Reunion to honor Ky. county founders By JOHN LUCAS Courier & Press Western Kentucky bureau (270) 333-4899 [email protected] July 8, 2002 GREENVILLE, Ky. - When Henry Rhoads and other early settlers - many of them Revolutionary War veterans - arrived in what is now Muhlenberg County in the late 1700s, they came on footand by horseback through the Cumberland Gap with their possessions loaded onto ox carts or transferred to makeshift flatboats. They came and stayed and died here. They left behind a new state and Kentucky's 32nd county - carved from what was then the Western frontier. And they also left behind a progeny that today numbers into the thousands and is scattered across the country. On Saturday, descendants of 11 of those pioneer families will meet at the Bremen Community Center for what is being billed as one of the largest multifamily reunions ever to be held in Muhlenberg County. Sandra Galyen, with the Muhlenberg County Public Library's Genealogy and Local History Annex, doesn't know how many will return to the county for the reunion which starts at 3 p.m. Galyen, a descendant of Rhoads - who is regarded as the "father of Muhlenberg County" - expects at least 300 people. People with roots in Muhlenberg County are coming from everywhere, from California to Ohio and Michigan to Texas. Anyone who has lived in Muhlenberg County for any length of time can probably claim kinship to the old families to be represented in Saturday's reunion. The family names, in addition to Rhoads, are Hendricks, Miller, Noffsinger, Phillips, Shanks, Strader, Vincent, Whitmer, Wilkins and Wright. "We tell people when they come in (to do genealogical research) that if they had ancestors here prior to 1850 they are related to somebody still here," Galyen said. As in most isolated, rural communities, families here intermarried over the generations, so that today many of the county's residents are related, sometimes on both sides of their family tree. The reunion, which will include a pig and turkey roast (attendees are asked to bring a side item or dessert) is the result of collaboration by Galyen and a cousin, Rita Wilkins, both of whom trace their family back six generations to Rhoads. Through mailings, telephone calls, stories in local newspapers and word of mouth, they've been promoting the gathering as a "tribute to our early ancestors." Horse-and-buggy rides will also be available at the reunion, along with displays of antiques and family heirlooms and photographs. Wilkins, who lives in Carlsbad, Calif., came to visit three years mago and was bitten by the genealogy bug, Galyen said. Wilkins used the research on her Rhoads ancestry for admission into the Daughters of the American Revolution. Galyen added a lot of people use Rhoads connections for admission into the organization because the research is well established. He and other veterans of the American Revolution began streaming through the Cumberland Gap, across the Appalachian Mountains in the late 1700s to claim land awarded them for their service in the war for independence. Rhoads, born in Pennsylvania in 1739, married a Maryland woman, and they arrived in Western Kentucky in the 1780s. Rhoads first settled and helped lay out what is today the town of Calhoun in McLean County, but he moved from there to Fort Hartford in Ohio County after he lost a lawsuit over title to the McLean County property. Shortly afterward, he moved to what is today northern Muhlenberg County and in about 1792 - the year Kentucky was admitted to the union as the 15th state - he built a two-story frame house beside a road that eventually became Kentucky 70. The ruins of the long-abandoned old house, a little northeast of present-day Browder, are obscured now by trees and weeds. Having served as a delegate to the Pennsylvania constitutional convention in 1776 and a member of that state's Legislature from 1776 to 1778, Rhoads was elected in 1798 to serve in the Kentucky Legislature. There in 1798, he was instrumental in seeing a new county created from portions of Logan and Christian counties. Rhoads and others of the veterans of the Revolution who settled in Western Kentucky had fought under Gen. John Peter Muhlenberg. As a member of the state Legislature, Rhoads was able to see the new county was named in Muhlenberg's honor. Rhoads died in 1814 in Muhlenberg County, and is buried in a family plot not far from his homestead. Until recently, the Rhoads' final resting places were marked only by field stones placed at the time of their burials. In 2001, descendants erected a large tombstone to mark their graves. ================== Protect Our Children & Prevent Domestic Abuse http://endabuse.org/programs/children/ Equal Employment Know Your Rights http://www.eeoc.gov/ Keep my daughter Tabitha and grandaughter Hallie in your prayers... "Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life. " Sophocles