Researching My Family's Story

Hello everyone!

As I've recently inherited a lot of items that have been in my family, I thought I'd seek out information from you knowledgeable folk.

While most of the items (furniture, clocks, pictures, etc) are most likely not worth much money-wise, they are VERY valuable to me in terms of childhood memories.

Hopefully as I attempt to research and restore many of these pieces, I'll learn a little bit more family history along the way.

Looking forward to meeting you all,

ML

 

Welcome to Antiquers, MountainLark!

 

Welcome,cant wait to see what ya got !

 

Looking forward to your posts! Welcome to the forum.

 

Welcome. Value is in the eye of the beholder.

 

Greetings, MountainLark!

Is that an ancestor in your avatar?

 

WELCOME MountainLark !!! ... Joy.

 

Yep. My great great grandad. He'd fit right in with the Hipster scene.

 

Great to use his picture, ML! If you don't mind my asking, where was your family from?

 

Most of my family goes about seven generations back in Eastern Kentucky and across the river in West Virginia. (It really surprised me, how much they'd stayed put!) Before that, many lineages trace back to England, Scotland and Wales.

 

Greetings.......any Civil War stuff ??

 

Is that so? I've got deep WV roots too, although I have never been there. My great grandparents on my father's side were born in Monroe Country, but moved to Indiana. And one of the lines down from my 3rd great grandfather involved a move to Greenup County, KY about 1840! We could be cousins

Those Scotch-Irish really invaded that part of Virginia in the 1700 and 1800's.

 

Hey Bakers we might be cousins.
My mother's father's side is from what is now Magoffin County, Kentucky. Back to the late 1600s.

 

You never know, Pat! Where's Magoffin Cty?

There is a person on the member list here (only visited a few times) who is my actual cousin.

 

Think I've got this right

 

Ah. Too far south. Greenup Cty is on the river, across from Portsmouth, OH. Northwest of Huntington, WV. Those in that line who didn't leave for Michigan, either stayed put in the Greenup area, went back and forth across the river to OH or moved back into WV.

 

Welcome.

 

I live on the edge of Appalachia. Incredibly pretty countryside and small towns but the poverty and economic decay is always present. As an economy based on resource extraction the has always been times of boom and bust but in the past few generations the times have been particularly lean with the decline of coal and the loss of manufacturing jobs. Some of these towns may not exist in 50 years at the rate things are going. So many abandoned homes and homes that are obviously occupied but are in disrepair are a significant percentage.