake Castle, Kaitlyn Downing, Alyssa Fletcher, Gabby Gambill, Braxton Gayheart, Sam Howard, Brianna Joseph, Hailey Joseph, Kaylee Morrison, Landon Poe, Christina Rowe, Levi Rudd, Breanna Salyer, Chloe Salyer, Mason Shepherd, Haley Smithers, Bethany Tate, Ethan Wireman and Autumn Wright. One student, Jaden Coleman was away on vacation and not able to be here with the class.

While here, the 6^th grade students went to see the VAMCCO Veteran’s Marker in Ramey Park across the Licking River from the Pioneer Village. They also visited the Lloyd M. Hall Community Center that is located between our library and the Magoffin County Public Library. The first of our markers in honor of Magoffin’s early founders is located in the lawn of the Community Center.

This group of students was in first grade when our county celebrated its Sesquicentennial (150^th birthday) year. Several of them participated in that year’s special activities. We showed them the actual 1960 Centennial Time Capsule made by the late Belsey Connelley that was recovered during 2010. The articles from that Time Capsule were placed in the new 2010 time capsule along with many other items that will be opened in the year 2060, perhaps by some of these very students.

Our young children are our future and we look forward to them working toward good things happening in our county.

We wish this 6^th grade graduating class continued success with their school work as they prepare to enter the Herald Whitaker Middle School next year.

Those who worked with this group of students remarked on how well behaved they were and that they showed much interest in seeing the items on display and learning about Magoffin County’s history and the way of life in the olden days.

We had the pleasure of having a number of volunteers to help with the school tour. Aiding our usual volunteers were Patty Auxier, Kay Howard, Randall Risner and Toddie Preston.

Patty Auxier is well known for her community and school work. Since her own son entered as a student at the John T. Arnett Elementary School she has volunteered her time to help teachers provide interesting and educational programs for their classes. Many of those students from the Arnett school are now parents themselves and still hold pleasant memories of Patty’s visits to school and their own school trips to her farm on Puncheon Creek.

Patty continued her volunteering after the Arnett School closed as the area students began attending the new South Magoffin Elementary School located at the mouth of Half Mountain, south of Royalton, KY.

Patty is a contributing writer for the quarterly Journal of the Magoffin County Historical Society and our members always look forward to reading her column. By the way, in addition to volunteering her time today, Patty treated the students and all of us to some of her delicious baked goods which were very much enjoyed (SMILE).

Randall Risner and Kay Howard are well known volunteers with several civic minded groups in Magoffin, most notably with the Civil War Reenactments held in our county and area as well as their work toward the proposed Civil War Park near the South Magoffin School.

Kay taught school at the former Salyer Elementary in Royalton, one of the two schools consolidated to form the new South Magoffin School. We were very fortunate to have Kay and Randall participate in the 2010 Sesquicentennial activities. In addition to helping with several projects they also appeared in the dramas performed that year. Both Kay and Randall have written articles that will be printed in the forthcoming sesquicentennial book being prepared by the Magoffin Historical Society.

Toddie Preston is a retired vocational school teacher and a member of the Black Powder Express music group. He and his band have performed for many of our Magoffin County Founder’s Days events. The son of Historical Society president Todd Preston, Toddie has been involved with our activities for all of our 37 years.

Toddie is also a member of the Magoffin County Muzzleloader’s Club. The Muzzleloader’s contributed many hours of labor in constructing the log cabins in the Pioneer Village as we acquired them. The volunteers went with us to the original location sites, marked the logs as to their placement in the log home, dismantled them and transported the logs to the Pioneer Village. Here they were restored to their original state as much as possible. Much of our early history was saved by their doing this as now we have a village for touring that holds items and artifacts of the past.

Many people like to come to see the log home that once belonged to their ancestors and it is always enjoyable to hear visitors remark during their tours that they remember Grandma and Grandpa having the same or similar items.

The weather has been such that our Pioneer Village grounds are in need of some additional work. We want to get some replanting done in and around the cabins and would enjoy having some plants or small shrubs that have been in your family for many years. The winter weather took its toll on some of the plants we had here. We are hopeful that some of the old-fashioned dahlias will still come up that came from the home of Raleigh and Virgie Shepherd who lived in the Gunlock, KY area. Their son, Raleigh Shepherd, Jr. brought those to us several years ago.