Obit received Dec 2000 from John B. Clark, Shelbyville KY:
John Earl Willhite
John Earl Willhite, 79, of Campbellsburg, died Monday, Dec 4, 2000 at Tri-County Baptist Hospital in LaGrange. A native of Henry County, he was the son of the late Earl and Ruth Ethington Willhite.
He was a retired Kentucky State Reformatory employee, member of the Campbellsburg Baptist Church and past member of Campbellsburg Masonic Lodge.
He is survived by his wife, Roberta Chapman Willhite of Campbellsburg; a son, Douglas Earl Willhite of Campbellsburg; a daughter Patricia Springate of Harrodsburg; three sisters, Dorothy Williams of PRinceton, Ann Brewer of Louisville, and Sue Hargrove of Shelbyville; two grandchildren.
The funeral is 11 AM Wednesday at Ransdell Funeral Home in Campbellsburg.
end.
SAMUEL AND RACHEL DEMAREE HAD THIRTEEN CHILDREN. - JWE PAGE 19
G.W. Demaree is the author of "Some Early History of Six Mile Creek", a source of many biographies of early Ethington family members.
Note from Jackie Ethington Lee to Pat Ethington Beadle about 1970:
"I talked to Uncle Reed about his visit to John Demaree. He said that Mr. DeMaree was very old at the time and he could get little information at that time. His records were just stashed in an old abandoned house but Uncle Reed could not persuade them (his children) to let him take those papers."From History of Henry County Kentucky by Maude Johnston Drane (1948) FHL # 976.9385 H2d:
"Every Henry Countian is familiar with the name Lockport. For, since the beginning of the county this spot on the beautiful Kentucky River has lured the angler to its enchanting banks.
"It was first called Wallace's Warehouse, Wallace being the family name of some of its pioneer settlers. Then, when John O. Demaree's grandfather Ethington built the first lock there, the name was changed to Lockport, and incorporated in 1854." Page 58
"Perhaps no citizen of Henry County is so well versed in all its history as is John Owen Demaree. He lives in his ancestral home one mile east of Defoe, where he was born and reared. Through the years many have sought and obtained from him valuable information about Henry County's pioneer days. At an early age he studied law and taught school in Henryh County and other places, always coming back to his "Old Kentucky Home" to farm, to study anew, and to help his fellow man.
"Mr. Demaree's ancestors were among the settlers of the Low Dutch Colony, one and one half miles east of North Pleasureville. His father, John Milton Demaree, was born in what was then called the Isaac LeCompte home, built in 1839. The present dwelling was placed next to it. His father was a farmer, teacher, and a minister for forty years in the Baptist denomination, becomming a Primitive Baptist when the missionary and anti-missionary elements of the Baptist church severed relations. Mr. Demaree's grandfather came to Henry County from New Jersey." Page 197
ENTERED THE ARMED FORCES IN EARLY 1942. WAS KILLED IN BATTLE 10 JUL 1944.
JWE.
Year and state of birth from 1880 Henry Co Ky census page 143 dw 141. ALSO JWE PAGE 21.