About the Society

The Stallard County Genealogical Society was organized in the spring of 1978 by eleven people who kept running into one another at the microfilm reader in the public library. We now have 214 members in 31 states and two foreign countries, most of whom have never lived here but whose families did. Our purpose is to find, preserve and publish the records of the people of Stallard County, and to help anyone, member or not, who is looking for family here.

The society meets on the third Monday of each month (except December) at 7:00 p.m. in the meeting room of the county public library. Visitors are always welcome. Membership is $15 a year and includes our quarterly, The Stallard County Searcher, and one free query in each issue.

I am Gretchen Rich, the society's corresponding secretary. I have been a secretary at our high school for twenty-six years, and I have been tracing my mother's people, the Livingstons and the Neelys, since 1981. It is my job to answer the letters that come to the society, and lately the e-mail as well. I try to answer everything within two weeks. If you have not heard from me in a month, please write again; it is possible that something went astray, and it is possible that I am buried in the 1850 census.

The Cemetery Reading Project

In 1994 the society set out to read and record every cemetery in Stallard County, from the town cemetery at the county seat to the smallest family plot in a pasture. As of this month our readers have walked and read 87 of the 112 cemeteries we know of, about 14,600 burials in all. The readings are published district by district (see Publications), and a copy of every reading is on file in the genealogy room.

We need your help with the last twenty-five. Most of the cemeteries we have left are small family plots on private land: a few stones, or only fieldstones, under a cedar tree in what is now a pasture or a woodlot, sometimes with a fence around them and sometimes not. If you know of one, please tell us where it is, even approximately. If one is on your land, we will ask your permission before we set foot on it and will gladly come when it suits you. Rosa Orndorff, who chairs the project and has personally read forty-one cemeteries, carries a letter explaining what we do. We close gates.

Research Hours

The society keeps a genealogy room on the second floor of the county public library, with the library's kind cooperation. Society volunteers are there to help:

The room is open whenever the library is, but a volunteer can save you a great deal of time. In the room: microfilm of the county's federal census schedules 1820 to 1920; copies of the county marriage, deed and will books; our cemetery readings; the obituary index to the county newspaper from 1880; some four hundred family files donated by researchers; and two microfilm readers, one of which works properly. Kristine Doherty is our genealogy room chairman.

First Families of Stallard County

If you descend from someone who lived in Stallard County before 1850, you may apply for a First Families of Stallard County certificate. The application asks for proof of each generation from you back to the ancestor, and proof of the ancestor's residence here before 1850: a census entry, a deed, a tax list, a marriage record, a tombstone. Copies, please, not originals. The fee is $10. We have issued 148 certificates since 1990, and they are presented at our annual dinner in November. Applications from William Velasquez, First Families chairman, through the society's e-mail below.

Fall Programs

For Beginners

We get many letters from people just starting out. This is what I tell them.

1. Start with yourself and work backward, one generation at a time. Write down what you know about yourself, your parents and your grandparents, with dates and places, and note how you know it. Do not start with a famous person of your surname and try to work down to yourself.

2. Talk to your oldest relatives now. Ask about names, places, churches, and where people are buried. Ask who has the family Bible. Write it down or tape it.

3. Write down where you found everything. Every fact, every source. You will thank yourself in five years.

4. Use the census. The federal census was taken every ten years from 1790. The schedules from 1790 through 1840 name only the head of each household; the others are counted by age and sex. The 1850 census is the first to name every person, and 1880 the first to give each person's relationship to the head of household. Nearly all of the 1890 census was destroyed after a fire in Washington in 1921, though the special schedules of Union veterans and their widows survive for about half the states, Kentucky among them. The 1920 census is the most recent open to the public. The 1930 census will open seventy-two years after it was taken, about two and a half years from now.

5. Learn Soundex. The census indexes for 1880 (households with children ten and under only), 1900 and 1920, and for 1910 in some states, Kentucky among them, are arranged by Soundex, a code that groups surnames that sound alike. Keep the first letter, drop the vowels and H, W and Y, and code the next three consonants: B F P V = 1; C G J K Q S X Z = 2; D T = 3; L = 4; M N = 5; R = 6. Letters with the same code side by side count once. Fill out with zeros. So POYNTER is P536, and HISE, HAYS, HAYES and HESS all come out H200, which is the whole point.

6. Go to the courthouse, or write to it. In Kentucky the county clerk keeps the deed books, will books and marriage records, many going back to the county's beginning. Our county was formed in 1811 and its records are nearly complete. Kentucky did not require birth and death certificates statewide until 1911; there are county registers for a few years in the 1850s and later, and they are spotty.

7. Spell it every way. Census takers and clerks wrote what they heard. Our NEELY family appears as Neely, Neeley, Nealy and Kneely, sometimes in the same decade.

8. Be skeptical of printed family histories and of anything without a source. Use them as clues, and then prove them.

If you mean to put your own research on the Web, see Your Family Tree on the Web. Its author put 2,300 ancestors online and explains how to turn your genealogy program's file into pages, keep the living private, and get found by cousins.

Officers for 1999

Publications for Sale · Members' Queries · Athens

Correspondence: Gretchen Rich, Corresponding Secretary
[email protected]


visitors since March 1, 1997
Last updated September 22, 1999