Susan, Found a photo in a book of Christina Elkins with a obit. of her son with his family listed. If you do not have a copy let me know. Gary Susan Martucci wrote: > Hi Everyone, > > I want to thank all of you who wrote to me with suggestions about how to spend my time when visiting Pike County. I think > that I was very efficient during my brief time there - mostly because of your excellent suggestions. > > I just got back from my visit to Pike County. I drove up to Grundy, VA last Monday. I was able to do research in Pikeville > for three whole days. On Friday, we toured a couple of cemeteries and a local church before heading back home to South > Carolina. As you can probably guess, three and half days was just not enough to see and do everything that I wanted to, but > it was a great trip. > > The major places that I visited were the Pike County courthouse and the Special Collections room at Pikeville College > library. I was at the Pikeville College library for only one day (definitely not enough time), but I did not even stop for > lunch. I wish I had another day just to browse. I spent two days at the court house, but they were not full days. I had > lunch one day with a cousin that I had not seen for over twenty years. On another day, I spent the early morning at the > Buchanan County courthouse trying to locate a marriage record that should have been in Pike County, but was just not there. > There was good and bad news about the visit to Buchanan county. The good news was that I found one of the missing marriages. > The bad news was that it was in marriage book #1 which they did not have at the courthouse anymore. > > I stopped by the Tourism/Visitor Information booth looking for local maps and found a book on Pike County for sale. The title > is "Pike County - A Very Different Place" by William David Deskins. It was published in 1994. The book was published in > conjunction with the Bicentennial of Kentucky (in 1992). The book begins with a brief overview of the people that may have > been in the area 10,000 years ago. It quickly moves into the 1700s and ends with a chapter called - World War II and Beyond. > I have not read the entire book yet, but it seems to be an interesting book and contains a section of pictures in the middle. > It cost $30.00. > > One of the more interesting finds from the Special Collection room was a file cabinet of Community Studies. Apparently, > students at Pikeville College taking a course called Appalachian Studies are required to do a project/report on an Appalachian > community. Most of the reports were brief (only 4-10 pages), but they were on very specific communities in Pike County. Most > of the students would pick their home community if they were from the area. These studies usually included oral interviews > with an older person in the area (many times it seemed to be an interview with grandparents or some other local older > person). I actually found a study that mentioned my GG-grandfather by name. The report usually included the names of the > major families in the community. I copied several of the reports that dealt with the area that my mother and her cousins grew > up in. They had a wonderful time reading the reports because they typically were about people that they knew "in the old > days". The communities that I was looking into were Mouthcard, Feds Creek, and Little Card (which was filed under Card > Creek). One of the reasons that I mentioned these community studies was because I always looked at the back page of a report > for the bibliography. In two of the reports, I saw a reference to "100 year History of Mouthcard Baptist Church". This was > the church that my family attended. This was not a document that seemed to be located in any library - it was distributed to > church members at the time, but after talking to the pastor of the church, he has tracked down a copy of the church history > and is making me a copy. > > The courthouse was a wonderful place to visit. I was able to look at original marriage documents for most of the marriages in > my main lines. The courthouse also had copies of Pike county census records plus a good collection of surrounding counties' > census records. These were very helpful when I found a marriage record that gave me a new family branch to look at. In my > library in South Carolina, I only have the microfilm to look at, so it was nice to see indexed books of most of census > information. I wish my library had a copy of the books. The courthouse charged $0.25 per page for marriage records, census > info and school census records. In the deed and will section however, each page costs several dollars ($5.00 for a two page > deed). My family transferred land and recorded a lot of deeds, so I did not get too many of those records. > > Apologies for the length of this post. I had such a great time on my visit that I wanted to share a little with you. This > was definitely not my last trip to Pike County. One additional note - The fall foliage this year is just spectacular. The > entire drive from South Carolina to Kentucky was one breathtaking view after another. > > Happy Hunting Everyone... > > -- > Susan Martucci > jkdevl@earthlink.net > > ==== KYPIKE Mailing List ==== > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% > ...........................PIKE MAAILING LIST.......................... > Please do not send attached files to our list. Some older systems will > not handle or process them. 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