Kentucky: A History of the State, Battle, Perrin, & Kniffin, 6th ed., 1887, Shelby Co. JUDGE JOSEPH P. FOREE was born near Christiansburg, Shelby County, March 26, 1820, the second son of William P. and Elizabeth J. (Major) Foree, natives of North Carolina and Virginia. The Foree family was among the earliest settlers of America, having come from France about the year 1689, and the Major family equally early in the country, were from England, where they were adherents of Charles I. Archibald Foree, the great-grandfather of the Judge, was massacred by the Indians, in Bourbon County, at a very early day in the settlement of Kentucky, and seven of his children held captives by the savages three or four years. Peter Foree, the Judge's grandfather, was a resident of Henry County, Ky., and was ninety-nine years of age at his death. William P. Foree was an extensive farmer, and died in 1849, aged about sixty-five years. Joseph P. Foree was educated at Shelby College and at Transylvania University, and graduated from the law department of the latter in 1843, in the fall of which year he began practice at Charleston, Miss. He was Judge of the probate court at Tallahatchie County in 1845, and in 1848 represented that county in the Legislature of the State (Miss). In 1852 he returned to Kentucky and and settled in Shelby County, and opened practice, was elected county judge of Shelby in 1854; re-elected after an interregnum; is the present incumbent, and with the close of this term will have served in that office sixteen years. In 1871 he served Shelby County in the State Legislature. July 8, 1846, he married Miss Mary P. Marshall, a native of Virginia, who died in 1882, the mother of four children: Prior J., Charles M., Susan B. and Sallie J. The Judge is a Royal Arch Mason, and in 1874 was elected Grand High Priest of the State of Kentucky and served one term as such. Foree Major Marshall = Bourbon-KY Henry-KY Fayette-KY Tallachatchie-MS VA NC France England http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/shelby/foree.jp.txt