The 2^nd Annual Magoffin County Heritage Days is taking place at this writing and our historical society is proud to be a part of it. Heritage Days brought back memories of our own first venture into beginning a county celebration.

The year 1979 was a spectacular one for the Magoffin County Historical Society! The new group had been officially organized in April of 1978 by Todd Preston, Stanley Gardner and Connie A. Wireman after over a year of discussion, meetings and work to copy Magoffin County cemeteries.

At the first formal meeting in 1978 held in the conference room of the Magoffin County Library, a small group of Magoffin County people came together with the co-founders of the historical society and made some preliminary plans.

In organizing the historical society Todd Preston was elected president; Stanley Gardner vice-president; Imogene Caudill secretary; Johnnie Back treasurer and Connie A. Wireman, corresponding secretary.

Before the year was out the enthusiastic group had decided to print a quarterly Journal and to have a county celebration that would be called "Founder’s Day".

For many years, Albert K. Moore, editor of the Salyersville Independent, had advocated a memorial for William "Uncle Billy" Adams, town founder of Adamsville, forerunner of our county seat of Salyersville in Magoffin County, KY. Our historical society wanted to honor Mr. Moore’s request so we chose Uncle Billy Adams as the subject of our first celebration to be held on Labor Day weekend. Tim Bostic, the editor of the newspaper in 1979, suggested that a booklet of Adams information be compiled in order to help finance the purchase of a marker and, with the help of many contributors, this was accomplished in time for the first Founders Days event.

The summer of 1978 brought visitors from Oklahoma, Joe and Yvona Mason who were researching Yvona’s ancestors. Joe Mason proposed that we purchase a marker that could be inscribed with several "founding fathers" names. Larry Caudill, son of Ishmael and Margie Caudill of the Caudill Funeral Home, searched for a suitable marker and advised a majestic black granite pyramid marker, being one of only two such markers that had been made at that time.

Permission was secured to place the marker on the lawn of the Lloyd M. Hall Community Center. The purchase money for the marker was borrowed from the Salyersville National Bank by several local citizens and the order was placed.

Work for the first Magoffin County Founder’s Day progressed with many interested persons coming in and volunteering to help. Candace and John Ray Conley were among those early volunteers with Candace taking up the task of looking into purchasing a cemetery marker to be placed in the Christian Churchyard in Salyersville where Uncle Billy and several of his family members had been buried. Once there had been markers for them on this cemetery but through time and circumstances these had disappeared.

Labor Day weekend 1979 came and various contests and pageants were held in the preceding days and a very large group of citizens and descendants of various Adams families gathered on the lawn of the Hall Community Center on Saturday for the very first Founders Day program. We were privileged to have Dorothy Amburgey Griffith, editor of The Adams Addenda, Clayton R. Cox, editor of the East Kentuckian Genealogy Journal, Herald Whitaker, Superintendent of Magoffin County Schools, Tim Bostic, Editor of the Salyersville Independent newspaper, Mary Lou Brown Byrd, our "Country Common-Tator" and several others as speakers for the event. An impressive parade followed through the streets of Salyersville.

 The project of placing a marker for Uncle Billy Adams in the large cemetery at the Christian Church as part of the Adams’ tributes that weekend became a reality with chairperson Candace Conley. Several descendants helped financially with this project and so visions of honoring Magoffin County’s early settlers, the first goal of the charter members of the Magoffin County Historical Society, started to become a reality.

The 118 page booklet of Adams genealogy and pictures was put on sale. Enough money was realized from its sale and from contributions to repay the bank loan for the Early Settler’s marker at the Lloyd M. Hall Community Center.

The Magoffin Historical Society continued with efforts to honor William "Uncle Billy" Adams for his life-long work to build a town for his friends and neighbors. In his lifetime he had provided jobs for residents of the town then called "Adamsville", and had a number of businesses in operation, including coal mines, blacksmith shop, steam mill, and tanyard. He gave land for the first courthouse. Uncle Billy eventually was instrumental in working toward having a new county formed in 1860 by the name of Magoffin, working along with Samuel "The Legislator" Salyer and other interested citizens in wanting a county seat town closer to where they lived.

To further honor the accomplishments of Uncle Billy, a Kentucky State Highway Marker was applied for and received. The marker was set on the lawn of the Magoffin County courthouse November 29, 1979.

Two descendants taking part in this first Founder’s Day event were John C. and Mary Conley. Uncle Billy Adams was John C. Conley’s great-grandfather. John C.’s grandfather was Samuel Johnson "Johnse" Adams, a minister and educator in Magoffin County, who moved to Morgan County, KY where he lived at the time of his death. In 1900 Johnse and his wife Zilpha lived at Maytown in Morgan Co. KY. He was buried in the Ezel Cemetery at Ezel, KY. His first wife Mahala Rice Adams had died in 1882 and was buried in the Earl May Cemetery in Magoffin Co. KY. A new monument was placed at her gravesite in recent years by her great-grandson, Marcus L. Conley.

Although proud and pleased with the first Magoffin County Founders Day and the succeeding 34 such events, the Magoffin County Historical Society members and descendants still remembered the unmarked gravesite of Uncle Billy’s father Stephen Adams whose descendants in eastern Kentucky and in all parts of the country number in the thousands. In 2013 during the Rudd family Founders Days celebration, an addition was made to the Early Founder’s marker in the Pioneer Village honoring Stephen Adams and his family.

Then, finally the task of marking Stephen Adams’ gravesite was accomplished recently when the Magoffin County Historical Society placed a monument in the cemetery in front of the Salyersville Christian Church to honor Stephen Adams b. 1778 in North Carolina and died in Magoffin County. This marker was donated by Candace Conley in memory of her husband John Ray Conley, her father-in-law John C. Conley and other family members who were direct descendants of Stephen Adams and his father John Adams. "A promise transferred into reality…."