Speaker Spotlight: Don Rightmyer

Don Rightmyer, editor, Kentucky Ancestors (quarterly genealogical publication of the Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Kentucky), writer, and lecturer.  Following a 24-year U.S. Air Force career, Don worked as a reference librarian for eight years before taking over Kentucky Ancestors.  He has spoken on a variety of genealogical, Civil War, and Kentucky historical topics at national, regional, and local levels.    

Migration Routes into Kentucky

Traveling to the trans-Appalachian region of colonial Virginia in the late 1700s?  Over 200,000 people made that trip in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.  The two primary routes were down the Ohio River or through the Cumberland Gap by way of the Wilderness Trail.  Don Rightmyer will describe what the experience was like for ancestors who made that trip and began a new life “on the western waters.” 

 

Speaker Spotlight: Don Rightmyer